Jarudapana Jataka

Jataka No. 256 of the Pali Canon was told by the Buddha at Jetavana concerning a company of traders from Savatthi. Before setting out on a long journey to sell their goods, they offered the Buddha a meal, took the Refuges, and undertook the Precepts. On the road they came to a dry, disused well and, being thirsty, dug it deeper. They found successive layers of minerals, from iron to lapis lazuli, filled their carts with them, and returned safely to Savatthi. Grateful for their good fortune, they invited the Buddha to a meal and described what they had found. He told them that they had been content with their wealth and livelihood, and that in the past others had not been content and had lost their lives. Before leaving, they had promised to come and visit him if they returned safely, and now they had kept that promise.

In the time of King Brahmadatta of Benares, the Bodhisatta was born into a merchant family and became a great trader. He once led a large caravan of laden wagons through that same wood and came upon the same well. The merchants wanted water, and they began to dig it out. It was the very well that the traders of Savatthi would come upon in a later age: dry and disused, yet still holding, beneath its sand, whatever a thirsty traveller might be tempted to keep digging for.

Instead of water, the diggers uncovered metal and then gems. In the verses they are named as iron, copper, lead, silver, gold, pearls, and abundant beryl. Yet they were not satisfied. Convinced that an even greater treasure lay below, they kept digging. (The commentary explains that the "iron" of the verse means manganese, which is often found alongside the other metals.)

The Bodhisatta warned them that greed is the root of destruction. He told them that they already had wealth enough and urged them to stop digging.

The merchants ignored him and dug on, unwilling to leave any layer of the well unexplored while there remained any chance of more.

The well was the home of nagas (serpent beings). The naga king was angered by the clods of earth falling upon his dwelling, and he killed the merchants with a blast of poisonous breath from his nostrils.

Only the Bodhisatta survived. The naga king then rose from the naga world, harnessed oxen to the carts, loaded them with jewels, and had young nagas drive them. He escorted the Bodhisatta to Benares, placed the treasure in his house, and returned to his own realm. The Bodhisatta spent his wealth generously and became famous across Jambudipa for his charity. He kept the holy days, practised virtue, and at the end of his life was reborn in heaven.

The closing verses state the lesson plainly. Merchants digging an old well for water found riches, but in their discontent they dug deeper and deeper, and a fierce, fiery serpent destroyed them. One may dig, but not to excess, for digging too deep brings harm: by moderate digging they gained wealth, and by digging too much they lost both wealth and life.

The traders who sat before him had been given a fortune by a dry well and had carried it home safely; the story showed them how the same good fortune had once ended in ruin for people who treated what they were given as only the start of what they wanted. The Buddha did not tell this old story to rebuke the traders of Savatthi but to honour their contentment, setting beside it the fate of those who had once dug at the same kind of well and could not stop. At the end of the telling he identified the birth: Sariputta had been the naga king, and he himself had been the leader of the caravan.