Āsaṅka Jātaka

The Buddha told Jātaka No. 380, as the Jātaka Atthakatha records it, at Jetavana. A monk there was being tempted by the wife he had left behind. The occasion, says the commentary, appears in the Indriya Jātaka. The Buddha saw that the monk was backsliding because of thoughts of her.

He told the monk that this woman did him harm. Long ago, for her sake, he had given up an army of four divisions and dwelt three years in great discomfort in the Himalayas. Then the Buddha told an old tale.

When Brahmadatta was king in Benares, the Bodhisatta was born into a brahmin family in a village of that country. When he grew up he learned the arts at Takkasilā and became an ascetic. He gained the faculties and attainments and lived on roots and fruits in the Himalayas.

At that time a being of perfect merit fell from the heaven of the Thirty-three and was conceived as a girl inside a lotus in a pool. As the other lotuses aged and fell, this one grew large and stood upright. The ascetic came to bathe and noticed it.

He wondered why all the other lotuses fell while this one grew great and stood. He put on his bathing dress and crossed the water to it. When he opened the flower he found a girl.

He felt toward her as a father to a daughter, and he carried her to his hut and raised her. When she turned sixteen she was beautiful, surpassing the colour of human beings, though she did not reach the colour of the gods. The ascetic named her Āsaṅkā, because he had crossed the water in doubt, wondering what was in the lotus.

One day Sakka came to wait on the Bodhisatta and saw the maiden. He asked how she had been found, and then asked what she ought to receive. The Bodhisatta said a dwelling, clothing, ornaments and food.

Sakka created a crystal palace for her, along with a bed, clothing and ornaments, food and divine drink. When she went up, the palace came down and rested on the ground. When she was inside, it rose into the air. She served the Bodhisatta in many ways while she lived there.

A forester saw the girl and asked the ascetic who she was. He replied that she was his daughter. The forester went to Benares and told the king about the ascetic's daughter and her great beauty. The king was captivated by the report.

He took the forester as his guide and travelled with an army of four divisions to the Himalayas. He made camp, and with the forester and a party of ministers entered the hermitage. He saluted the Bodhisatta and said that women are a stain on the religious life, yet he wished to take care of the daughter.

The Bodhisatta did not simply tell the king to take her and go. He said that if the king could learn the maiden's name, he could take her and leave. The king asked him to say it, but he refused. He said the king must find it out for himself.

The king and his ministers began to consider what her name might be. They put forward all the hard-to-guess names, but the Bodhisatta shook his head to each one. A year passed in this way.

The camp suffered. Lions and other beasts seized the king's elephants, horses and men. There were dangers from snakes and from flies, and many died worn out by cold. The king finally said to the Bodhisatta that he no longer needed the girl and set out to leave.

Āsaṅkā stood at an open crystal window. The king saw her and said that they could not find her name, so she should stay in the Himalayas while he departed.

Āsaṅkā told him that if he went, he would never find another wife like her. She spoke of a creeper in the heaven of the Thirty-three that bears fruit once in a thousand years. The gods patiently come year after year to watch it, hoping for a divine drink. If they can wait so long, she said, he should not grow discontented after only one year.

Her three verses give the message. In the heavenly garden grows the tree Āsāvatī, and the gods wait patiently. She told him to hope on, because the fruit of hope is sweet. A bird had hoped and won its wish.

When the king guessed ten more names and a second year passed, he again prepared to leave. She told him a story about a crane who rested on a hilltop one day and wished to eat and drink without leaving it. That very day Sakka, who had just defeated the Asuras, was wondering whether anyone in the forest had an unfulfilled wish.

He saw the crane and sent a stream in full flood up to the hilltop. The crane ate fish and drank water without moving. Then the flood receded. If the crane could win his hope, she asked, why could the king not win his?

The king was moved by her beauty and her words. He gathered a hundred names and spent a third year guessing. Then he came to the Bodhisatta and asked whether the name was among them. The ascetic said he did not know it.

The king saluted him and prepared to leave once more. He saw Āsaṅkā at the window and told her that she had satisfied him with words but not with love. He had spent three years there, his troops were wasted and his stores spent. In his final verse he said that he doubted whether his life was not spoiled, and that it was time to go.

The maiden answered at once. She told him that he had just spoken her name and that he should tell her father. Her answer, in a verse, was that he had said the word that is her name. The word he had used, in the Pali, was the one for doubt.

The king went to the Bodhisatta and said that his daughter was named Āsaṅkā. The Bodhisatta told him that since he knew her name, he could take her and go. Āsaṅkā came down from the palace, saluted her father and received his consent. The king took her to Benares and lived happily with her, blessed with sons and daughters. The Bodhisatta continued in unbroken meditation and was born in the Brahma world.

After the lesson the Buddha declared the Truths, and the monk was established in the fruit of the first path. He then identified the birth. Āsaṅkā was the monk's former wife, the king was the discontented monk, and the ascetic was the Buddha himself.

Jātaka No. 380 gives hope an unusual shape. Āsaṅkā asks the king to wait, and she does so by pointing to the gods who wait a thousand years for a single fruit. The monk, restless after only a short time, is meant to see himself in the king who nearly left, one year at a time.

The story is also a gentle caution about desire. The king spent three years, an army and his supplies chasing one wish. The Buddha used the story not to condemn the woman but to show the monk what longing had once cost him. What the king wanted was in the end given by her own words, and the ascetic stood by in meditation. The lesson is patience, and it is also the knowledge that wanting at any cost can drain a life.