Jambu-khadaka Jataka No. 294

Jataka No. 294, the Jambu-khadaka Jataka of the Tikanipata, opens with Devadatta (the Buddha's envious cousin and rival) and his companion Kokalika going door to door among supporters, each praising the other's false virtues to win alms neither man actually deserved. Kokalika extolled Devadatta's supposed noble lineage and spiritual attainments. Devadatta reciprocated in turn, praising Kokalika's brahmin ancestry and learning, neither claim resting on anything real.

When the other monks discussed this shameless mutual flattery among themselves, word of it reached the Buddha. He told them it was no new habit of either man. The same two souls, he explained, had practiced this exact deception long before, in a very different pair of bodies, and he told them the following story to show them how little had actually changed.

In the very distant past, when Brahmadatta reigned in Benares, the Bodhisatta was born as the tree deity, a Rukkhadevata, inhabiting a great jambu, rose-apple, tree that stood alone in a forest clearing. A crow, filthy from its regular habit of scavenging carrion and refuse in the nearby city, flew up into the branches of that very tree one day. It began greedily eating the ripe purple fruit, knocking several pieces down to the grass below as it fed without any thought of sharing.

A gaunt jackal trotted by in search of food and saw the crow feasting above. He thought to himself that flattery might win him a share of the fallen fruit without any real effort of his own. Looking up, he declaimed in honeyed verse: who is this with a voice so lovely, so rich and supremely melodious, chirping unbroken like a young peacock upon the rose-apple's branch?

Puffed up with vanity at hearing his own harsh croak likened to such sweetness, the crow answered in kind: a son of good family knows how to praise a good family when he hears one, my friend, so eat your fill. With that, the crow shook the branch vigorously and sent still more fruit raining down to the waiting jackal below, delighted at having found so discerning a friend.

The Bodhisatta witnessed this entire exchange of baseless mutual praise from within the tree he inhabited, and could stay silent no longer. He spoke a verse of his own: after so long a time, he said, he had seen two liars come together at last, one who feeds on vomit and one who feeds on corpses, each praising the other as though either of them had anything true to praise.

Having spoken, the tree deity did not stop at words alone. He assumed a terrifying form and appeared suddenly among the branches, revealing himself in a shape dreadful enough to frighten both the jackal and the crow at once. Both fled the grove immediately, each abandoning the very fruit they had conspired over only moments before, their flattery forgotten the instant real fear replaced it.

At the very conclusion of the discourse, the Buddha identified the birth quite plainly. The jackal, who had opened the exchange with flattery he knew to be false, was identified as Devadatta. The crow, who had returned the favor every bit as falsely, was identified as Kokalika. The tree deity who had exposed and frightened them both was the Buddha himself, the same discerning witness in both lifetimes to a false friendship built on nothing but mutual lies.

The lesson was not subtle, and it was not meant to be. Devadatta and Kokalika had sought in the present, exactly as the jackal and crow had sought in the distant past, to profit from praise that cost nothing because it contained no truth. Both pairs were exposed by the same witness, separated by countless lifetimes but caught in precisely the same transaction: flattery traded for flattery, with nothing of substance ever changing hands beneath the pleasant-sounding words. Fruit shaken down for a sweet lie, and alms given for a reputation neither man had earned, were in the end the very same exchange, differing only in the species of the liars and the fruit they happened to be after.