Akatannu Jataka

The Master told this story at Jetavana in reference to the great almsgiver Anathapindika and a merchant of the border country. Jataka No. 90 of the Pali Canon records the ancient tale told to explain what had happened.

A merchant on the border sent five hundred carts of local produce to Anathapindika in Savatthi, asking him to barter the goods. The two men had never met; they dealt with each other through their shops and their envoys.

Anathapindika received the border merchant's envoys warmly, lodged them, gave them money for their needs, and exchanged their goods fairly.

In return Anathapindika sent five hundred carts of his own wares to the border. The border merchant received his envoys coldly. He sneered that anyone can call himself Anathapindika, took the gift, and sent the men away with neither lodging nor hospitality.

Later the border merchant sent a second caravan to Savatthi. At midnight Anathapindika's people fell on it, took the men's clothes and drove off their oxen, and removed the wheels from the carts, leaving the travellers with nothing.

Anathapindika reported the whole affair to the Master. The Buddha said that the border merchant had been of this disposition before, and he told a story of the past.

In the days when Brahmadatta ruled Benares, the Bodhisatta was a wealthy merchant. He too had a correspondent on the border whom he had never met, and the very same events unfolded: the border merchant's men were welcomed in Benares, the Bodhisatta's envoys were turned away at the border, and the second caravan was stripped on its arrival.

When his people reported what had happened, the Bodhisatta said that this trouble had come from the border merchant's ingratitude for the kindness shown him. Then he taught the assembled crowd a verse: a man who in the past was done good and does not acknowledge it will, when later need arises, find no one to help him.

The commentary explains the verse broadly. The good done may be any kindness, help, or duty performed for a person by another, and the one who does not acknowledge it has left himself without support at the very hour he needs it. The Bodhisatta is described as a man of generosity and other good works, which is why the border merchant's coldness struck him as a wrong against a person who had asked for nothing in return except fair dealing. His teaching was addressed to the crowd, so that every listener could take the point to heart in his own dealings.

The Master closed the teaching by identifying the characters: the border merchant of the present was the border merchant of the past, and the Buddha himself was the merchant of Benares.

The Jataka does not praise the harsh treatment of the second caravan; it records it as the plain result of a man who gave nothing back for the welcome he had received. Its lesson sits in the verse: kindness acknowledged keeps a person supported, and kindness forgotten leaves him alone just when he needs help most. The Buddha gave Anathapindika a precedent, so that he could see this ingratitude as an old pattern in human affairs rather than a wrong aimed at him alone.

There is a quiet lesson in how the tale is built. Anathapindika, known as the Buddha's great lay patron, had done everything a good correspondent should do: he had welcomed strangers he had never seen, lodged them, and dealt with them fairly. Kindness of that kind rests on trust that it will be returned, and the border merchant broke that trust at the first test. The story asks the listener to notice how a single refusal to acknowledge a kindness can spread outward, undoing the goodwill that makes distant trade, and distant friendship, possible at all. Gratitude, in this telling, is the quiet currency that keeps strangers willing to trust one another across long distances.