Ja 465 Bhaddasālajātaka
The Story about (the King of the Gods) Bhaddasāla
In the present the Sākiyans deceive the king of Kosala and send him the daughter of a slave girl as his new queen. When the son of this arrangement finds out he determines to destroy the clan. The Buddha tries to save them, but in the end he cannot. He then tells how a Devatā of a large tree succeeded in saving his relations in the past.
The Bodhisatta = the King of the Devas, Bhaddasāla (Bhaddasāladevarājā),
the Buddha’s disciples = the gods who dwelt in the young Sāla trees (taruṇasālesu nibbattadevatā),
Ānanda = the king (of Benares) (rājā).
Present Source: Ja 465 Bhaddasāla,
Compare: Ja 7 Kaṭṭhahārijātaka, Dhp-a IV.3 Viḍūḍabha,
Quoted at: Ja 22 Kukkurajātaka, Ja 407 Mahākapijātaka.
Keywords: Kinship, Loyalty, Devas.
“Who are you.” This story the Teacher told while dwelling in Jetavana about doing good to one’s kith and kin. At Sāvatthi in the house of Anāthapiṇḍika there was always unfailing food for five hundred monks, and the same with Visākhā A famous female disciple, for whose history see Hardy, Manual, 220 ff. and the king of Kosala. But in the king’s palace, various and fine as was the fare given, no one was friendly to the monks. The result was that the monks never ate in the palace, but they took their food and went off to eat it at the house of Anāthapiṇḍika or Visākhā or some other of their trusted friends.
One day the king said: “A present has been brought; take this to the monks,” and sent it to the refectory. An answer was brought that no monks were there in the refectory. “Where are they gone?” he asked. They were sitting in their friends’ houses to eat, was the reply. So the king after his morning meal came into the Teacher’s presence, and asked him, “Good sir, what is the best kind of food?” “The food of friendship is the best, great king,” said he, “even sour rice-gruel given by a friend becomes sweet.” “Well, sir, and with whom do the monks find friendship?” “With their kindred, great king, or with the Sakya families.” Then the king thought, what if he were to make a Sakya girl his queen-consort; then the monks would be his friends, as it were with their own kindred.
So rising from his seat, he returned to the palace, and sent a message
The Sakyas assigned a lodging for the messengers, and then wondered what to do. Mahānāma said: “Now do not trouble 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, produce a letter, and say, ‘My lord, such a king has sent you a letter; be pleased to hear his message at once.’ ”
They agreed; and as he was taking his meal they dressed and adorned the maid. “Bring my daughter,” said Mahānāma, “and let her take food with me.” “In a moment,” they said, “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, such a king has sent a letter to you: be pleased to hear his message at once.” Said Mahānāma, “Go on with your meal, my dear,”
So Mahānāma sent away his daughter in great pomp. The messengers brought her to Sāvatthi, and said that this maiden was the true-born daughter of Mahānāma. The king was pleased, and caused the whole city to be decorated, and placed her upon a pile of treasure, and by a ceremonial sprinkling made her his chief queen. She was dear to the king, and beloved.
In a short time the queen conceived, and the king caused the proper treatment to be used; and at the end of ten months, she brought forth a son whose colour 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 his name be?” Now the courtier who was charged with this message was slightly deaf; but he went and told the king’s grandmother. When she heard it, she said: “Even when Vāsabhakhattiyā had never borne a son, she was more than all the world; and now she will be the king’s darling.” Vallabhā. The deaf man did not hear the word “darling” aright, but thought she said: “Viḍūḍabha,” so back he went to the king, and told him that he was to name the prince Viḍūḍabha. This, the king thought, must be some ancient family name, and so named him Viḍūḍabha. After this the prince grew up and was 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
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 till his back ached, not one of them vouchsafed a greeting; 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 stay, he set out for home with all his retinue. Just then a slave woman washed the seat which he had used in the rest house with milk-water, saying insultingly, “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 to the soldiers; a great uproar arose, all shouting, “Vāsabhakhattiyā is a slave woman’s daughter, so they say!” The prince 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 the blood of the hearts!”
