The Ass and the Wise Son's Seat

At Jetavana, the gathered Brethren one day fell to praising the Buddha's own perfect and unobstructed wisdom, how he had humbled proud brahmins, converted fierce ascetics, and tamed even the robber Angulimala. When the Teacher asked what they were discussing and was told, he said that his wisdom had not come to him only in this final life. Long before his knowledge had fully ripened into Buddhahood, he said, he had already gone about the world seeking wisdom with the same discernment. He told them of a birth in which a mere boy had out-reasoned an entire royal court. This recollection became Jataka No. 111, the Gadrabha-Panha or "Question of the Ass." Its brief canonical verse, "If you think a father is always better than his son, O best of kings, then this ass is better than your mule, for the ass is the mule's sire," points to the longer telling preserved in Jataka No. 546, the Mahā-Ummagga Jātaka.

In the kingdom of Mithila, King Vedeha kept four learned sages at his court, named Senaka, Pukkusa, Kavinda, and Devinda. One night he dreamed of four pillars of fire blazing in the corners of his courtyard, and from their midst a fifth flame rose higher than all of them and lit the whole world. When he asked his sages what this meant, Senaka told him not to fear. A fifth sage would soon be born who would outshine the four of them, exactly as the small flame had outshone the four columns of fire.

That same night, the Bodhisatta descended from the Tavatimsa heaven and was conceived in the womb of Sumanadevi, wife of the merchant Sirivaddhaka in an eastern market town of Mithila. He was born holding a small medicinal herb in his closed fist, and when it cured his own father's long-standing headache, word of the wonder spread through the district. Because of the healing plant he carried into the world, his parents named him Mahosadha, "the great remedy," and as he grew, his wit matched the promise of his birth.

Hearing of the boy's growing fame for cleverness, King Vedeha sent for him and his father to be brought to the palace. When young Mahosadha entered the hall and bowed, the king greeted him warmly and told him to take any seat he thought fitting. Mahosadha looked toward his father, Sirivaddhaka, who understood the glance, rose from his own seat, and offered it to his son. The boy sat down in it without hesitation, in full view of the entire court.

Senaka, Pukkusa, Kavinda, and Devinda burst out laughing and clapped their hands, mocking the "wise boy" who could do nothing cleverer than make his own father stand so that he himself might sit. The king also grew visibly uneasy, and when Mahosadha asked why his face had fallen, Vedeha admitted that he had been glad to hear of the boy's wisdom but was dismayed to see him humble his own father before the assembled ministers.

Mahosadha asked the king directly whether he truly believed a father was in every case worth more than his son, and the king answered that he did. The boy then reminded him that it was the king himself who had sent word asking that "the better one" be brought to court, without specifying father or son. He had an ordinary pack-ass led into the hall and asked the king its price. Vedeha said a serviceable ass was worth about eight rupees. Mahosadha then asked what a mule foal would be worth if that very ass sired it upon a thoroughbred Sindh mare. The king answered at once that such a mule would be priceless.

"Then by your own reckoning," Mahosadha said, "this humble ass is worth more than the priceless mule, since the ass is the mule's own sire." He recited the verse that closes the episode: "Thinkst thou that the sire is always better than the son, O excellent king? Then is yon creature better than the mule; the ass is the mule's sire." He added that if the king truly believed fathers always outrank sons, he should employ Sirivaddhaka instead of him. But if a son's worth could exceed his father's, as the king's own horse-trading proved, then the seat rightly belonged to Mahosadha. The hall erupted in applause, ministers snapped their fingers and waved their scarves in delight, and the four sages who had laughed loudest fell silent in disgrace.

At the end of the Mahā-Ummagga Jātaka, the Teacher revealed who each character had become. The merchant Sirivaddhaka, Mahosadha's father in that birth, was King Suddhodana, father of the Buddha himself in his final life. Senaka was later born as Saccaka, Pukkusa as Potthapada, Kavinda as Ambattha, and Devinda as Pilotika, while King Vedeha became the monk Laludayi. "Mahosadha," the Buddha said, "was I myself."

The Gadrabha-Panha survives in the Pali Canon as only a single pointed verse, almost a riddle without its answer, because its first hearers already knew the longer tale by heart. What it preserves, in miniature, is the Bodhisatta's lifelong method: he never silenced an insult with anger, but with a question so exact that the insult answered itself. A father's seat had seemed to be given away in disrespect. It was returned, through sound reasoning stated plainly and without malice, as an honor earned by wisdom rather than claimed by birth order alone.