Bhadda Sāla Jātaka

"Who are you?” The Master told this story while he was living at Jetavana. It is about doing good for your family. In the house of Anāthapiṇḍika at Sāvatthi there was always unfailing food for 500 monks. This was also true at the house of Visākhā and the King of Kosala. (Anāthapiṇḍika was the Buddha’s greatest male benefactor. Visākhā was the Buddha’s greatest female benefactor. The King of Kosala was King Pasenadi, who was also a great supporter of the Buddha.) But in the King’s palace, even though the food provided was varied and fine, no one was friendly to the Saṇgha. The result was that the monks never ate at the palace. Rather they took their food and went off to eat it at the house of Anāthapiṇḍika or Visākhā or another of their trusted friends.

One day the King said, “A gift has been brought. Take this to the monks and sent it to the dining hall.” The King was told that no monks were there in the dining hall. “Where have they gone?” he asked. They replied that they were sitting in their friends’ houses to eat. So after his morning meal, the King went to the Master and asked him, “Good sir, what is the best kind of food?” “The food of friendship is the best, great King,” he said. “Even sour rice-gruel given by a friend becomes sweet.” “Well, sir, and with whom do the monks find friendship?” “With their family, great King, or with the Sakya families.” Then the King thought, what if he were to make a Sakya woman his Queen Consort? Then the monks would be his friends, as it were, with their own families.

So rising from his seat, he returned to the palace and sent a message to Kapilavatthu (the capital of Sakya and the Buddha’s birthplace) to this effect: “Please give me one of your daughters in marriage, for I wish to become connected with your family.” On receipt of this message the Sakyas gathered together and deliberated. “We live in a place subject to the authority of the King of Kosala. If we refuse a daughter, he will be very angry. But if we give her to him, the custom of our clan will be broken. What are we to do?” Then Mahānāma (a Sakyan prince) said to them, “Do not trouble yourselves. I have a daughter named Vāsabhakhattiyā. Her mother is a slave woman. Nāgamuṇḍā is her name. Vāsabhakhattiyā is some 16 years of age. She is of great beauty and auspicious prospects, and on her father’s side she is noble. We will send her as a girl nobly born.” The Sakyas agreed and sent for the messengers. They said that they were willing to give a daughter of the clan and that the messengers could take her with them at once. But the messengers reflected, “These Sakyas are desperately proud in matters of birth. Suppose they send a girl who was not of them and say that she was so? We will take no one who does not eat along with them.” So they replied, “Well, we will take her, but we will only take one who eats along with you.”

The Sakyas assigned lodging for the messengers, and then they wondered what to do. Mahānāma said, “Now do not trouble yourselves about it. I will find a way. At my mealtime bring in Vāsabhakhattiyā dressed up in her finery. Then just as I have taken one mouthful of food, produce a letter and say, ‘My lord, a King has sent you a letter. Pleased attend to his message at once.’”

They agreed. And as he was taking his meal, they dressed and adorned the maid. “Bring my daughter,” Mahānāma said, “and let her take food with me.” “In a moment,” they said. “We will bring her as soon as she is properly adorned.” And after a short delay, they brought her in.

Expecting to take food with her father, she dipped her hand into the same dish. Mahānāma had taken one mouthful with her and put it in his mouth. But just as he stretched out his hand for another, they brought him a letter, saying, “My lord, a King has sent a letter to you. Pleased attend to his message at once.” Mahānāma said, “Go on with your meal, my dear,” and holding his right hand in the dish, with his left hand he took the letter and looked at it. As he examined the message the maiden went on eating. When she had eaten, he washed his hand and rinsed out his mouth. The messengers were firmly convinced that she was his daughter, for they did not see the deception.

So Mahānāma sent away his daughter with great ceremony. The messengers brought her to Sāvatthi and said that this maiden was the true-born daughter of Mahānāma. The King was pleased. He ordered the whole city to be decorated, and he had her placed on a pile of treasure. Then, by a ceremonial sprinkling, he made her his chief Queen. She was dear to the King and much beloved.

