Meṇḍaka Jātaka

Jataka No. 471 of the Pali Canon has no story of the present. The Buddha tells it only as a tale of the past, and it is taken from the longer Ummagga Jataka (Ja 546). In it the Bodhisatta (the Buddha-to-be, in this earlier birth) is the wise Mahosadha, and the riddle at its heart is the Problem of the Goat, or ram, from which the Meṇḍaka Jātaka takes its name.

A goat kept sneaking grass meant for the royal elephants. The stable keepers beat it, and a man struck its back as it fled. In pain, it lay down by the great wall of the palace. A dog that had long lived on scraps from the royal kitchen snatched meat while the cook rested. The cook beat it and struck its back as it ran off. Hurt in the same way, the dog came to the wall, where the two commiserated and found they could no longer approach their sources of food.

The goat proposed a division of labor. No one would suspect a dog of eating grass, or a goat of eating meat. So the dog fetched grass from the stable and the goat fetched meat from the kitchen. They shared their loot by the wall and lived in harmony.

The king watched the two through a doorway and was astonished that natural enemies were friends. He framed a question for his wise men: anyone who could not solve it would be banished, and anyone who could would be honored. They were to answer by noon the next day.

The chief minister Senaka, seated first, saw that the sage Mahosadha was also stumped. Senaka stalled, arguing that a knotty question could not be solved in a crowd and that the men needed time alone to think. The king grudgingly agreed.

Mahosadha learned from Queen Udumbarā that the king had spent the previous days pacing the long walk and looking out of the window. He went there, saw the goat and the dog, and understood the riddle.

The other four wise men came to Mahosadha for help. Though he could simply have told them, he gave each a verse in Pāli to memorize, without revealing what the king had seen, and sent them to court.

The next day each recited his verse. Senaka noted that young nobles enjoy mutton but not dog meat, yet friendship was still possible. Pukkusa noted that goatskin, not dogskin, covers horses, and again allowed for friendship. Kāvinda contrasted the ram's curled horns with the dog's lack of horns, and the ram's grass diet with the dog's meat diet. Devinda contrasted the ram's diet of grass and leaves with the dog's diet of hares and cats. Each recited without understanding the meaning, yet the king assumed each had solved the riddle through his own insight.

Finally Mahosadha answered by explaining that the goat brings the dog its meat and the dog brings the goat its grass, each exchange going unnoticed, and that the king himself had witnessed this from his terrace. The king praised the wise men, then rewarded all five with a chariot, a female mule, and a rich village. Mahosadha's part in the solution was not revealed to the king.

The Bodhisatta was the wise Mahosadha, who solved the riddle. The four wise men were Senaka, Pukkusa, Kāvinda and Devinda, who recited the verses he gave them. Queen Udumbarā was the one through whom Mahosadha learned what the king had observed. The text does not name the king, and it does not say who the goat and the dog had been in other lives.

The goat and the dog show how two creatures who ought to be enemies can become partners through shared need, each supplying what the other lacks, while the wise men show that reciting words without understanding them solves nothing. Only Mahosadha, by observing the scene itself, saw the answer.