Jataka 199
Gahapati Jātaka
The Householder
as told by Eric Van Horn
originally translated by William Henry Denham Rouse, Cambridge University
originally edited by Professor Edward Byles Cowell, Cambridge University
This is another one of those misogynistic stories that does not ring true. In the story-in-the-present we are told that a “wicked woman can never be made right.” The Buddha would never make a statement like that. In fact, one of the fundamental tenets of the Buddha’s teaching is that anyone can change at any time. This is the profound lesson of Aṇgulimāla, the serial killer who became an arahant. It is also curious that the “wicked woman can never be made right,” when the Jātaka story says that after the incident at the house the wicked woman “did not dare to misbehave even in thought,” contradicting the story’s own premise. It is also interesting that the story is about a wicked woman, while the headman of the village apparently gets off scot-free!
“I do not like this.” The Master told this story during a stay at Jetavana. It, too, is about a backsliding monk. In the course of his address he said, “A wicked woman can never be kept right. Somehow or another they will misbehave and trick their husbands.” And then he told this story of the past.
Once upon a time, during the reign of Brahmadatta, the King of Benares, the Bodhisatta was born in the realm of Kāsi as a householder’s son. When he came of age he married and settled down. Now his wife was a wicked woman, and she had an affair with the head of the village. The Bodhisatta got wind of it and thought about how he might put her to the test.
At that time all the grain had been washed away during the rainy season and there was a famine. But it was the time when the corn had just sprouted. All the villagers came together and asked for the help of the head of the village. They said, “Two months from now when we have harvested the corn, we will pay you back.” So they got an old ox from him and ate it.
One day, the headman watched for his chance, and when the Bodhisatta was away he visited the house. Just as the two were happily together, the Bodhisatta came in by the village gate and set out for home. The woman happened to look toward the village gate and she saw a man walking toward them. “Why, who's that?” she wondered, looking at him as he stood on the threshold. “It is he!” She cried. She told the headman. He trembled in terror.
“Don't be afraid,” the woman said, “I have a plan. You know we have had meat from your ox. Pretend that you were asking to be paid for the meat. I will climb up into the granary and stand at the door crying. ‘There is no rice here!’ Then you stand in the middle of the room and call out insisting, again and again, ‘I have children at home. Pay me for the meat!’”
So saying, she climbed up to the granary and sat in the doorway. The headman stood in the midst of the house and cried, “Pay me for the meat,” while she replied, “There is no rice in the granary. I will pay you when the harvest is in. Now leave me alone!”
The good man entered the house and saw what was going on.
“This must be that wicked woman’s plan,” he thought, and he called to the headman, “Sir headman, when we had some of your old ox to eat, we promised to give you rice for it in two months. Only a half a month has passed. Why are you trying to make us pay now?” Then he said, “That’s not the reason you are here. You have come for something else. I don’t like your ways. That wicked and sinful woman over there knows that there is no rice in the granary, but she has climbed up and sits there crying, ‘No rice here!’ And you cry ‘Pay me!’ I don’t like your doings, either of you!” And to make his meaning clear, he uttered these lines:
“I don’t like this, I don’t like that, I don’t like her, I say,
Who stands beside the granary, and cries ‘I cannot pay!’
“Nor you, nor you, sir! Listen now. My means and store are small.
You gave me once a skinny cow, and two months’ grace withal.
Now, here today, you bid me pay! I don’t like it at all.”
Then he seized the headman by the lock of hair on the top of his head, dragged him out into the courtyard and threw him down as he cried, “I’m the headman!” But the good man mocked him, saying “You owe me damages for injury done to a wife under another man’s watch!” He beat him until the man was faint. Then he took him by the neck and threw him out of the house. He seized the wicked woman by her hair, pulled her away from the granary, knocked her down, and threatened her. “If you ever do this kind of thing again, I’ll make you remember it!”
Figure: Winner and Still Champion
From that day on the headman dared not even look at that house, and the woman did not dare to misbehave even in thought.
When this discourse was ended, the Master taught the Four Noble Truths, at the conclusion of which the backsliding monk reached the Fruit of the First Path (stream-entry). Then he declared the birth: “I was the good man who punished that headman.”