In a short time the Queen conceived, and the King caused the proper care to be provided. At the end of ten months she gave birth to a son whose color was a golden brown. On the day of his naming, the King sent a message to his grandmother, saying, “A son has been born to Vāsabhakhattiyā, daughter of the Sakya King. What shall we name him?” Now the courtier who was charged with this message was slightly deaf, but he went and told the King’s grandmother. When she heard the message, she said, “Even when Vāsabhakhattiyā had never given birth to a son, she was more than all the world. And now she will be the King’s darling.” The deaf man did not hear the word “darling.” He thought she said “Viḍūḍabha.” So back he went to the King. He told him that he was to name the prince Viḍūḍabha. This, the King thought, must be some ancient family name, and so he named him Viḍūḍabha.

After this the Prince grew up treated as a prince should be.

When he was at the age of seven years, having observed how the other princes received presents of toy elephants and horses and other toys from the family of their mothers’ fathers, the lad said to his mother, “Mother, the rest of them get presents from their mothers’ family, but no one sends me anything. Are you an orphan?” Then she replied, “My boy, your grandfathers are the Sakya kings, but they live a long way off, and that is why they send you nothing.” Again, when he was 16, he said, “Mother, I want to see your father’s family.” “Don’t speak of it, child,” she said. “What would you do when you get there?” But even though she put him off, he asked her again and again. At last his mother said, “Well, go then.” So the lad got his father’s consent and set out with a number of followers. Vāsabhakhattiyā sent a letter out before him to this effect: “I am living here happily. Do not let my masters tell him anything of the secret.” But the Sakyas, on hearing of the coming of Viḍūḍabha, sent off all their young children into the country. “It is impossible,” they said, “to receive him with respect.”

When the Prince arrived at Kapilavatthu, the Sakyas had assembled in the royal rest-house. The Prince approached the rest-house and waited. Then they said to him, “This is your mother’s father, this is her brother,” pointing them out. He walked from one to the other, saluting them. But although he bowed to them until his back ached, not one of them greeted him. So he asked, “Why is it that none of you greet me?” The Sakyas replied, “My dear, the youngest princes are all in the country.” Then they entertained him grandly.

After a few days, he set out for home with his retinue. Just then a slave woman washed the seat that he had used in the rest-house with milk-water. She said sarcastically, “Here's the seat where sat the son of Vāsabhakhattiyā, the slave girl!” A man who had left his spear behind was just fetching it when he overheard the abuse of Prince Viḍūḍabha. He asked what it meant. He was told that Vāsabhakhattiyā was born of a slave to Mahānāma the Sakya. This he told the soldiers. A great uproar arose. They all shouted, “Vāsabhakhattiyā is a slave woman’s daughter, so they say!” The Prince also heard it. “Yes,” he thought, “let them pour milk-water over the seat I sat in to wash it! When I am king, I will wash the place with their hearts’ blood!”

When he returned to Sāvatthi, the courtiers told the story to the King. The King was enraged at the Sakyas for giving him a slave’s daughter to marry. He cut off all allowances made to Vāsabhakhattiyā and her son and only gave them what is proper to be given to slave men and women.

A few days later the Master came to the palace where he took a seat. The King approached him, and with a greeting he said, “Sir, I am told that your clansmen gave me a slave’s daughter to marry. I have cut off their allowances, mother and son, and grant them only what slaves would get.” The Master said, “What the Sakyas did was wrong, O great King! If they gave anyone, they should have given a girl of their own blood. But, O King, I say this. Vāsabhakhattiyā is a King’s daughter, and in the house of a noble king she has received the ceremonial sprinkling. Viḍūḍabha, too, was born of a noble king. Wise men of old have said, what matters the mother’s birth? The birth of the father is the measure. And to a poor wife, a picker of sticks, they gave the position of Queen Consort, and the son born of her obtained the sovereignty of Benares, twelve leagues in extent, and he became King Kaṭṭha-vāhana, the Wood-carrier.” Then he told him the story of the Kaṭṭhahāri Birth (Jātaka 7).

