Kalabahu Jataka

Jataka No. 329 of the Pali Canon was told by the Buddha concerning Devadatta's (the Buddha's envious cousin and rival) scheme to have the elephant Nalagiri trample him to death, a plan whose failure echoed an older story of insolence that ultimately destroyed no one but the insolent creature itself. To show that unrestrained arrogance always exhausts its own welcome in time, the Buddha recalled the story of two parrots and the monkey who briefly eclipsed them at court.

In that former life the Bodhisatta was born as a parrot named Radha, gifted with keen intelligence and refined speech. His younger brother Potthapada shared the same cage, after a fowler captured them both as fledglings and presented them to King Dhananjaya of Benares. Delighted by their beauty and their articulate words, the king kept them in a golden cage and fed them choice sugarcane, parched corn with honey, and sweetened milk, while the royal household held them in the highest regard.

Some time later, a forester brought a large, mischievous monkey named Kalabahu, Black-arm, to the court as a gift. The creature's agile mimicry, rolling eyes, and tumbling antics across the rafters threw the princes and courtiers into fits of laughter they had never given the parrots. Entranced by this new amusement, the court lavished its sweet fruits and treats upon the monkey, while the attendants began neglecting the golden cage, leaving the two parrots with nothing but plain water and dry grain.

Potthapada grew bitter at this sudden reversal of fortune. He lamented to his elder brother that all the honor that had once belonged to them now went to a rough, grimacing beast who did nothing but make faces, while they, who spoke only words of wisdom, were left forgotten with dry grain. He urged Radha that the only dignity left to them was to take flight together and return to the deep forest rather than endure the insult any longer.

Radha answered his brother with calm certainty rather than matching bitterness. He counseled him not to be shaken by the ordinary rise and fall of fortune, since honor and dishonor, gain and loss, pass over every creature like shifting shadows that never stay fixed on anyone for long. He told Potthapada that an unruly creature without real virtue could never hold the favor of thoughtful people for any length of time. Kalabahu's own restless insolence, he said, would soon bring about his downfall without either of them needing to lift a feather.

Radha's confidence did not require a long wait to be proven right. Puffed up by the court's unrestrained laughter and treats, Kalabahu grew bolder with each passing day. One afternoon, when the king's own young children entered the pavilion, the monkey bared his teeth, screeched, lunged at the young prince, and tore his fine silken mantle in front of the terrified children.

The king, outraged at the beast's violence toward his own children, ordered the guards to beat Kalabahu and cast him out of the royal compound onto the city's rubbish heap, exactly as Radha had quietly predicted he would. With the monkey gone, the king recognized at last the steady worth of the two parrots he had so briefly neglected, and restored them to their former honor with a regard that never again wavered.

Radha's composure through the whole episode rested on a distinction his brother had briefly lost sight of: the court's fleeting delight in a new amusement was never the same thing as the honor earned by being genuinely worth trusting. A clever trick draws eyes for only as long as it stays novel. A steady character continues to be valued long after the novelty of any rival has worn thin, which is exactly why Radha felt no need to compete with Kalabahu for the same shallow applause.

At the story's end, the Buddha identified Potthapada with Ananda (one of the Buddha's chief disciples) and Kalabahu with Devadatta. The same restless insolence that had once cost a monkey his place at court was still, centuries later, driving Devadatta toward the ruin his own unchecked ambition against the Buddha would ultimately bring upon himself.