Jataka 247
Pādañjali Jātaka
The Story of Pādañjali
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 a lovely little story about a foolish prince and the wise men who keep him from becoming the king. It is well known in the Buddhist world.
While this story is about a “king,” it may be more about a “raja” in one of the Indian republics of the time. The king/raja did rule as the supreme leader, but it was at the pleasure of the senior ministers in the kingdom. The raja was elected and continued to serve only as long as he could keep a consensus between the ministers. The Buddha’s father Suddhōdana was just such a man.
“Surely this lad.” The Master told this story while he was in Jetavana. It is about the Elder Lāḷudāyī.
One day, it is said, the two chief disciples (Sāriputta and Moggallāna) were discussing a question. The Saṇgha members who heard the discussion praised the elders. Elder Lāḷudāyī, who sat among the company, curled his lip with the thought, “What is their knowledge compared with mine?” When the monastics noticed this, they left him. The company broke up.
The monastics were discussing this in the Dharma Hall. “Friend, did you see how Lāḷudāyī curled his lip in scorn of the two chief disciples?” On hearing this the Master said, “Brothers and sisters, in past days, as now, Lāḷudāyī had no other answer but a curl of the lip.” Then he told them this story from the past.
Once upon a time, when King Brahmadatta was reigning in Benares, the Bodhisatta was his adviser in things spiritual and worldly. Now the King had a son. His name was “Pādañjali.” He was an idle, lazy loafer.
By and bye the King died. Once his funeral rites were over, the courtiers discussed consecrating his son Pādañjali to be the new King. But the Bodhisatta said, “He is a lazy fellow, an idle loafer. Shall we consecrate him as King?”
The courtiers decided to test him by holding a trial. They sat the youth down before them and made an incorrect judgment. They assigned something to the wrong owner. Then they asked him, “Young sir, did we make the right decision?”
The lad curled his lip.
“He is a wise lad, I think,” the Bodhisatta thought. “He must know that we made the wrong decision.” And he recited the first verse:
“Surely the lad is wise beyond all men.
He curls his lip - he must see through us, then!”
On the next day, as before, they arranged a trial, but this time judged it properly. Again they asked him what he thought of it.
Again he curled his lip. Then the Bodhisatta perceived that he was a blind fool, and repeated the second verse:
“Not right from wrong, nor bad from good he knows,
He curls his lip, but no more sense he shows.”
Figure: “Not right from wrong, nor bad from good he knows.”
The courtiers knew then that the young man Pādañjali was a fool, and they made the Bodhisatta King.
When the Master ended this discourse, he identified the birth: “Lāḷudāyī was Pādañjali, and I was the wise courtier.”