(In Jātaka 7 the Buddha says, “Sire, she is a king’s daughter. She is married to a king, and to a king she bore her son. Why is that son not in authority over the realm?”)

When the King heard this speech he was pleased. He said to himself, “The father’s birth is the measure of the man.” Then he again gave mother and son the treatment suited to them.

Now the King’s commander-in-chief was a man named Bandhula. His wife, Mallikā, was barren. He sent her away to Kusināra, telling her to return to her own family. “I will go,” she said, “when I have saluted the Master.” She went to Jetavana where she greeted the Tathāgata standing to one side. “Where are you going?” he asked. She replied, “My husband has sent me home, sir.” “Why?” the Master asked. “I am barren, sir, I have no son.” “If that is all,” he said, “there is no reason for you to go. Return.” She was very pleased, and saluting the Master, she went home again.

Her husband asked her why she had returned. She answered, “The Dasabala sent me back, my lord.” “Then,” the commander-in-chief said, “the Tathāgata must have seen good reason.” Soon after that, the woman conceived, and when her cravings began, she told him about it. “What is it you want?” he asked. “My lord,” she said, “I want to go and bathe and drink the water of the tank in Vesāli City where the families of the kings get water for the ceremonial sprinkling.” The commander-in-chief promised to try. Seizing his bow—as strong as a thousand bows—he put his wife in a chariot, left Sāvatthi, and drove his chariot to Vesālī.

Now at this time there lived close to the gate a Licchavi (a kingdom in the Kathmandu valley) named Mahāli. He had been educated by the same teacher as the King of Kosala's general, Bandhula. This man was blind, and he used to advise the Licchavis on all matters worldly and spiritual. Hearing the clatter of the chariot as it went over the threshold, he said, “That is the noise of the chariot of Bandhula the Mallian! This day there will be fear for the Licchavis!” A strong guard was set by the tank, within and without. An iron net was spread above it. Not even a bird could find room to get through. But the general, dismounting from his car, set the guards to flight with blows from his sword. He burst through the iron network, and in the tank he bathed his wife and gave her a drink of the water. Then after bathing himself, he put Mallikā in the chariot. Then he left the town and went back by the way he had come.

The guards went and told this all to the Licchavis. This made the kings of the Licchavis angry, and 500 of them, mounted in 500 chariots, set off to capture Bandhula the Mallian. They informed Mahāli of it. But he said, “Do not go, for he will kill you all.” But they said, “No. We must go.” He replied, “Then if you come to a place where a wheel has sunk up to the hub, you must return. If you do not return then, return when you hear the noise of a thunderbolt. If you do not return then, turn back from that place when you see a hole in front of your chariots. But go no further!”

But they did not turn back according to his word. They pursued on and on. Mallikā saw them and said, “There are chariots sight, my lord.” “Then tell me,” he said, “when they all look like one chariot.” When they were all in a line and looked like one, she said, “My lord, I see as if it were the head of one chariot.” “Take the reins, then,” he said, and he gave the reins over into her hand. He stood upright in the chariot and strung his bow. The chariot-wheel sank into the earth hub-deep. The Licchavis came to that place and saw it, but they did not turn back. Bandhula went on a little further. He strung the bow string. Then came a noise as the noise of a thunderbolt, yet even then they did not turn back. They kept up their pursuit. Bandhula stood up in the chariot and unleashed a shaft. It cleft the heads of all 500 chariots, and it passed right through the 500 kings in the place where the girdle is fastened. Then it buried itself in the earth. They did not see that they were wounded and continued to pursue, shouting, “Stop, holla, stop!” Bandhula stopped his chariot and said, “You are dead men, and I cannot fight with the dead.” “What!” they said, “dead, such as we now are?” “Loose the girdle of the first man,” Bandhula said.

