Somanassa Jātaka

At Jetavana the Buddha once spoke of how his cousin Devadatta had again sought to take his life. He said: "This is not the first time, monks, that Devadatta has sought to slay me; he did the same before." He then told of a birth long past.

In the kingdom of Kuru, in the city of Uttara-Pañcāla, there reigned a king named Reṇu. At that time the ascetic Mahārakkhita dwelt in the Himalayas with a company of five hundred fellow renunciants. Travelling in search of salt and seasoning, he came with his companions to Uttara-Pañcāla and took up residence in the royal park. King Reṇu, delighted by their bearing, invited the sages to his palace, honoured them with fine food, and asked them to pass the rains there, providing them with every requisite. The king was childless and longed for an heir, though none had yet been born to him.

When the rains had ended, Mahārakkhita prepared to return to the Himalayas. On the road, resting at midday beneath a shady tree, his companions fell to speaking of the king's childlessness and how fortunate it would be if an heir were born to continue his line. Mahārakkhita, reflecting on their words, perceived by his insight that a son would indeed come to the king, and declared, "Have no fear, friends. This very dawn a son of the gods will descend and be conceived by the chief queen."

Among the band was an ascetic who possessed no true insight at all, a fraud who lived among the genuine renunciants. Hearing the prophecy, he saw in it his own fortune, and feigned a sudden illness so that he might be left behind. Mahārakkhita, perceiving nothing of the deceit, told him to follow when he was able, and departed with the true ascetics toward the Himalayas.

The instant they were out of sight, the impostor hastened back to the city and presented himself at the palace gate, claiming to be one of Mahārakkhita's own attendants. Brought before the king, he declared that he alone, by his "divine eye," had foreseen that a son of the gods would be conceived by the queen that very dawn. He claimed he had hurried back only to bring the king this joyful news. The king, overjoyed and wholly deceived, gave the man a name, Dibbacakkhuka, "he of the divine eye," and installed him in the royal park with every honour, believing him a true seer.

In time the Bodhisatta descended from the heavenly realm and was conceived as the king had been told. When he was born, the whole kingdom rejoiced, and he was named Prince Somanassa, "Joy of Heart." He was raised with every royal care. Dibbacakkhuka, meanwhile, in a hidden corner of the park, secretly tended a market garden, selling vegetables and fruit to the city's gardeners and quietly amassing wealth beneath his robes of false sanctity.

When the prince was seven years old, a rebellion broke out on the frontier, and the king rode out to subdue it, leaving the ascetic in his son's keeping. One day the prince visited the park and found Dibbacakkhuka bent over his plants, watering them jar in hand like any common gardener. "Is this the work of an ascetic, or of a worldly man?" the prince asked, and rebuked him plainly, departing without the customary gesture of respect.

Fearing that the prince, once grown, would expose him further, Dibbacakkhuka resolved to strike first. As the king's return drew near, he overturned his own stone seat, broke his water jar, scattered his hut in disorder, smeared himself with oil, and lay down groaning as though gravely injured. When the king returned victorious and went, as was his custom, to greet his revered friend before entering his own house, he found the hut in disarray and the ascetic prostrate. Alarmed, he knelt to tend him and asked what had befallen him. The impostor replied that the prince had come to him and, without any cause, had done him this harm.

Blind with rage, the king ordered his executioners to seize Prince Somanassa, strike off his head, and bring it before him. The prince, led away, begged only to see his father once more before he died, and the request was granted. Standing before the king, he asked what wrong he had done. The king answered that the holy man drew water and tended sacred fire morning and evening, and demanded how the prince dared call such a one a worldling. The prince replied that a man who kept orchards and roots and fields, and tended them for profit, was worldly in truth whatever he called himself. He then asked that the market gardeners at the city's four gates be questioned.

The king sent for them, and they confirmed that they had long bought vegetables and fruit from the ascetic. A search of the hut uncovered a hoard of coins, the proceeds of his secret trade. Seeing the truth at last, the king knew his son was innocent.

The Bodhisatta then reflected that a kingdom guided by so foolish and credulous a ruler as his father offered no refuge for a soul, and resolved then and there to renounce the world. Before the assembled court, he declared how near an innocent life had come to destruction through a fool's false counsel, bowed to those present, and asked his father's leave to go forth. The king pleaded with him to remain and inherit the throne, but the prince recalled the heavenly joys he had given up at his descent and said he would stay no longer under a king so easily deceived. The king, humbled, begged forgiveness and spoke at length on the peril of hasty judgment and the honour that attends a ruler who weighs his verdicts with care.

The king then turned to the queen, asking her to persuade their son to remain. She instead urged the prince onward, saying that one who harms no living being reaches the company of Brahma. The king, moved by her words, withheld his sorrow and gave his blessing. The prince bowed to his parents, asking their forgiveness, and set out for the Himalayas accompanied by deities in the guise of a royal retinue. There, in a leaf-hut built for him by the divine architect Vissakamma, he gave himself to meditation and in time attained the jhānas, the deep states of meditative absorption, becoming destined for rebirth in the Brahma world, a high heavenly realm. As for Dibbacakkhuka, once his long fraud stood exposed before the whole city, the people's fury turned upon him, and he did not live to see another day.

Having finished the tale, the Buddha said, "So, monks, Devadatta sought to slay me in a former life as he does now," and he identified the birth. Devadatta was the fraudulent ascetic Dibbacakkhuka. His own mother Mahāmāyā was the queen. Sāriputta was the true seer Mahārakkhita. And he himself was Prince Somanassa.

The jataka, No. 505 in the Pali Jātaka collection of the Khuddaka Nikāya, endures as a double warning. A reputation for holiness built on a stolen prophecy and a borrowed robe can command a king's devotion for years. Yet it collapses the moment someone asks a plain question and checks the facts against the market gardeners at the gate. A kingdom ruled by hasty judgment, however well-meaning its king, offers no true refuge even to an innocent prince. What endures beyond the throne is a mind willing to look past outward appearance, test a claim against evidence, and choose the discipline of the forest over the comfort of a court that mistakes robes for virtue.