When he returned to Sāvatthi, the courtiers told the whole matter to the king. The king was enraged against the Sakyas for giving him a slave’s daughter to marry. He cut off all allowances made to Vāsabhakhattiyā and her son, and gave them only what is proper to be given to slave men and women.
Some few days later the Teacher came to the palace, and took a seat. The king approached him, and with a greeting 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.” Said the Teacher, “The Sakyas have done wrong, O great king!
When the king heard this speech he was pleased; and saying to himself, “The father’s birth is the measure of the man,” 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, and he sent her away to Kusināra, telling her to return to her own family. “I will go,” said she, “when I have saluted the Teacher.” She went to Jetavana, and greeting the Tathāgata stood waiting on one side. “Where are you going?” he asked. She replied, “My husband has sent me home, sir.” “Why?” asked the Teacher. “I am barren, sir, I have no son.” “If that is all,” said he, “there is no reason why you should go. Return.” She was much pleased, and saluting the Teacher went home again. Her husband
Now at this time there lived close to the gate a Licchavi named Mahāli, Called Mahālicchavi in Dhp (p. 219). who had been educated by the same teacher as the king of Kosala’s general, Bandhula. This man was blind, and used to advise the Licchavis on all matters temporal and spiritual. Hearing the clatter of the chariot as it went over the threshold, he said: “The noise of the chariot of Bandhula the Mallian!
The guards went and told all to the Licchavis. Then were the kings of the Licchavis angry; and five hundred of them, mounted in five hundred chariots, departed to capture Bandhula the Mallian. They informed Mahāli of it, and he said: “Go not! For he will slay you all.” But they said: “Nay, but we will go.” “Then if you come to a place where a wheel has sunk up to the nave, you must return. If you return not then, return back from that place when you hear the noise of a thunderbolt. If then you turn not, turn back from that place where you shall see a hole in front of your chariots. Go no further!” But they did not turn back according to his word, but pursued on and on.
Mallikā espied them and said: “There are chariots in sight, my lord.” “Then tell me,” said he, “when they all look like one chariot.” When they all in a line looked like one, she said: “My lord, I see as it were the head of one chariot.” “Take the reins, then,” said he, and gave the reins into her hand; he stood upright in the chariot, and strung his bow. The chariot-wheel sank into the earth nave-deep. The Licchavis came to the place, and saw it, but turned not back. The other went on a little further, and twanged the bow string; then came a noise as the noise of a thunderbolt, yet even then they turned not, but pursued on and on. Bandhula stood up in the chariot and sped a shaft, and it cleft the heads of all the five hundred chariots, and passed right through the five hundred kings in the place where the girdle is fastened, and then buried itself in the earth. As they did not perceive that they were wounded they pursued still, shouting, “Stop, holloa, 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,” said Bandhula.
They loosed his girdle, and at the instant the girdle was loosed, he fell dead. Then he said to them, “You are all of you in the same condition; go to your homes, and set in order what should be ordered, and give your directions to your wives and families, and then doff your armour.” They did so, and then all of them gave up the ghost. This is a variation of a well-known incident. A headsman slices off a man’s head so skilfully, that the victim does not know it is done. The victim then takes a pinch of snuff, sneezes, and his head falls off. Another form is: Two men dispute, and one swings his sword round. They go on talking, and by and bye the other gets up to depart, and falls in two parts.
