Jataka 460
Yuvañjaya Jātaka
The Story of Yuvañjaya
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 about the Buddha’s home leaving to go on his spiritual quest. But this is not just the story of the Buddha. As is so often true in the Buddha’s story, his dilemma is also that of many thousands of men and women in the history of Buddhism. Through the centuries many people left home to follow the holy life, and often the parents were distraught. Sometimes they were quite angry. Ajahn Brahmali of Bodhinyana Monastery in Australia was shunned by his family for ten years for becoming a monk.
There are so many lovely and poetic similes in the Buddha’s teaching, and this story has one of the. The Buddha refers to a human life as being “like dew drops on the grass.” It is an apt image for the fleeting and fragile nature of life.
“I greet the lord.” The Master told this story while he was at Jetavana. It is about the Great Renunciation. (This is when the Buddha left the mundane world to become a spiritual seeker.) One day the Saṇgha assembled in the Dharma Hall. “Brother,” one said to his fellow, “The Dasabala might have lived in a house, he might have been a universal monarch in the center of the great world possessed of the Seven Precious Things, glorious with the Four Supernatural Faculties, surrounded with more than a thousand sons! Yet he renounced all this magnificence when he perceived the sorrow that lies in sensual desire. At midnight, with (his charioteer) Channa in company, he mounted his horse Kanthaka and departed. And on the banks of Anomā, the River Glorious, he renounced the world, and for six years he tormented himself with austerities and then attained to perfect wisdom.” In this way they spoke of the Buddha’s virtues. The Master entered and asked, “What are you discussing now, brothers, as you sit here?” They told him. The Master said, “This is not the first time, monks, that the Tathāgata has made a Great Renunciation. In days past he retired and gave up the kingdom of Benares City, which was twelve leagues in extent.” So saying, he told them this story from the past.
(“Dasabla” is the ten powers of a Buddha: 1) the power of knowing what is true and what is not, 2) the power of knowing karmic causality at work in the lives of all beings throughout past, present, and future, 3) the power of knowing all stages of concentration, emancipation, and meditation, 4) the power of knowing the conditions of life of all people, 5) the power of judging all people’s levels of understanding, 6) the power of discerning the superiority or inferiority of all people’s capacity, 7) the power of knowing the effects of all people’s actions, 8) the power of remembering past lifetimes, 9) the power of knowing when each person will be born and will die, and in what realm that person will be reborn, and 10) the power of eradicating all illusions.
The Seven Precious Things are: gold, silver, pearl, coral, cat’s-eye, ruby, and diamond.
The Four Supernatural Faculties probably refers to the Four Bases of Spiritual Power: desire, intention, energy, and investigation. These are prerequisites for samadhi, or jhāna.)
Once upon a time a King named Sabbadatta reigned in the city of Ramma. The place that we now call Benares was named Surundhana City in the Udaya Birth (Jātaka 458). It was named Sudassana in the Cullasutasoma Birth (Jātaka 525), Brahmavaddhana in the Soṇandana Birth (Jātaka 532), and Pupphavatī in the Khaṇḍahāla Birth (Jātaka 542). But in this Yuvañjaya Birth it is named “Ramma City.” In this manner its name changed on each several occasion. At that time the King Sabbadatta had a thousand sons, and to his eldest son Yuvañjana he gave the viceroyalty.
One day early in the morning he mounted his splendid chariot, and in great pomp he went to enjoy himself in the park. He saw dew drops on the tree tops, on the grass tips, at the ends of the branches, on all the spiders’ webs and threads, and on the points of the rushes. They were hanging like so many strings of pearls. “Friend charioteer,” he said, “what is this?” “This, my lord,” he replied, “is what falls in the cold weather. They call it ‘dew.’”
