Sīla-Vīmaṁsa Jātaka

The Buddha told this Jataka, No. 290 of the Pali Canon, at Jetavana about a brahmin who served as an adviser to the king of Kosala. The brahmin wondered whether the king honoured him for his virtue or only for his birth and lineage. To find out, he took coins from the royal treasury on three days. On the third day he was caught and brought before the king, who ordered him punished. He explained that he had done it to test his standing, and the king understood that it was virtue, not birth, that had won his favour. Knowing that virtue is the highest good, and that he could not bring it to perfection while living as a householder, the brahmin asked leave to renounce the world. He went to Jetavana, was ordained, and before long became an Arahat. When the monks spoke of his conduct in the Dhamma Hall, the Buddha told them that such a test had a precedent in the past.

In the days when Brahmadatta ruled Benares, the Bodhisatta was the king's family priest. Learned, honoured by the court and the people alike, he came to ask himself a quiet question: is the honour I receive given to my learning and lineage, or to the purity of my conduct? He resolved to put it to the test.

The chaplain went to the treasury and took coins from the table on successive days, saying nothing. On the third day he was seized and led away toward the king. The treasury officers who had bowed to him before now saw only a thief in his hands and his sleeve.

As he was being taken to the king, the Bodhisatta saw some snake-charmers making a snake dance. Asked by the king why he had done this, he said that he had been testing his virtue. Then he spoke three verses. The first, which begins "Sīlaṁ kireva kalyāṇaṁ," says that virtue is lovely and unsurpassed in the world, and bids us look at the deadly snake, which is not harmed because it is virtuous. The second says he will undertake the virtue that the world approves of and that brings safety, for one who behaves nobly is called virtuous. The third says that the virtuous are dear to their relatives, shine among their friends, and at death arise in a happy destination.

The chaplain told the king that his family's wealth and standing were worth little beside virtue. After much pleading on the king's part, he was allowed to go. He became an ascetic in the Himalayas, developed the higher knowledges and the attainments, and was reborn in the Brahma realm.

The chaplain's test was not an act of greed but a question put to his own life. Everything he had, his learning, his birth, his place at court, could be taken in a moment by one accusation, while the fruit of his conduct went with him wherever he went. The three verses read like the answer he reached: virtue is lovely in this life, protective as a snake's own nature is its protection, and carries one on to a happy destination after death.

It is worth noticing what the test asks. Birth and learning are things a person is given or acquires, and a court may honour them without ever looking at the person. Virtue is the one possession that cannot be handed over, borrowed or inherited, and the Jataka asks whether it is the thing that actually earns trust. In both the present and the past story the answer comes back the same: the king's favour had rested on conduct. That is why each of the two wise men, the brahmin of Kosala and the priest of Benares, drew the same conclusion and chose the path of renunciation, where virtue can be brought to completion.

The Buddha identified the priest of the past with himself: the Bodhisatta who tested virtue and then renounced the world was the Buddha in an earlier life, and the Kosalan brahmin of the present story had followed the same path of going forth.