Keḷisīla Jātaka

The Master told this story while he was staying at Jetavana. It concerns the Elder Lakuṇṭaka the Good, a monk famous in the Buddha's community for his sweet speech and his keen understanding. His passions were perfectly subdued, and he preached with a honeyed voice that drew listeners to him. Yet in body he was the smallest of all the eighty great elders, no taller than a novice. The Jātaka Aṭṭhakathā of the Pali Canon preserves the story as No. 202, the Keḷi-Sīla Jātaka.

One day the elder went to the gate of Jetavana to pay his respects to the Buddha. At that moment thirty monks from the countryside arrived at the same gate, on their way to see the Master as well. They took the small figure for a novice and treated him roughly, tugging at his robe and handling him without any courtesy. Then they set aside their bowls and robes and went in to salute the Buddha.

The visitors asked the Master where Lakuṇṭaka the Good, the honeyed preacher, could be found. The Buddha answered that he was the very man they had handled at the gate. Astonished, they asked how a devoted and accomplished disciple could be so slight in stature. The Master replied that it came from his own past deeds, and at their request he told them an old tale.

Long ago, when Brahmadatta reigned in Benares, the Bodhisatta was born as Sakka, king of the gods. As told in No. 202, the king of Benares could not bear the sight of anything old or decrepit, whether elephant, horse, ox, or human being. He was full of pranks, and whenever he saw an aged creature he chased it away. Old carts were broken up. Elderly women were sent for and frightened, and old men were made to roll about like tumblers for his amusement. If he heard that a grey-haired man lived in some far town, he sent for him to make sport of him.

The people were so ashamed and afraid that they sent their aged parents beyond the boundaries of the kingdom. Men no longer tended or cared for their mothers and fathers. The king's companions were as wanton as he was. Since people who neglect their parents fall into the four states of woe (the unhappy lower realms of rebirth) when they die, those unhappy worlds began to fill up, and the company of the gods grew thinner and thinner.

Sakka saw that no new gods were arriving in heaven, and he considered what should be done. At last he settled on a plan, thinking that he would humble the king. He took the form of an old man in rags. He placed two jars of buttermilk in a rickety old wagon, yoked a pair of aged oxen to it, and set out on a feast day.

That day the king was riding a richly adorned elephant in a solemn procession around the decorated city. Sakka came driving his wagon to meet him. When the king saw the old cart, he shouted at it to get out of the way. His attendants answered that they could not see any cart, for by his power Sakka let no one see it but the king. Coming closer again and again, Sakka at last smashed one jar upon the king's head and made him turn round. Then he smashed the other in the same way, and the buttermilk trickled down on either side of the king's head.

When he saw the king's distress, Sakka made the cart vanish and took his true shape. He stood in the air with his thunderbolt in hand and rebuked the king. Would old age never come to him as well? Why did he sport with the aged and mock them? Because of him, Sakka said, people everywhere were dying and filling the four worlds of woe, and children could not care for their parents. If the king did not stop, Sakka would split his head with the thunderbolt.

With that rebuke Sakka declared the worth of parents and made known the benefit of honouring the old. Then he departed to his own place. From that time the king never so much as thought of doing anything like what he had done before. The story does not describe the king as punished further; it shows a person turned from cruelty by one sharp lesson.

When the tale was done, the Master, now perfectly enlightened, recited two couplets. The first says that geese, herons, elephants, and spotted deer are all unlike one another, yet all alike fear the lion. The second says that a child is great if he is clever, while fools may be big but can never be truly great. The verses speak directly to the case of Lakuṇṭaka, whose small body held a great mind.

After teaching the Truths, the Master identified the birth. At the conclusion of the Truths some of those monks entered on the first path, some on the second, and some on the fourth (successive stages of awakening, from stream-entry up through full arahantship). The excellent Lakuṇṭaka had been the king in the story, who made others the butt of his jests and then became a butt himself. The Buddha himself had been Sakka.

The tale links two scenes that seem unrelated, a small monk handled roughly at a gate and a king jeered at by an invisible cart. Both teach that a person's present condition grows out of earlier conduct, and that contempt for others rebounds on the one who shows it. It also names the reverence owed to the old as a protection for the whole community, since a society that discards its aged parents empties its own future. Nothing in the account asks the listener to despise the king. It asks only that we guard our own manner toward people who are smaller, slower, or older than we are.