The Shipwrecked Prince Who Persevered

The Bodhisatta was born Mahajanaka, son of King Arittha-janaka of Mithila, who had been killed in battle by his own brother Pola-janaka before the boy's birth. His pregnant mother escaped the fallen kingdom and raised him in secret, and the boy grew up knowing he was heir to a throne now held by the very family that had taken his father's life.

At sixteen, rather than rely only on his mother's remaining wealth, Mahajanaka boarded a merchant ship bound for Suvannabhumi, the far-off 'Land of Gold' sought by ancient traders, to build his own fortune before ever confronting his uncle's line. Seven days into the voyage the ship broke apart and sank, drowning every soul aboard except Mahajanaka, who clung to a floating mast and refused to let despair decide his fate.

For seven days and nights he swam and drifted without sighting land. Manimekhala, the sea's guardian goddess, found him in the water and first questioned him on why he kept struggling toward a shore he could not see, since the sea stretched endlessly in every direction. Satisfied by his unbroken determination, she lifted him from the water and carried him through the air to a mango grove near Mithila.

Pola-janaka had since died leaving no son, only a daughter, Sivali. The ministers of Mithila declared that whoever could pass four tests would win both the kingdom and the princess: identifying which end of the royal bed was its head, stringing a bow that required the strength of a thousand men, locating sixteen hidden treasures from riddling clues, and winning Sivali's own genuine approval. Mahajanaka, resting in the grove, solved each test in turn, including discovering the bed's head by a clever question that made Sivali reveal it herself, and she chose him gladly as her husband.

He was crowned king and ruled Mithila for years, raising a son, Dighavu, whom he eventually made viceroy.

Riding through his own garden one day, Mahajanaka tasted the fruit of a mango tree, and the crowd that had followed him stripped the tree bare within moments, while a second, fruitless tree beside it stood untouched and thriving. He recognized in that single sight that possession itself invited the very plunder and anxiety that bare, undemanding existence never had to fear, and he resolved that same day to leave the throne behind entirely.

Sivali refused to accept his decision. She followed him from the palace with seven hundred attendants in tears and staged a false report that the city itself was burning, to call him back. When he answered that nothing could burn that he no longer claimed as his own, she forced her way across a boundary line he had drawn to separate his followers from hers.

Even after two ascetics he met on the road confirmed him in his resolve, she continued pleading, asking at least that he crown their son before leaving for good.

In the town of Thuna, Mahajanaka sought out a girl shaking a basket of bangles and a fletcher straightening an arrow with one eye closed. Both taught him the same lesson in different words: two things together make friction and noise, while a single thing alone makes none, and true peace belongs only to the one who walks alone. Repeating this teaching to Sivali at last, he told her plainly that he could no longer be called her husband. He cut a reed stalk in two as a final image of their severance and walked into the Himalayan forest, erasing his own footprints so she could not follow.

The Buddha closed the teaching by naming Sivali as the mother of Rahula, Dighavu as Rahula himself, Manimekhala as Uppalavanna, the two ascetics as Sariputta and Moggallana, the girl with the bangles as the nun Khema, and the fletcher as Ananda. Jataka No. 539 of the Pali Canon's Mahanipata records the tale under this telling, offered in the context of the Buddha's own Great Renunciation to show how long that same resolve had already been practiced.