The Rājovāda Jātaka

The Buddha told this story at Jetavana, in the Jātaka Atthakatha, where it is recorded as Jātaka No. 151, the Rājovāda Jātaka. It begins with a visit from the king of Kosala. The king had just finished judging a very difficult case, and he hurried to the monastery straight after his meal, with his hands barely dry. The Buddha asked why he had come at such an hour, and the king explained. The Buddha praised him and then said that the real wonder was not a king who judges fairly with an all-knowing teacher beside him. The wonder was the kings of old, who had only the counsel of ordinary scholars and still ruled with justice.

Long ago, when Brahmadatta reigned in Benares, the Bodhisatta was conceived in the womb of the chief queen. After the rites proper to her state, she bore a son, and on his name-day he was called Prince Brahmadatta. At sixteen he travelled to Takkasilā for his education and mastered every branch of learning there. When his father died, he became king.

The new king ruled with uprightness and gave no weight to his own whim. His ministers, following his example, were also just. Soon no one brought a false suit to the courts. The bustle of petitioners at the palace gates faded, and the judges could sit all day without seeing a single case.

The Bodhisatta looked at the silent courts and reflected. Perhaps his own good government explained the quiet. Perhaps, though, he had some fault that no one dared to name. If he could find it, he would give it up and live better.

He first questioned those around him at court, but heard only good of himself. Perhaps they feared him, he thought, so he questioned the citizens, and then the villagers living near the four city gates. Everywhere the answer was the same.

At last he gave the government into the hands of his ministers, climbed into his carriage with only his driver, and left the city in disguise. He travelled through the country as far as the frontier, hoping to meet one honest critic. He found none, and turned back along the high road toward home.

By a remarkable coincidence, Mallika, the king of Kosala, was doing exactly the same. He too was a just ruler, and he too had heard only praise at home. He had searched across his own land and had just reached the same spot.

The two carriages met where the road ran deep between two banks, and there was no room for either to pass the other. "Get your carriage out of the way!" cried Mallika's driver. The driver from Benares answered that in his carriage sat the great monarch Brahmadatta, and it was the other who must give way. The Kosalan replied that in his carriage sat King Mallika, and the same demand came back to him.

The Benares driver wondered what to do. He decided that the younger king should yield to the elder, so he asked the other driver his master's age, and learned that the two kings were of the same age. He asked about their power, wealth, glory, caste, and family, and found them equal in each. Both ruled a country three hundred leagues long.

Then he proposed a new test. Let the road go to the better man, and let each driver describe his master's virtues.

Mallika's driver went first, and he set out his king's faults as though they were virtues. His king, he said, met the rough with roughness and the mild with mildness. He mastered the good by goodness and repaid the bad with badness. "Give place, give place, O driver!" he ended, "such are this monarch's ways."

The driver from Benares asked whether that was all. "If these are his virtues, what must his vices be?" The other told him to speak, if he could do better. So the Benares driver answered with the second verse. His king conquered wrath by mildness and answered the bad with goodness. He overcame the miser with gifts and repaid the liar with truth.

When Mallika and his driver heard these words, they understood. They climbed down from their carriage, unharnessed the horses, and moved the carriage out of the road to make way for the king of Benares. The Bodhisatta then gave King Mallika friendly counsel on how a king should live. Afterwards he returned to his own city. He gave alms and did good all his life, and at the end of it he went to the company of the gods.

Mallika took the lesson to heart. He travelled the length and breadth of his land and found no one who had a fault to report. Then he returned to Kosala, gave alms, and did good until he too went to the heavens.

The Buddha had told the story to teach the king of Kosala, and he then named the cast of that long-ago meeting. Moggallāna was Mallika's driver. Ānanda was King Mallika. Sāriputta was the driver of the king of Benares. "But I myself," said the Buddha, "was the king."

The second verse of this Jātaka survives in the Dhammapada as verse 223: conquer anger by non-anger, conquer evil by good, conquer the miser by giving, and conquer the liar by truth. The Rājovāda Jātaka gives the verse its setting. It shows the teaching being tested between two equal rulers, with nothing to separate them except conduct.

The tale also shows something quiet about humility. Both kings go out in disguise to look for their own faults, and both are honest enough to want to be corrected. When Mallika meets a better answer, he does not argue. He steps down from his carriage and learns from it. A devotee can take the same posture, asking not whether power or rank has been matched, but whether anger has been met with patience, and meanness with generosity.