They loosed his girdle, and at the instant the girdle was loosed, he fell dead. Then he said to them, “You are all in the same condition. Go to your homes, set your affairs in order. Give your instructions to your wives and families, and then remove your armor.” They did so, and then they all fell dead.

Bandhula took Mallikā to Sāvatthi. She bore twin sons 16 times in succession. They were all mighty men and heroes. They became perfected in all manner of accomplishments. Each one of them had a thousand men attend to him, and when they went with their father to wait on the King, they filled the courtyard of the palace to overflowing.

One day some men who had been defeated in court on a false charge saw Bandhula approach. They raised a great outcry and informed him that the judges of the court had supported a false charge. So Bandhula went into the court and judged the case himself. He gave each man proper justice. The crowd uttered loud shouts of applause. The King asked what it meant, and on hearing what had happened, he was very pleased. He sent all those officers away and gave Bandhula charge of the judgement court. From then on he judged justly. The former judges became poor because they no longer received bribes, so they slandered Bandhula in the King’s ear. They accused him of plotting to take over the kingdom himself. The King listened to their words, and he could not control his suspicions. “But,” he reflected, “if he is killed here, I will be blamed.” He paid certain men to harass the frontier districts. Then he sent for Bandhula. He said, “The borders are in a blaze. Go with your sons and capture the outlaws.” He also sent other men with him—mighty men of war—with instructions to kill him and his 32 sons and to cut off their heads and bring them back.

While he was on the way, the hired outlaws got wind of the general’s coming and took flight. He settled the people of that district in their homes and quieted the province, then he set out for home. When he was not far from the city, the warriors cut off his head and the heads of his sons.

On that day Mallikā had sent an invitation to the two chief disciples (Sāriputta and Moggallāna) and 500 monks. Early in the afternoon a letter was brought to her with news that her husband and sons had lost their heads. When she heard this, without a word to a soul, she tucked the letter in her dress and waited upon the company of the Saṇgha. Her attendants had given rice to the monks, and when they were carrying a bowl of ghee, they happened to break the bowl just in front of the Elders. Then the Captain of the Faith (Sāriputta) said, “Pots are made to be broken. Do not fret about it.” Then the lady produced her letter from the fold of her dress, saying, “Here I have a letter informing me that my husband and our 32 sons have been beheaded. If I do not trouble about that, am I likely to be troubled when a bowl is broken?” The Captain of the Faith now began, “Unseen, unknown,” and so forth. Then rising from his seat, he gave a discourse and went home. She summoned her 32 daughters-in-law. She said to them, “Your husbands, though innocent, have reaped the fruit of their former deeds. Do not you grieve or commit a misdeed of the heart worse even than the King’s.” This was her advice. The King’s spies heard this speech and brought word to him that they were not angry. Then the King was distressed. He went to her dwelling, and craving the pardon of Mallikā and her sons’ wives, he offered a boon. She replied, “The invitation will be accepted.” She set out the funeral feast, bathed, and then went before the King. “My lord,” she said, “you granted me a boon. I want nothing but this. Permit my 32 daughters-in-law and me to go back to our own homes.” The King consented. She sent each of her 32 sons’ wives away to their homes, and she returned to the home of her family in the city of Kusināra. The King gave the post of commander-in-chief to one Dīgha-kārāyana. He was the sister’s son to the general Bandhula. But Dīgha-kārāyana went about picking faults in the King, saying, “He murdered my uncle.”

After the murder of the innocent Bandhula, the King was overcome with grief, and he had no peace of mind. He felt no joy in being King. At that time the Master was living near a country town of the Sakyas named Uḷumpa. The King went there. He pitched a camp not far from the park, and with a few attendants he went to the monastery to salute the Master. He handed the five symbols of royal authority (sword, turban, fan, parasol, and sandals) to Kārāyana, and he entered the Perfumed Chamber alone. All that followed is described as in the Dhammacetiya Sutta (MN 89).