The Prince enjoyed himself in the park for a portion of the day. In the evening, as he was returning home, he did not see any dew drops. “Friend charioteer,” he said, “where are the dew drops? I do not see them now.” “My lord,” said the charioteer, “as the sun rises higher, they all melt and sink into the ground.” On hearing this, the prince was distressed. He said, “The lives of living beings is fashioned like dew drops on the grass. I must be rid of the oppression of disease, old age, and death. I must take leave of my parents and renounce the world.” So because of the dew drops, he perceived the Three Modes of Existence as it were in a blazing fire. (The “three modes of existence” probably refers to aging, sickness, and death.) When he went home, he went into the presence of his father in his magnificent Hall of Judgement. He greeted his father, stood on one side (a sign of respect), and repeated the first stanza, asking his leave to renounce the world:
“I greet the lord of charioteers with friends and courtiers by,
The world, O King! I would renounce. Let not my lord deny.”
Then the King repeated the second stanza, trying to dissuade him:
“Whatever you crave, Yuvañjana, I will not refuse,
If anything hurts you, I protect, be you no recluse."
Hearing this, the Prince recited the third stanza:
“No man there is that does me harm, my wishes nothing lack,
But I would seek a refuge, where old age makes no attack.”
By way of explaining this matter, the Master uttered a half-stanza:
“The son speaks to his father thus, the father to his son.”
The remaining half-stanza was uttered by the King:
“Leave not the world, O Prince! So cry the townsfolk everyone.”
The Prince again repeated this stanza:
“O do not from the unworldly life, great monarch, make me stay,
Lest I, intoxicate with lusts, to age become a prey!”
This said, the King hesitated. Then the mother was told, “Your son, my lady, is asking his father’s leave to renounce the world.” “What do you say?” she asked. It took her breath away. Seated in her litter of gold she went swiftly to the Hall of Judgement, and repeating the sixth stanza, she asked:
“I beg you, it is I, my dear, and I would make you stay!
Long I wish to see my son, O, please, do not go away!"
On hearing this the Prince repeated the seventh stanza:
“Like as the dew upon the grass, when the sun rises hot,
So is the life of mortal folk, O mother, hold me not!”
Figure: The Prince asks permission to enter the holy life.
When he had said this, she begged him again and again to the same effect. Then the Great Being addressed his father in the eighth stanza:
“Let those that bear this litter, lift, let not my mother stay
Me, mighty King! from entering upon my holy way.”
When the King heard his son’s words, he said, “Go, lady, in your litter, back to our palace of Perennial Delight.” At his words her feet failed her. And surrounded by her company of women, she departed. She entered the palace and stood looking towards the Hall of Judgement wondering about news of her son. After his mother’s departure, the Bodhisatta again asked leave of his father. The King could not refuse him. He said, “Have your way, then, dear son, and renounce the world.”
When this consent was given, the Bodhisatta’s youngest brother, Prince Yudhiṭṭhila, greeted his father, and likewise asked leave to follow the holy life. To this the King also consented. Both brothers bade their father farewell, and having now renounced worldly lusts, they departed from the Hall of Judgement amidst a great company of people. The Queen looked upon the Great Being weeping: “My son has renounced the world, and the city of Ramma will be empty!” Then she repeated a couple of stanzas:
“Make haste, and bless you! Empty now is Rammaka, I know.
King Sabbadatta has allowed Yuvañjana to go.
“The eldest of a thousand, he, like gold to look upon,
This mighty Prince has left the world the yellow robe to don.”
The Bodhisatta did not at once embrace the holy life. First he bade farewell to his parents. Then taking his youngest brother, Prince Yudhiṭṭhila, with him, he left the city. And sending back the great multitude that followed them, they both made their way to the Himalaya Mountains. There they built a hermitage in a delightful spot. They embraced the life of a holy sage, and cultivating the transcendent rapture of deep meditation, they lived all their lives on the fruits and roots of the forest. And thereafter they became destined for rebirth in the world of Brahma.
This matter is explained in the stanza of perfect wisdom that comes last:
“Yuvañjana, Yudhiṭṭhila, in holy life remain,
Their father and their mother left, they break in two death’s chain.”
When the Master had ended this discourse, he said, “This is not the first time, brothers, that the Tathāgata renounced a kingdom to follow the holy life. It was the same before.” Then he identified the birth: “At that time members of the present King’s family were the father and mother, Ānanda was Yudhiṭṭhila, and I was Yuvañjana.”
