Kundakapuva Jataka

Jataka No. 109 of the Pali Canon was told by the Buddha concerning a destitute man of Savatthi. When the community pooled its resources to feed the Buddha and his monks, this man had nothing to contribute but a single bran cake, which he placed directly into the Buddha's own alms bowl with nothing else to offer alongside it. His gift earned such merit in the eyes of the gathered citizens that wealthy donors began showering him with gifts simply to share in the blessing of his offering. His fortune grew to nine crores of wealth (a crore being ten million) and the king appointed him treasurer that very evening. To show that this was no isolated miracle, the Buddha recalled an old story of a water-carrier whose own humble cake had once met the same fate.

In the city of Benares, the citizens held an annual festival honoring the spirits believed to protect the forest. The wealthy merchants and nobles of the city brought milk-rice, scented garlands, and honeyed confections to decorate the great banyan and sal trees standing outside the city walls.

Among the city's laborers was a destitute water-carrier who owned nothing beyond a single earthen pot, a coarse cloth, and a handful of discarded rice husks. Yet he felt the same reverence for the festival as any wealthy citizen bringing fine offerings. He pounded the husks, kneaded them into a rough, dry cake, and carried it toward a modest castor-oil tree far humbler than the great banyans favored by the rich.

Approaching the tree, the water-carrier saw the shrines nearby overflowing with delicacies and fragrant blossoms, and looking down at his own crumbling grey cake of husks, shame overtook him. He reasoned that a spirit accustomed to feasts offered by kings and bankers would surely be insulted by so poor an offering. He turned to throw the cake into the bushes rather than risk giving something he feared would cause offense.

At that very moment, the tree spirit, the Bodhisatta, emerged from the trunk in a glow of light and called out for the man to stop, asking why he was withholding his gift. The water-carrier wept and confessed his poverty and his fear that so humble an offering would only bring him shame or divine anger.

The Bodhisatta answered that a gift is measured neither by its price nor by its rarity, but by the sincerity of the heart offering it. A kingdom given with arrogance is worth less than ashes. A crumb of husk-cake given in honest faith tastes, to anyone who understands true giving, as sweet as the finest offering any wealthy patron could provide.

The man came back and made his offering, and the tree spirit accepted the rough cake, taking its savour and refusing to let the water-carrier's shame stand between a sincere gift and the one meant to receive it. As the Bodhisatta's verse puts it, the deity's food is suited to the man's means: as the man's food is, so is the deity's.

To honor the man's unshaken faith, the Bodhisatta revealed pots of treasure buried in a ring around the tree, neck to neck, and told him exactly how to present this fortune before the king. The king, moved by the tree spirit's testimony on the water-carrier's behalf, appointed him royal treasurer on the strength of a gift that had once nearly gone to the bushes instead.

The Buddha closed the story by returning to the poor man of Savatthi whose own bran cake, offered with nothing to recommend it but sincerity, had just produced a fortune and a treasurership of its own. He showed the assembly that the water-carrier's ancient husk-cake and the contemporary bran cake were answered by exactly the same truth. It is the purity of the giver's heart, never the splendor of the gift, that makes any offering sublime, and that truth had already proven itself once in an old forest tale long before it proved itself again in a single alms bowl at Jetavana.