When the King entered the Perfumed Chamber, Kārāyana took possession of those symbols of royal authority and made Viḍūḍabha King. And leaving behind one horse and a serving woman for the former King, he went to Sāvatthi.

After a pleasant conversation with the Master, on his return the King saw no army. He asked the woman about this and learned what had happened. Then he set out for the city of Rājagaha resolving to take his nephew (Ajatasattu, the King of Magada) with him and capture Viḍūḍabha. But it was late when he got to the city. The gates were shut. And lying down in a shed, exhausted by exposure to the wind and the sun, he died right there.

When the light began to grow brighter, the woman began to wail. “My lord, the King of Kosala is past help!” The sound was heard and news got to the King (Ajatasattu). He performed the funeral rites of his uncle with great magnificence.

When Viḍūḍabha was firmly established on the throne, he remembered that grudge of his. He was determined to destroy the Sakyas one and all. To this end he set out with a large army. On that day at dawn, the Master, looking forth over the world, saw destruction threatening his countrymen. “I must help my friends and family,” he thought. In the afternoon he went in search of alms, and after returning from his meal, he lay down lion-like in his Perfumed Chamber. In the evening, having passed through the air to a spot near Kapilavatthu, he sat down beneath a tree that gave only a little shade. Nearby that place a huge and shady banyan tree stood on the boundary of Viḍūḍabha’s realms. Viḍūḍabha saw the Master approaching. He saluted him and said, “Why, sir, are you sitting under so thin a tree in all this heat? Sit beneath this shady banyan, sir.” He replied, “Let be, O King! The shade of my kindred keeps me cool.” “The Master,” the King thought, “must have come here to protect his clansmen.” So he saluted the Master and returned again to Sāvatthi.

The Master arose and went back to Jetavana. For a second time the King recalled his grudge against the Sakyas. For a second time he set out, and again he saw the Master seated in the same place. Once again he returned. A fourth time he set out, and the Master, scanning the former deeds of the Sakyas, perceived that nothing could atone for the effect of their evildoing in casting poison into the river. (This is where the Buddha saw that in the past they had poisoned a river and killed all of the fish.) So he did not set out the fourth time. Then King Viḍūḍabha massacred all of the Sakyas, beginning with babies at the breast. And with their hearts’ blood he washed the beach, and then he returned.

On the day after the Master had gone out for the third time, after going on his alms round and eating his meal, he was resting in his Perfumed Chamber. The monks gathered from all directions into the Dharma Hall. And seating themselves, they began to discuss the virtues of the Great Being. “Sirs, the Master only had to show himself, and this turned the King back, setting his kinsmen free from the fear of death. The Master is a good friend to his clan!” The Master entered and asked what they were discussing as they sat there. They told him. Then he said, “Not now only, monks, does the Tathāgata act for the benefit of his kinsmen. He did the same long ago.” And with these words, he told them this story from the past.

Once upon a time, when Brahmadatta ruled as the King in Benares and observed the Ten Royal Virtues (generosity, morality, renunciation, honesty, gentleness, asceticism, non-violence, patience, uprightness), he thought to himself, “All over India the kings live in palaces supported by many columns. There is no marvel, then, in a palace supported by many columns. But what if I make a palace with only one column to support it? Then I shall be the greatest king of all kings!” So he summoned his builders, and he told them to build a magnificent palace that was supported by one column. “Very good,” they said, and away they went into the forest.

There they surveyed many a tree, straight and great, worthy to be the single column of such a palace. “Here are these trees,” they said, “but the road is rough, and we can never transport them. We will go ask the King about it.” When they did this, the King said, “By any means necessary you must bring them and do it quickly.” But they answered, “It is not possible that this can be done.” “Then,” the King said, “search for a tree in my park.”

