Mahābodhi Jātaka

The Master told this story while staying at Jetavana, concerning the Perfection of Wisdom. The incident is also related in the Mahāummagga. The Master said that not only now but in the past the Tathāgata was wise and overcame all disputants. The Jātaka Aṭṭhakathā of the Pali Canon records the tale as No. 528, the Mahābodhi Jātaka.

In the reign of Brahmadatta, the Bodhisatta was born at Benares in the kingdom of Kāsi, in the family of a wealthy northern Brahmin. They named him young Bodhi. He studied at Takkasilā (a renowned ancient center of learning) and lived for a time as a householder. Then he gave up sensual desires, went to the Himālaya region, and lived there for a long time on roots and wild fruit. At the rainy season he came down and gradually approached Benares.

He stayed in the royal park, and the next day he went to the palace gate for alms. The king saw his calm bearing from a window, invited him in, and seated him on the royal couch. After the meal, the king asked him to live in the park, and gave him a hut of leaves. Bodhi came to the palace daily and ate at the king's table. Twelve years passed in this way.

The king had five councillors who taught him his duties. One denied that there is any cause behind what happens. One held that everything is the work of a Supreme Being. One held that every pleasure and sorrow comes from past actions. One believed that death is annihilation. The fifth taught the Kshatriya doctrine, that one should pursue one's own interest even at the cost of one's parents. These five were also appointed to sit as judges, and they took bribes.

One day a man who had lost a false suit saw Bodhi enter the palace. He saluted him and complained that the councillors had taken a bribe and robbed him of his property. Moved by pity, the ascetic went to the court and gave a righteous judgment that restored the man's property. The people applauded loudly. The king heard the noise, learned the cause, and asked the ascetic to sit as judge each day. After repeated requests Bodhi agreed.

False suits no longer found a hearing, and the councillors received no bribes. They resolved to destroy the ascetic by slander. They told the king that Bodhi wished him harm. The king at first refused to believe it. They said that the citizens were all Bodhi's, and that the five of them were the only people he could not control. They urged the king to watch the crowd that followed Bodhi, and the king, seeing the suitors, misread them as a retinue.

The king gradually lessened the respect shown to the ascetic. First Bodhi was seated on a bare couch, then given mixed food, then placed at the head of the stairs, and then on the lower terrace with a poor broth. Bodhi saw each change and understood that he had been slandered. Still he waited, thinking he would depart once he knew for certain. The councillors told the king that he had not left because he sought the throne, and the king ordered them to end his life the next day.

That night the king grieved as he recalled twelve years of Bodhi's teaching. He told his chief queen about the order, and she urged him to guard his own safety. A tawny hound, well bred and a favourite of the king, overheard it. At dawn the hound lay across the threshold. When Bodhi approached, the hound bared his teeth and barked loudly. Bodhi, knowing the meaning of all sounds, understood, turned back to the park, and gathered his belongings.

The king hurried to the park and found the ascetic ready to leave. He asked in verse why Bodhi was going. Bodhi answered that for twelve years the hound had never barked, and that today he showed his teeth and warned him on hearing what the king told the queen. The king confessed his fault and begged him to stay. Bodhi answered that wise men do not live with one who follows others without seeing for himself. He spoke of friendship that fades from too many or too few visits, and he departed.

Once the ascetic was gone, the councillors feared his return and resorted to a worse slander. They told the king that Bodhi and the chief queen were sending messages to plot against him. Without investigating, the king ordered the queen put to death. Her four sons then became his enemies, and the king lived in terror. Bodhi, hearing of it, thought that he alone could pacify the princes and save the king. He left the Himālaya and went toward Benares.

At a frontier village the people gave Bodhi a monkey, and he accepted its meat and asked for its skin. He dried and cured it until it lost all smell, and he made it into robes. At Benares he first counselled the four princes not to harm their father and promised to reconcile them. Then he entered the royal park and sat on a stone slab, spreading the skin over it. The park keeper told the king, who came with the five councillors and sat down to speak with him.

Bodhi stroked the skin, and when the king asked, he said that this monkey had been of great service. He claimed it had carried him on its back, held his water pot, and swept his dwelling. The councillors laughed and called him a murderer and a betrayer of a friend.

To the one who denied cause, Bodhi replied that if all acts spring from no cause, no blame can attach to his act. To the one who believed in a Supreme Being, he said that blame would fall on that Being. To the one who held past action, he said that the monkey was merely paying an old debt. To the annihilationist, he said that nothing could be harmed in a world already doomed. To the Kshatriya, he said that his act served his own need. Each, he said, was the doctrine of the accuser turned to the speaker's own mouth.

Having silenced the five, Bodhi told the king that these men were big thieves who plundered his realm. He taught him in verse that a king should rule justly, that unripe fruit plucked early destroys the seed, and that harming the wise, soldiers, merchants, or an innocent wife leads to ruin. He then called the four princes, urged them to ask the king's pardon, and persuaded the king to forgive them. The king wished to put the five to death or cut off their hands and feet. Bodhi said that he must not. They were stripped of their property, publicly disgraced, and driven out of the kingdom.

The Master ended his lesson, saying that not only now but in the past the Tathāgata was wise and overcame all disputants. He then identified the birth. The five heretics were Purāṇa Kassapa, Makkhali Gosāla, Pakudha Kaccāna, Ajita Kesakambalī, and Nigaṇṭha Nāthaputta. The tawny hound was Ānanda. The wandering ascetic Mahābodhi was the Buddha himself.

Mahābodhi's monkey-skin argument does not simply win a debate. It shows that each of the five views, when taken seriously, would excuse the ills it claims to explain. A teaching that denies cause, hands everything to a god, or fixes all events in the past leaves no room for responsibility. A creed that urges self-interest above kinship leaves no room for trust. The story also respects the ascetic's patience, his willingness to leave quietly, and his readiness to return when others were in danger. Wisdom here is not merely cleverness. It is the capacity to protect those who wronged him, and to refuse vengeance in the end.