The Foolish Maid and the Flies

The Buddha told this story while dwelling at Jetavana, after a sorrow had befallen the household of Anāthāpiṇḍika, the great treasurer of Sāvatthī. A maidservant of that house, named Rohiṇī, was devoted to her aged mother but wholly without discernment. One day the mother came to the place where Rohiṇī was pounding rice, and lay down to rest beside her. Flies gathered round the old woman and stung her as sharply as if with needles. In pain, she called out, 'Rohiṇī, these flies are stinging me, my dear — drive them away!' Meaning only to help, Rohiṇī took up the heavy wooden pestle she had been using to husk the grain. She brought it down on the very spot where the flies had settled. In that single stroke of misplaced zeal, her mother's life was lost on the spot, while the flies themselves escaped unharmed.

Seeing what she had done, Rohiṇī broke into bitter weeping, crying, 'Oh, mother, mother!' When Anāthāpiṇḍika learned of the tragedy, he saw to his servant's cremation. He then went to the Master at the monastery and told him what had happened. The Buddha said this was not the first time such a sorrow had come to pass between this mother and this daughter. He told of an earlier birth in which the very same thing had happened, with the very same names attached to it.

In that former time, when King Brahmadatta reigned in Varanasi, the Bodhisatta was born as the son of the city's Lord High Treasurer. When his father died, he himself rose to that same office, honored throughout the kingdom for his wisdom and generosity. In his household, too, lived a slave-girl also named Rohiṇī. She loved her aged mother dearly, but she had no more sense than a child.

One hot afternoon, the mother came to where her daughter was pounding rice in the courtyard, and she lay down there to rest. Flies gathered and settled on her, biting at her tired skin. 'Do drive these flies off me, my dear,' she called out.

Rohiṇī hurried to her side. 'Mother, do not fear,' she said. 'I shall see that they never trouble you again.'

Looking for something with which to strike them, her eyes fell on the heavy wooden pestle (musala) she had set down beside her. She lifted it with both hands. The moment the flies settled again on her mother, she brought it down with all her strength, meaning only to free her mother from their torment.

The blow fell with such force that her mother did not survive it. The flies themselves flew off unharmed. Seeing what her own hand had done, Rohiṇī was overcome with grief. She began to weep and cry aloud.

Hearing her cries, the Bodhisatta came to the place. He understood at once what devotion without wisdom had brought about, and he saw to a fitting cremation for the mother. Before the grieving girl and the household gathered there, he reflected that even an enemy possessed of sense would be preferable to a friend who lacked it. Then he spoke this verse:

'Sense-lacking friends are worse than foes with sense — witness the girl whose reckless hand laid low her mother, whom she now laments in vain.'

In these lines praising wisdom over witless affection, the Bodhisatta preached the truth to all who had gathered. Goodwill without discernment, he taught, can bring about a ruin that even open enmity might not have intended.

When the tale was ended, the Buddha made known the connection between the two births. 'The mother and the daughter of today,' he declared, 'were the mother and the daughter of that time as well, and I myself was then the Lord High Treasurer.' A single lapse of judgment, repeated across two lives, became a teaching on the difference between affection and discernment. The very same lesson is echoed in the kindred tale of the Makasa Jātaka. There, a devoted son's axe-blow — meant for a mosquito — cost his father's life in just the same way.

This story is recorded as Jataka No. 45 of the Pali canon, in the first book of the Jātaka collection translated under the editorship of E. B. Cowell. It is the twin tale that immediately follows the Makasa Jātaka, No. 44. The two are traditionally read together as companion illustrations of the same proverb: that wisdom, even in an adversary, outweighs devotion without it.