Mayhaka Jātaka

This tale was told by the Buddha while dwelling at Jetavana, concerning a foreign merchant who had settled in Savatthi and grown immensely wealthy. Yet he neither spent his fortune on himself nor gave anything to others. Offered fine food, he refused it and ate only broth of rice-dust and sour gruel. Offered silken robes, he refused them and wore coarse hair-cloth. Offered a jeweled chariot, he refused it and rode about in a broken-down cart beneath a parasol of dry leaves. In this joyless manner he hoarded his wealth his whole life long, giving nothing in charity, and when he died he left no heir. For seven days and nights the king's men labored to carry his vast, ownerless fortune into the royal treasury.

When this task was done, King Pasenadi of Kosala went to Jetavana to pay his respects. Asked why he had not come sooner, he told the Buddha of the merchant, a man who, despite such riches, had lived and died like a pauper. 'Why, Lord,' the king asked, 'did this undeserving man gain such wealth at all? And why could he never bring himself to enjoy it? And why, besides, did he die without a son?' At the king's request, the Buddha answered with two tales of the past.

Long ago, when Brahmadatta reigned in Benares, there lived a merchant who gave to no one and provided for no one. One day, on his way to the king's court, he came upon a Pacceka Buddha (one who reaches enlightenment alone and does not teach others) named Tagarasikhi collecting alms, and on a sudden impulse of respect, he asked whether the sage had received any food. Told that he had not, the merchant sent him to his own house with orders that he be served a full bowl from the fine meal prepared for the merchant himself; his wife gladly obeyed.

But returning from court, he passed Tagarasikhi carrying away the bowl brimming with delicacies. The merchant's heart failed him at the sight, and he thought, 'Had my own servants eaten this, at least their labor would have repaid me — what a loss this has been!' He could never undo that thought of regret. The Buddha explained that a gift bears its fullest fruit only when three states of mind are kept whole: joy in the wish to give, joy in the act of giving, and joy afterward in having given. Because the merchant let regret spoil the third, his alms to Tagarasikhi ripened, birth after birth, into vast wealth that he could never bring himself to enjoy.

As for his childlessness, the Buddha told a second tale. Long ago, also in Benares under King Brahmadatta, the Bodhisatta was born into a merchant's household worth eighty crores. On his parents' death he took charge of the estate, built an almshouse at his gate, and lived generously, providing also for his younger brother. In time a son was born to him. But once the boy had grown old enough to walk, the Bodhisatta, seeing clearly the suffering bound up in worldly life, resolved to renounce it. He entrusted his wife, his child, and his entire fortune to his younger brother, and charged him to continue the almsgiving without fail. Then he departed for the Himalayas to become an ascetic, where through meditation he attained the higher powers of insight.

The younger brother, left in charge, began to eye his nephew with unease, dreading the day the boy would come of age and claim half the estate. Overcome by covetousness, he led the child down to the river on the pretext of bathing him. What passed between them there he alone knew and never confessed — but the boy did not come home. When the child's mother asked where her son was, he said only, 'He was playing in the water; I looked for him, but could not find him.' She wept and said no more.

From his dwelling in the Himalayas, the Bodhisatta perceived the whole matter with his purified sight and resolved to bring the truth into the open. He traveled through the air to Benares and came to stand, finely robed, at the door of his old home, grieved to find the almshouse gone, supposing his brother had let it fall to neglect. When his brother learned of his arrival he came out, bowed before him with reverence, and led him up to dine. After the meal, as they sat together, the Bodhisatta asked after his son. 'He has died, my lord,' the brother admitted. 'How?' 'At the bathing place — but I cannot say exactly how it happened.'

'You cannot say?' the Bodhisatta answered. 'This deed is already known to me. Was it not by your own hand that the river closed over him? And tell me — when kings, thieves, and time itself will scatter every treasure you hoard, what will you truly have gained by it? What difference, in the end, is there between you and the Mayhaka bird?'

And teaching with the ease of a Buddha, he spoke these verses: 'There is a bird called Mayhaka that dwells in a mountain cave; perched upon a fig tree heavy with ripening fruit, it cries without pause, "Mine! Mine!" Yet while it only laments, flocks of other birds gather and eat the fruit, and still its plaintive cry goes on. So too a man may gather boundless wealth, yet never share a fair portion with his own kin; he knows no pleasure in fine food, perfume, or garland, and does his family no good at all. "Mine, mine," he whimpers as he guards his hoard — yet kings, robbers, and his own impatient heirs will scatter it in the end, and still the miser's plaintive cry goes on. But a wise man who gains great riches makes himself useful to his kin; by this he wins good repute in this very life, and heaven hereafter.'

Struck with shame at being found out, the brother confessed, and under the Bodhisatta's guidance took up the almsgiving once more with sincere devotion. His teaching given, the Bodhisatta returned to the Himalayas, continued his unbroken meditation, and was in time reborn in the Brahma heavens.

Concluding the account, the Buddha said: 'Even so, great king — because he once drowned my son, that man was destined, in this life too, to die without son or daughter of his own.' And he identified the birth: 'The covetous younger brother of that time is the foreign merchant of today; and the elder brother, who taught him the folly of the Mayhaka bird, was I myself.'

The Mayhaka Jātaka, No. 390 of the Pāli canon, is unusual among the birth stories for braiding two separate causes into a single fate. One is a generous act whose fruit was spoiled by after-the-fact regret; the other is an act of covetous violence that no later wealth could ever undo. Together they teach that neither merit nor misdeed vanishes with time. The miser's fortune, guarded with the same futile cry as the Mayhaka bird's, profited no one, least of all himself. The elder brother's plain question, what is gained by hoarding what kings, thieves, and time will scatter anyway, remains as sharp a challenge to greed today as it was in Benares.