And Bandhula conveyed Mallikā to Sāvatthi. She bore twin sons sixteen times in succession, and they were all mighty men and heroes, and became perfected in all manner of accomplishments. Each one of them had a thousand
One day some men who had been defeated in court on a false charge, seeing Bandhula approach, 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, and gave each man his own. The crowd uttered loud shouts of applause. The king asked what it meant, and on hearing was much pleased; all those officers he sent away, and gave Bandhula charge of the judgement court, and thenceforward he judged aright. Then the former judges became poor, because they no longer received bribes, and they slandered Bandhula in the king’s ear, accusing him of aiming at the kingdom himself. The king listened to their words, and could not control his suspicions. “But,” he reflected, “if he be slain here, I shall be blamed.” He instigated certain men to harry the frontier districts; then sending for Bandhula, he said: “The borders are in a blaze; go with your sons and capture the brigands.” With him he also sent other men sufficient, mighty men of war, with instructions to kill him and his two-and-thirty sons, and cut off their heads, and bring them back.
While he was yet on the way, the hired brigands got wind of the general’s coming, and took to flight. He settled the people of that district in their homes, and quieted the province, and set out for home. Then when he was not far from the city, those warriors cut off his head and the heads of his sons.
On that day Mallikā had sent an invitation to the two chief disciples along with five hundred of the monks. Early in the forenoon a letter was brought to her, with news that her husband and sons had lost their heads.
She summoned her two-and-thirty daughters-in-law, and to them said: “Your husbands, though innocent, have reaped the fruit of their former deeds. Do not you grieve, nor commit a wrong worse even than the king’s.” This was her advice. The king’s spies hearing this speech brought word to him that they were not angry. Then the king was distressed, and went to her dwelling, and craving pardon of Mallikā and her sons’ wives, offered a boon. She replied, “Be it accepted.” She set out the funeral feast, and bathed, and then went before the king. “My lord,” said she, “you granted me a boon. I want nothing but this, that you permit my two-and-thirty daughters-in-law and me to go back to our own homes.” The king consented. Each of her two-and-thirty sons’ wives she sent away to her home, and herself returned to the home of her family in the city of Kusināra. And the king gave the post of commander-in-chief to one Dīgha-kārāyana, sister’s son to the general Bandhula. But he went about picking faults in the king and saying: “He murdered my uncle.”
Ever after the murder of the innocent Bandhula the king was devoured by remorse, and had no peace of mind, felt no joy in being king.
At that time the Teacher dwelt near a country town of the Sakyas, named Uḷumpa. There went the king, pitched a camp not far from the park, and with a few attendants went to the monastery to salute the Teacher. The five symbols of royalty See above, p. 80 note. he handed to Kārāyana, and alone entered the Perfumed Chamber. All that followed must be described as in the Dhammacetiyasutta [MN 89]. When he
After a pleasant conversation with the Teacher, the king on his return saw no army. He enquired of the woman, and learned what had been done. Then set out for the city of Rājagaha, resolved to take his nephew with him, The quotation should begin at bhāgineyyām, since the king was alone. and capture Viḍūḍabha. It was late when he came to the city, and the gates were shut; and lying down in a shed, exhausted by exposure to wind and sun, he died there.
When the night began to grow brighter, the woman began to wail, “My lord, the king of Kosala is past help!” The sound was heard, and news came to the king. He performed the obsequies of his uncle with great magnificence.
Viḍūḍabha once firmly established on the throne remembered that grudge of his, and determined to destroy the Sakyas one and all; to which end he set out with a large army. That day at dawn the Teacher, looking forth over the world, saw destruction threatening his kin. “I must help my kindred,” thought he. In the forenoon he went in search of alms, then after returning from his meal lay down lion-like in his Perfumed Chamber, and in the evening-time, having past through the air to a spot near Kapilavatthu, sat beneath a tree that gave scanty shade. Hard by that place, a huge and shady banyan tree stood on the boundary of Viḍūḍabha’s realms. Viḍūḍabha seeing the Teacher approached and saluting him, 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 Teacher,” thought the other, “must have come here to protect his clansmen.” So he saluted the Teacher, and returned again to Sāvatthi. And the Teacher rising went to Jetavana.
A second and a third time the king called to mind his grudge against the Sakyas, a second and a third time he set forth, and again saw the Teacher seated in the same place, then again returned.
