Mahā-Paduma Jātaka

The Master told this story at Jetavana concerning Ciñcamāṇavikā, who had bound a round piece of wood beneath her robe and stood before the assembled people falsely proclaiming that the Buddha had fathered her child. Sakka's intervention let the wood slip loose, exposing her fraud before the whole assembly, who drove her from the monastery in disgrace. The Buddha declared that this was not the first time she had tried to destroy an innocent man with a lie, and told of a time long past.

In ancient times, King Brahmadatta ruled Baranasi with righteousness. His chief queen gave birth to the Bodhisatta, who was named Prince Mahā-Paduma because his complexion was as pure, radiant, and fragrant as a fully blossomed white lotus (paduma). When the queen passed away, the king elevated a stunning but vain and sensual woman to be his chief consort.

Some years later, a rebellion broke out on the far frontiers. King Brahmadatta marched forth with his legions to quell the uprising, leaving Prince Mahā-Paduma in charge of the royal capital. The prince governed with such wisdom, justice, and kindness that the entire population rejoiced. Upon the king's victorious return, Prince Mahā-Paduma rode forth on a caparisoned elephant to welcome his father, adorning the city with triumphal banners. Watching the radiant young prince from her palace terrace, the wicked queen was inflamed with unholy lust.

That afternoon, when Prince Paduma entered the palace apartments to pay his dutiful respects to his stepmother, the queen shamelessly propositioned him, seizing his robe and tempting him with royal power and secret pleasures. Horrified, Prince Paduma pulled away and rebuked her sternly: 'Mother, speak not such evil! You are my father's wife, and to me you are as sacred as the mother who bore me. I would sooner die than commit such defilement.'

Fearing that her treason would be exposed, the queen resolved upon monstrous vengeance. She tore her garments, scratched her cheeks and breasts with her own nails, smeared dust over her hair, and lay sobbing upon her couch. When King Brahmadatta returned and tenderly asked who had wronged her, the deceitful queen wept hysterically, claiming that Prince Paduma had forcibly entered her chamber and assaulted her.

Blinded by fury, King Brahmadatta refused to grant his son a hearing, ignoring the pleadings of his ministers, weeping citizens, and holy ascetics. The tyrant commanded that Prince Paduma be bound in chains, paraded through the city to the roll of the executioner's drum, and hurled from the summit of the sheer mountain cliff known as the Robbers' Precipice (Corapapāta).

As the virtuous prince was hurled into the abyss, his mind rested in pure loving-kindness (mettā) toward his accusers. A deity who dwelt upon that mountain, moved by the majesty of his virtue, caught the falling prince in his own two hands and comforted him, saying, 'Fear not, Paduma.' Unable to keep him safely in the realm of men, the deity then bore him down and laid him within the hood of the king of the Nāgas, who received him with honor and carried him to the subterranean realm of the serpents.

For one year, Prince Paduma was honored with divine hospitality; he then requested to be returned to the human world, donning the bark garments of an ascetic in a secluded forest hermitage in the Himalayas.

Meanwhile, a wood-ranger of Baranasi, wandering in the Himalayas, came upon the prince living as an ascetic and recognised him. After staying with him some days, the ranger returned to Baranasi and told the king where his son was dwelling.

Hearing that his son was alive, King Brahmadatta set out with a great host, camped at the edge of the forest, and went on foot with his courtiers to the prince, who sat at the door of his leaf hut. Paduma welcomed him with wild fruits and kindly talk. The king asked how his son had survived the fall from the cliff, and Paduma answered that a mighty serpent born in that mountain land had caught him in its coils and kept him safe. The king then offered to take him home to reign.

Prince Paduma gently declined. He likened himself to a man who has swallowed a hook and is happy only once it has been drawn out; when the king asked what the hook was, Paduma answered that lust is the hook, and that he had drawn it out by renouncing it. He urged his father to keep the Ten Royal Virtues, give up wrongdoing, and rule righteously, and the king departed in tears.

On the way home the king asked his courtiers on whose account he had been parted from so virtuous a son, and they named the queen. He had her seized and cast headlong from the Robbers' Cliff to which she had condemned his innocent son — a stern end to her treachery, though it could not undo the sorrow she had sown. The king returned to Baranasi to rule righteously, while Prince Mahā-Paduma attained jhana, a state of deep meditative absorption, and was reborn in the realm of Brahma.

When the Master had finished this story at Jetavana, he revealed the birth: 'Devadatta was the king of that time, Ciñcamāṇavikā was the treacherous queen, Sāriputta was the deity who dwelt upon the mountain, Ānanda was the king of the Nāgas, and I myself was Prince Mahā-Paduma.' Jataka No. 472 of the Pali Canon records the tale under this telling, offered to explain the slander Ciñcamāṇavikā raised against the Buddha in his final life.