The builders went to the park, and there they saw a lordly sal tree. It was straight and well grown. It was worshipped by village and town, and the royal family also paid tribute to it and worshipped it. They told this to the King. The King said, “In my park you have found a good tree. Go and cut it down.” “So be it,” they said. So they went to the park with their hands full of perfumed garlands and the like. And hanging a five-spray garland on it and encircling it with a string, they fastened a small bunch of flowers to it, kindled a lamp, and worshipped it. They declared, “On the seventh day from now we will cut down this tree. It is the King’s command to cut it down. Let the deities who live in this tree go elsewhere, and do not blame us.”

(The meaning of a five-spray garland is uncertain. Perhaps it was a garland in which sprouts or twigs were arranged radiating like the fingers of a hand. It could also mean “making five-finger wreaths with scent.” The spread hand is in many places a symbol used to avert the evil eye.)

The god who lived in the tree heard this. He thought to himself, “These builders are determined to cut down this tree and to destroy my home. Now my life only lasts as long as this tree. And all the young sal trees that stand around me, there live the deities, my family. There are many of them. They will be destroyed. My own destruction does not touch me nearly as much as the destruction of my children. Therefore, I must protect their lives.”

Accordingly, at the hour of midnight, adorned in divine splendor, he entered into the magnificent chamber of the King. And filling the whole chamber with a bright radiance, he stood weeping beside the King’s pillow. At the sight of him the King—overcome by terror—uttered the first stanza:

“Who are you, standing high in air, with heavenly clothing swathed,

Why come such fears, why flow the tears in which your eyes are bathed?”

Figure: The King was overcome by terror.

On hearing this the king of the gods repeated two stanzas:

“Within your realm, O King, they know me as the Lucky Tree,

For sixty thousand years I stood, and all have worshipped me.

“Though many a town and house they made, and many a king’s dwelling,

Yet me they never did molest, to me no harm did bring.

Then even as they did homage pay, so worship you, O King!”

Then the King repeated two stanzas:

“But such another mighty trunk I never yet did see,

So fine a kind in girth and height, so thick and strong a tree.

“A lovely palace I will build, one column for support,

There I will place you to live there—your life will not be short.”

On hearing this the king of the gods repeated two stanzas:

“Since you are bent to tear my body from me, cut me small,

And cut me piecemeal limb from limb, O King, or not at all.

“Cut first the top, the middle next, then last the root of me,

And if you cut me so, O King, death will not painful be.”

Then the King repeated two stanzas:

“First hands and feet, then nose and ears, while yet the victim lives,

And last of all the head let fall—a painful death this gives.

“O Lucky Tree! O woodland king! what pleasure could you feel,

Why, for what reason do you wish to be cut up piecemeal?”

Then the Lucky Tree answered by repeating two stanzas:

“The reason (and a reason ’tis full noble) why piecemeal

I would be cut, O mighty King! come listen while I tell.

“My family all prospering round me well-sheltered grow,

These I should crush by one huge fall, and great would be their woe.”

The King, on hearing this, was very pleased. “This is a worthy god,” he thought. “He does not wish that his family should lose their home because he loses his. He acts for his family’s good.” And he repeated the remaining stanza:

“O Lucky Tree! O woodland king! your thoughts must noble be,

You would befriend your kindred, so from fear I set you free.”

The king of the gods, having pled his case to the King, then departed. And the King, having established himself in virtue, gave gifts and did other good deeds until he went to fill the hosts of heaven.

The Master having ended this discourse said, “Thus it is, brothers, that the Tathāgata acts in order to do good to his kith and kin.” And then he identified the birth: “At that time Ānanda was the King, the followers of the Buddha were the deities that were embodied in the young saplings of the sal tree, and I was Lucky Tree, the king of the gods.”

  << Previous   Index    Next >>