Jataka 260
Dūta Jātaka
The Messenger
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 silly little tale in which a man claims to be a messenger from Lust and the Belly! He gets away with it, too.
This is also a story in which the Bodhisatta is presented in less than flattering terms. This is something for all Buddhist practitioners to remember. We sometimes suffer from trying to be too perfect. But the path to awakening is a path that—as they say in Zen—is through the brambles. We are all imperfect until we aren’t. That is true for us, and that was true for the Buddha-to-be as well.
“Oh King, the Belly’s messenger.” The Master told this story while he was staying at Jetavana. It is about a monk who was addicted to covetousness. The circumstances will be given at large under the Kāka Jātaka (Jātaka 395). Here again the Master told the monk, “You were greedy before, brother, just as you are now. And in the past, because of your greed you nearly had your head split open with a sword.” Then he told this story from the past.
Once on a time when Brahmadatta was the King of Benares, the Bodhisatta was born as his son. He grew up and was educated at Takkasilā University. When his father died, he inherited the kingdom. He was very fussy about his food, and accordingly he earned the name King Fussy. There was so much extravagance about his eating that he would spend 100,000 gold coins on one dish. When he ate, he did not eat indoors because he wanted to flaunt his extravagant meals to many people. He had a pavilion adorned with jewels set up at the door. When he ate, he had this decorated, and he sat there on a royal dais made of gold under a white parasol. He was surrounded by princesses, and he ate the food of a hundred delicate flavors from a dish that cost 100,000 gold coins.
Now a certain greedy man saw the King’s manner of eating and wanted to have a taste. Unable to master his craving, he ran up to the King yelling, “Messenger! Messenger! Oh King” with his hands held up. (At that time and in that nation, if a man called out “Messenger!” no one would get in his way. So the crowd parted and gave him a way to pass.)
The man ran up swiftly. He grabbed some rice from the King’s dish and put it in his mouth. The swordsman drew his sword to cut off the man’s head. But the King stopped him. “Do not kill him,” he said. Then he said to the man, “Fear nothing. Eat on!” And so he washed his hands and sat down.
Figure: “Messenger! Messenger! Oh King”
After the meal the King gave his own drinking water and betel nut to the man, and then he said, “Now my man, you have news, you said. What is your news?”
“Oh King, I am a messenger from Lust and the Belly. Lust said to me, ‘Go!’ and sent me here as her messenger.” And with these words he said the first two stanzas:
“Oh King, the Belly’s messenger you see,
Oh lord of chariots, do not angry be!
For Belly’s sake men very far will go,
Even to ask a favor of a foe.
“Oh King, the Belly’s messenger you see,
Oh lord of chariots, do not angry be!
The Belly holds beneath his influence sway
All men upon the earth both night and day.”
When the King heard this he said, “That is true. Belly-messengers are these. Urged by lust they go to and fro, and lust makes them go. How prettily this man has put it!” The King was pleased with him and uttered the third stanza:
“Brahmin, a thousand red cows I present
To you, thereto the bull, for complement.
One messenger may to another give,
For Belly’s messengers are all that live.”
So said the King. He continued, “I have heard something I never heard before, or thought of, said by this great man.” And the King was so pleased that he showered honors upon him.
When the Master had ended this discourse, he taught the Four Noble Truths at the conclusion of which the greedy monk attained stream-entry and many others entered the other stages of awakening. Then he identified the Birth: “The greedy man is the same in both stories, and I was King Fussy.”
