The Measure of Rice and the Greedy King

Jataka No. 5 of the Pali Canon was told by the Buddha concerning a dispute between the monks Laludayi and Dabba Mallaputta over the distribution of food tickets, after Laludayi took over the task and his mismanagement created widespread confusion among the community. To show how old this pattern of foolish overreach actually was, the Buddha recalled a former life in which the very same tendency had once embarrassed an entire royal court.

In ancient times, when King Brahmadatta reigned over Varanasi, the Bodhisatta served as his chief royal valuer, assessing the true worth of elephants, horses, jewels, and gold purchased for the royal treasury. Because the Bodhisatta possessed unshakeable integrity, the king grew resentful, feeling that paying merchants the honest value of their goods diminished his own private hoard.

Looking out the palace window one morning, the king saw a crude, ignorant rustic passing through the courtyard, and thought to himself that this fellow could value goods without taking any gold from the treasury for himself. The king summoned him on the spot, dismissed the Bodhisatta, and made the foolish rustic the new royal valuer.

Soon afterward, horse merchants arrived from the northern frontier with five hundred magnificent steeds, hoping for a fair assessment. The foolish valuer inspected the thoroughbreds and declared their total value to be a single measure of husked rice. The king ordered exactly that measure of rice given to the merchants and had the five hundred horses stabled for himself.

Weeping and ruined, the merchants sought out the former valuer, the Bodhisatta, and fell at his feet begging for help. The Bodhisatta smiled gently and advised them to approach the fool with a rich offering of sweetmeats and fragrant garlands, and befriend him. They were to persuade him that tomorrow, before the king and all the ministers, he must answer with complete gravity if asked what a single measure of rice was actually worth.

The merchants did exactly as advised, winning the fool's affection with gifts until he trusted them completely. The next day, before the assembled royal court, they politely petitioned him, noting that five hundred fine horses were apparently worth one measure of rice. They asked him to inform the king and the court what the intrinsic value of that single measure of rice actually was.

Puffed up with conceit at being asked to pronounce before the whole court, the fool proclaimed his answer. The value of one measure of rice, he declared, was precisely the royal city of Varanasi itself, its surrounding twelve leagues of gardens, and all the lands within its dominion. The absurdity of the claim hung in the air long enough for every minister present to understand exactly what it meant.

Hearing this absurd appraisal, the ministers and nobles broke into uncontrollable laughter, mocking the king openly for having let a kingdom once valued at millions be reduced, in effect, to the price of a fistful of boiled porridge. There was no way for the king to pretend the humiliation belonged to anyone but himself.

Overwhelmed with shame, the king dismissed the rustic valuer and returned the honest Bodhisatta to his former post. He had learned, at considerable public cost, that true governance required righteousness rather than the cheap deceit of hiring someone who would simply let him keep more gold.

At the story's end, the Buddha identified the monk Laludayi with the foolish valuer. The very same hunger to appear important while understanding nothing of the actual task at hand, the pattern that had once embarrassed an entire royal court over a measure of rice, was the identical failing still disrupting the orderly distribution of food tickets among the Buddha's own community of monks.

What this story preserved was never simply a joke about a foolish valuer, but a warning about what happens when a position of trust is given to someone chosen for convenience rather than competence. The king never intended real harm when he dismissed an honest servant for a flattering fool; he simply wanted to keep more of his own gold. It was that small, apparently harmless motive, rather than any grand villainy, that nearly cost five hundred merchants everything they owned before a single clever question set the matter right again.