Jataka 230
Dutiya Palāyi Jātaka
The Second Debater
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 “The Debater” Part Deux. As if once was not enough, our debater from Jātaka 229 is back, only to be rebuffed once more!
“Countless are my banners.” The Master told this story while he was living at Jetavana. It is about this same persistent mendicant.
At that time the Master, with a large company round him, was sitting on the beautifully adorned throne of the Dharma, on a vermilion platform. He was giving a discourse like a young lion roaring with a lion’s roar. The mendicant, seeing the Buddha’s form like the form of Brahma, his face like the glory of the full moon, and his forehead like a plate of gold, turned around from where he had come. He ran off in the midst of the crowd saying, “Who could overcome a man like this?”
The crowd chased after him, then came back and told the Master. He said, “Not only now has this mendicant fled at the mere sight of my golden face. He did the same before.” And he told them this story from the past.
Once upon a time, the Bodhisatta was the King in Benares. And in Takkasilā there reigned a certain King from Gandhāra. This King wanted to capture Benares. He surrounded the city with a complete army of four divisions (elephants, cavalry, chariots, and infantry). And taking his stand at the city gate, he looked out on his army and said he, “Who would be able to conquer as great an army as this?” And describing his army, he uttered the first stanza:
“Countless are my banners, rival none they own,
Flocks of crows can never stem the rolling sea,
Never can the storm-blast beat a mountain down,
So, of all the living none can conquer me!”
Then the Bodhisatta displayed his own glorious countenance, as radiant as the full moon. He threatened him, saying, “Fool, do not babble so vainly! Now I will destroy your host as a maddened elephant crushes a thicket of reeds!” and he repeated the second stanza:
“Fool! and have you never yet a rival found?
You art hot with fever, if you seek to wound
A solitary savage elephant like me!
As they crush a reed-stalk so will I crush thee!”
When the King of Gandhāra heard his threat, he looked up, and beholding his wide forehead like a plate of gold, he turned and ran away from the fear that he himself would be captured. Then he went back to his own city.
Figure: “Maybe this was a bad idea.”
This discourse ended, the Master identified the birth: “The persistent mendicant was the King of Gandhāra, and I was the King of Benares.”