A fourth time he set out; and the Teacher, scanning the former deeds of the Sakyas, perceived that nothing could do away with the effect of their evildoing, in casting poison into the river; so he did not go there the fourth time. Then king Viḍūḍabha slew all the Sakyas, beginning with babes at the breast, and with the blood of the hearts washed the bench, and returned.
On the day after the Teacher had gone out for the third time and returned, he,
In the past, when Brahmadatta ruled as king in Benares, and observed the Ten Royal Virtues, he thought to himself, “All over Jambudīpa the kings live in palaces supported by many a column. There is no marvel, then, in a palace supported by many columns; but what if I make a palace with one column only to support it? Then I shall be the leading king of all kings!” So he summoned his builders, and told them to build him a magnificent palace supported on one column. “Very good,” they said, and away they went into the forest.
There they beheld many a tree, straight and great, worthy to be the
The builders went to the park, and there they espied a lordly Sāl tree, straight and well grown, worshipped by village and town, and to it the royal family also were wont to pay tribute and worship; and they told the king. Said the king, “In my park you have found me a tree, good – go and cut it down.” “So be it,” they said, and repaired to the park, with their hands full of perfumed garlands and the like; then hanging upon it a five-spray garland, See note in vol. ii. p. 72. and encircling it with a string, fastening to it a nosegay of flowers, and kindling a lamp, they did worship, explaining,
The Devaputta who dwelt in the tree hearing this, thought to himself, “These builders are determined to cut down this tree, and to destroy my place of dwelling. Now my life only lasts as long as this my abiding place. And all the young Sāl trees that stand around this, where dwell the deities my kinsfolk, and they are many, will be destroyed. My own destruction does not touch me so near as the destruction of my children: therefore I must protect their lives.” Accordingly at the hour of midnight, adorned in divine splendour, he entered into the magnificent chamber of the king, and filling the whole chamber with a bright radiance, stood weeping beside the king’s pillow. At sight of him the king, overcome by terror, uttered the first verse:
1. “Who are you, standing high in air, with heavenly vesture swathed:
Whence come your fears, why flow the tears in which thine eyes are bathed?”
On hearing which the King of the Devas repeated two verses:
2. “Within your realm, O king, they know me as the Lucky Tree:
For sixty thousand years I stood, and all have worshipped me.
3. 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 worship pay, so worship you, O king!”
Then the king repeated two verses:
4. “But such another mighty trunk I never yet did see,
So fine a kind in girth and height, so thick and strong a tree.
5. A lovely palace I will build, one column for support;
There I will place you to abide – your life shall not be short.”
On hearing this the King of the Devas repeated two verses:
6. “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.
7. Cut first the top, the middle next, then last the root of me:
And if you cut me so, O king, death not will painful be.”
Then the king repeated two verses:
8. “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.
9. O Lucky Tree! O woodland king! What pleasure couldst you feel,
Why, for what reason do you wish to be cut up piecemeal?”
Then the Lucky Tree answered by repeating two verses:
10. “The reason (and a reason ’tis full noble) why piecemeal
I would be cut, O mighty king! Come listen while I tell.
11. My kith and kin all prospering round me well-sheltered grow;
These I should crush by one huge fall – and great would be their woe.”
The king, hearing this, was much pleased, “ ’Tis a worthy Devaputta this,” he thought, “he does not wish that his kinsfolk should lose their dwelling-place because he loses his; he acts for his kinsfolk’s good.” And he repeated the remaining verse:
12. “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 Devas, having discoursed to this king, then departed. And the king being established according to his admonition, gave gifts and did other good deeds, till he went to fill the hosts of heaven.
The Teacher having ended this discourse said: “Thus it is, monks, that the Tathāgata acts so as to do good to his kith and kin,” and then he identified the Jātaka, “At that time Ānanda was the king, the followers of the Buddha were the deities which were embodied in the young saplings of the Sāl tree, and I was myself Lucky Tree, the King of the Devas.”