Kandagalaka Jātaka

The Kandagalaka Jataka, numbered 210 in the Pali collection and told in the Jataka Atthakatha, was spoken by the Buddha at Veluvana. The occasion was Devadatta's repeated attempts to imitate the Buddha. When the Master heard of them, he said that this was not the first time Devadatta had destroyed himself by imitating him. Then he told a story of the past. The frame is brief, but it sets the question for everything that follows: what happens when a person copies another without sharing his strength?

Once, when Brahmadatta was king of Benares, the Bodhisatta was born as a woodpecker. He lived in a wood of acacia trees, and his name was Khadiravaniya, which means the Bird of the Acacia Wood. The acacia is a hard, pithy tree, and only a strong beak can open it.

He had a comrade named Kandagalaka, a name sometimes rendered literally, if awkwardly, into English as 'Eatbulb.' This friend got his food in a wood full of good fruit, among soft trees without pith. One day Kandagalaka came to visit the Bodhisatta.

Khadiravaniya thought that his friend had come, and he led him into the acacia wood. There he pecked at the tree trunks until the insects came out, and he gave them to his guest. Kandagalaka pecked up each one and ate it as if it were a honey cake.

As he ate, pride arose in his heart. He thought that the other bird was a woodpecker and so was he, so why should he be fed by anyone? He decided to get his own food in the acacia wood. He told his friend not to trouble himself, for he would find his own meal.

The Bodhisatta answered gently. He said that Kandagalaka belonged to a tribe of birds that found food in forests of pithless silk-cotton trees and in trees heavy with fruit. The acacia, he said, is full of pith and is hard. He asked his friend please not to do this.

Kandagalaka would not listen. He asked whether he was not a woodpecker, and he struck at an acacia trunk. In a moment his beak snapped off, his eyes seemed ready to fall out, and his head split. Unable to hold the tree, he fell to the ground, and there he spoke a verse asking what this thorny, cool-leaved tree was that had broken his beak at one blow.

Khadiravaniya then recited the second verse. It says that this bird was fit for rotten and soft wood. Once, by some ill chance, he tried hard trees, and he broke his skull and died. The Bodhisatta added that the tree where his friend had broken his head was hard and strong. Kandagalaka died there and then.

When the Master had ended the discourse, he identified the birth. Devadatta was Kandagalaka, and Khadiravaniya was the Buddha himself. In this way the old story answered the present case. The one who copied the Teacher without having the Teacher's strength came to the same end as the bird that copied its friend.

The story is short, yet its warning is practical. Generosity was shown to Kandagalaka, and he turned it into vanity. Good advice was given, and he treated it as an insult. The tale does not condemn ambition, but it does ask for honest self-knowledge. A person should learn what they can truly bear before taking on a task that a more practised hand performs with ease. Humility here is not weakness. It is the habit that keeps a beak from breaking on the first hard tree.

The friendship itself is also worth noticing. Khadiravaniya never mocks his guest, and he never withholds help. He feeds him first, and only then, when pride has appeared, does he speak a plain warning. Even after the disaster, his closing words are not boasts. They state what happened and why. A true friend tells the truth early, and a wise listener hears it before the beak breaks rather than after.