Pañcagaru Jātaka

Soon after his awakening, the Buddha sat beneath the Ajapāla banyan near the river Nerañjarā when Māra, the tempter-deity who embodies death and desire, sent his three daughters, Taṇhā, Arati, and Ragā, to break his resolve with every charm they possessed. He remained as unmoved as a mountain of stone. The monks later marveled at how completely he had withstood them. The Buddha told them this was not the first time such steadiness had carried him through danger, and he recalled a birth in which the very same quality had once won him a throne.

In that former life, the Bodhisatta was born the youngest of a hundred sons to King Brahmadatta of Benares, with no realistic hope of ever ruling his father's city. Seeking guidance, he approached a group of Pacceka Buddhas, solitary buddhas who attain awakening alone and do not teach a following. They told him plainly that Benares would never be his, but that the distant city of Takkasilā could be, if he reached it alive within seven days. The road there, they warned, was haunted by man-eating yakkhinis who conjured the illusion of villages and pleasures to lure travelers to their deaths. Before he set out, they gave him a protective thread to wear and a measure of consecrated sand, the only defenses he would carry against an enemy no sword could touch.

The prince did not travel alone; five companions chose to join him despite the warning, each confident in his own resolve. Along the haunted road, the yakkhinis studied each man in turn and offered him precisely what he could not refuse. One was drawn aside by a vision of unearthly beauty, another by music too sweet to pass. A third followed a fragrance beyond any perfume he had known, a fourth could not resist food laid out as if for a king, and the last found a bed so inviting that he could not make himself walk on. Each one who paused was seized and devoured before the group could reach him.

A single yakkhini remained undeterred by the prince's protections and followed him for the rest of the journey, appearing beside him and telling everyone they passed that she was his wife. When he warned villagers that she was in truth a man-eating demon, they found her far too convincing and charming to believe him over her. Because the charmed thread and sand never let his attention slip, her disguise could trouble him without ever overpowering him. He walked into Takkasilā still alive, still clear-headed, and still determined.

The king of Takkasilā had no such protection. The moment he saw the yakkhini at his gates, her beauty undid him completely, and he installed her in his own palace as queen before the prince could make him listen. She soon persuaded the king to grant her full authority over the household. She waited only for nightfall before summoning the rest of her kind into the palace. By morning, nothing remained of the king, his court, or any living creature within those walls but scattered bones.

The horrified citizens broke open the silent palace and understood what had happened. They remembered that only the foreign prince had warned them from the very start and had never once wavered in his judgment. Recognizing in him the steadiness that had already saved his own life, they crowned him king of Takkasilā in the dead ruler's place.

Seated at last on a jeweled throne, attended by ministers and brahmins and entertained by sixteen thousand dancing girls of celestial grace, the new king let his mind travel back over everything that had brought him there. One unguarded moment on that haunted road, he understood, would have ended in the same scattered bones as the king he had replaced. Nothing but the wise counsel he had sought out, and the firmness with which he had held to it, had carried him through to this hall of gold.

Reflecting on his escape, he spoke a verse still preserved in the Pāli canon. Heeding wise counsel and firm in his resolve, he had held to his course with an undaunted heart. He had shunned the sirens' dwellings and their snares, and found, in his hour of greatest need, a great salvation.

Having finished the story, the Buddha revealed who the prince had been. He himself had been that prince of long ago, the one who went to Takkasilā and won a kingdom. Fear and fascination alike had failed to move him from the counsel he had chosen to trust.

This tale is recorded in the Pāli canon as the Pañcagaru Jātaka and is also known as the Bhīruka Jātaka. Its fuller unfolding, the five companions' temptations and the slaughter at Takkasilā, is preserved under its own telling as the Telapatta Jātaka, since the commentary presents this as the same past life recalled on a second occasion. What Māra's daughters could not do to an awakened Buddha, the yakkhinis of an older age could not do to a prince. He had already learned, long before his final birth, that counsel sought wisely and held without wavering is a protection no illusion can unravel.