Bhuridatta Jataka

The Buddha once taught lay followers who were keeping the uposatha observance, a periodic day of fasting and heightened precepts, that such vows were worth upholding faithfully. He told them that in a far older life he had kept this same observance without any teacher to encourage him, at a cost to himself far greater than any of them would ever be asked to pay.

In that former age, the Bodhisatta was born as Bhuridatta, a naga prince in the jeweled realm beneath the waters, son of the naga king Dhatarattha and his queen Samuddaja. Bhuridatta grew so radiant in virtue that Sakka, king of the gods, named him "gifted with wisdom." Yet the pleasures of the naga world never satisfied him. He longed instead for the higher merit that might one day let him be born among the gods.

To pursue that longing, Bhuridatta took on the uposatha vow with a severity few would attempt. On each holy day he left the safety of the naga realm and rose into the world of men. There he coiled his body around an anthill beside the Yamuna river and lay motionlessly keeping the precepts, undefended in serpent form against any danger that might come upon him. His mother warned him of the dangers waiting above the water, but Bhuridatta valued the discipline of his vow above his own safety and would not be turned from it.

A brahmin hunter and his son once wandered into the forest and discovered the naga prince at his vow. Rather than fearing them, Bhuridatta welcomed them generously, inviting them to live for a time in the splendor of the naga realm itself. After a year of this hospitality, the hunter grew homesick for his own household and asked, under a false claim of wishing to take up the ascetic life, to be allowed to leave. Bhuridatta let him go without suspicion.

Years later, a wandering snake-charmer named Alambayana came to possess a jewel and a spell of great power for subduing serpents. When the hunter recognized the jewel's worth, his old debt of gratitude gave way to greed. He led Alambayana straight back to the anthill where Bhuridatta still kept his vow, trading the prince's safety for a treasure he had no right to claim. The hunter's own son was so disgusted by what his father had done that he renounced him and went to live as an ascetic rather than share in the betrayal.

Alambayana's spell subdued Bhuridatta with cruel ease, for the prince had bound himself never to harm a living being. He would not release so much as a drop of his own venom to save himself, even though a single glance could have destroyed his captor. Confined and compelled to perform, he was dragged from village to village and forced to change size, color, and shape before jeering crowds for the charmer's profit, enduring every indignity without striking back or breaking his word.

Bhuridatta's mother, troubled by an ominous dream, grew certain some harm had come to her son, and his brothers set out at once to find him. Sudassana, disguised as a wandering ascetic, and his sister Accimukhi traveled together until they reached the court of King Brahmadatta of Benares, where Alambayana had brought his captive to perform before the throne. There Sudassana challenged the charmer openly, exposing both his fraud and his cruelty before the assembled court, and the charmer's own schemes were turned back upon him in a reckoning that left no doubt of Bhuridatta's true, radiant nature.

Freed at last, Bhuridatta rose in his full naga splendor before the astonished court. When the hunter who had sold him for a jewel was brought before him, Bhuridatta did not demand punishment in return for the betrayal; he forgave the man outright and let him go. The naga prince returned home with his brothers and sister to resume his life of vows and virtue, having kept his vow of non-violence intact through welcome, through betrayal, and through captivity alike.

The Buddha closed the teaching by naming the figures within it. The hunter who had betrayed him, he said, had been Devadatta, and the hunter's son who renounced his father rather than share in the wrong had been Ananda. His brother Sudassana had been Sariputta, his brother Subhaga had been Moggallana, and his sister Accimukhi had been Uppalavanna. The Buddha himself had been Bhuridatta, the naga prince who kept a vow for its own sake long before anyone taught him its worth. Jataka No. 543 of the Pali Canon's Mahanipata records the tale under this telling.