Jataka 358
Culladhammapāla Jātaka
Young Prince Dhammapāla
as told by Eric Van Horn
originally translated by H.T. Francis and R.A. Neil, Cambridge University
originally edited by Professor Edward Byles Cowell, Cambridge University
This is a story that needs to come with a warning about violence. It’s not pretty. Sadly, this kind of violence against children and parents is rather common in the stories from antiquity regardless of the cultural context.
“Mahāpatāpa's wretched queen.” The Master told this story when he was living at the Bamboo Grove (Veluvana). It is about when Devadatta tried to kill the Bodhisatta. In all of the other births Devadatta failed to provoke so much as an atom of fear in the Bodhisatta. But in the Culladhammapāla Birth, when the Bodhisatta was only seven months old, he cut his hands and feet and head off and skewered his body with sword cuts as if it were a garland. In another birth he killed him by twisting his neck, roasting his flesh in an oven and eating it. In the Khantivādi Birth (Jātaka 313) he had him scourged with two thousand strokes of a whip and ordered his hands and feet and ears and nose to be cut off. Then he had him seized by the hair of his head and dragged, and when he was stretched at full length on his back, he kicked him in the belly and abandoned him, and on that very day the Bodhisatta died. But in two other births he merely had him put to death. Thus Devadatta for a long time went about killing him, and he continued to try and do so, even after he became a Buddha.
So one day they started a discussion in the Dharma Hall, saying, “Sirs, Devadatta is continually formulating plots to kill the Buddha. Being of a mind to kill the Supreme Buddha, he hired archers to shoot him, he threw a rock down on him, and let loose the elephant Nālāgiri on him.” When the Master came and heard what the monks were discussing, he said, “Brothers, not only now, but formerly, too, he tried to kill me. But now he fails to provoke so much as a particle of fear in me. This is despite the fact that formerly—when I was Prince Dhammapāla—he brought about my death. Then I was his own son. He laced my body with sword cuts as if it were with a garland.” And so saying, he told this story from the past.
Once upon a time when Mahāpatāpa was reigning in Benares, the Bodhisatta was reborn as the son of his Queen Consort Candā. They named him “Dhammapāla.” When he was seven months old, his mother bathed him in scented water and had him richly dressed, and she sat down to play with him. The King came to her room, and as she was playing with the boy—being filled with a mother’s love for her child—she did not rise up to acknowledge him. He thought, “Even now this woman is filled with pride because of her boy. She does not value me a straw. And as the boy grows up, she will think, ‘I have a man for my son,’ and she will take no notice of me. I will have him put to death at once.”
So he returned home, and sitting on his throne he summoned the executioner into his presence with all the instruments of his office. The man put on his yellow robe, and wearing a crimson wreath, he laid his axe upon his shoulder. He carried a block and a bowl in his hands. He went and stood before the King. And saluting him he said, “What is your pleasure, sire?”
“Go to the royal room of the Queen and bring Dhammapāla here,” said the King.
But the Queen knew that the King had left her in a rage. She laid the Bodhisatta on her bosom and sat weeping. The executioner came in. He gave her a blow in the back, snatched the boy out of her arms, and took him to the King. He said, “What is your pleasure, sire?”
The King had a board brought and put down before him, and he said, “Lay him down on it.” The man did so. But Queen Candā came and stood just behind her son, weeping. Again the executioner said, “What is your pleasure, sire?”
“Cut off Dhammapāla’s hands,” said the King.
Queen Candā said, “Great King, my boy is only a child, seven months old. He knows nothing. The fault is not his. If there be any fault, it is mine. Therefore have my hands cut off.” And to make her meaning clear, she uttered the first stanza:
Mahāpatāpa’s wretched Queen,
‘Tis I alone to blame have been.
Have Dhammapāla, sire, set free,
And off with hands of luckless me.
Figure: The cruel King
The King looked at the executioner. “What is your pleasure, sire?”
“Without further delay, off with his hands,” said the King.
At that moment the executioner took the sharp axe and lopped off the boy’s two hands as if they had been young bamboo shoots. But when his hands were cut off, the boy neither wept nor lamented. Moved by patience and charity, he bore it with resignation. But the Queen Candā put the tips of his fingers in her lap, and stained with blood she went about lamenting.
Again the executioner asked, “What is your pleasure, sire?”
“Off with his feet,” said the King.
On hearing this, Queen Candā uttered the second stanza:
Mahāpatāpa’s wretched Queen,
‘Tis I alone to blame have been.
Have Dhammapāla, sire, set free,
And off with feet of luckless me.
But the King gave a sign to the executioner, and he cut off both his feet.
Queen Candā put his feet in her lap also. And stained with blood, she lamented and said, “My lord Mahāpatāpa, his feet and hands are cut off. A mother is bound to support her children. I will work for wages and support my son. Give him to me.”
The executioner said, “Sire, is the King’s pleasure fulfilled? Is my service finished?”
“Not yet,” said the King.
“What then is your pleasure, sire?”
“Off with his head,” said the King.
Then Queen Candā repeated the third stanza:
Mahāpatāpa’s wretched Queen,
‘Tis I alone to blame have been.
Have Dhammapāla, sire, set free,
And off with head of luckless me.
And with these words she offered her own head. Again the executioner asked, “What is your pleasure, sire?”
“Off with his head,” said the King.
So he cut off his head and asked, “Is the King’s pleasure fulfilled?”
“Not yet,” said the King.
“What further am I to do, sire?”
“Catching him with the edge of the sword,” said the King, “lace him with sword cuts as if he were with a garland.”
Then he threw the body of the boy up into the air, and catching it with the edge of his sword, he laced him with sword cuts as if he were with a garland. He scattered the bits on the royal lounge. Queen Candā placed the flesh of the Bodhisatta in her lap, and as she sat on the lounge lamenting, she repeated these stanzas:
No friendly councilors advise the King,
“Slay not the heir that from your loins did spring.”
No loving kinsmen urge the tender plea,
“Slay not the boy that owes his life to thee.”
After speaking these two stanzas, Queen Candā, pressing both her hands upon her heart, repeated the third stanza:
You, Dhammapāla, were by right of birth
The lord of earth.
Your arms, once bathed in oil of sandal wood,
Lie steeped in blood.
My fitful breath alas! is choked with sighs
And broken cries.
While she was lamenting, her heart broke just as a bamboo snaps when the grove is on fire, and she fell dead on the spot. The King, too, being unable to remain on his throne, fell down on the floor. An abyss was ripped open in the ground, and straightway he fell into it. Then the solid earth, more than a million kilometers in thickness, was unable to bear his wickedness. It, too, ripped open. A flame arose out of the Avīci hell. It seized him, engulfing him like a royal woolen garment. Then it plunged him into the Avīci hell. And his ministers performed the funeral rites for Queen Candā and the Bodhisatta.
The Master, having brought this discourse to an end, identified the birth: “At that time Devadatta was the King, Mahāpajāpatī was Queen Candā, and I was Prince Dhammapāla.”
(Mahāpajapatī was the Buddha’s step mother.)
