Siri Jātaka

The Blessed One told this story at Jetavana concerning the great almsgiver Anathapindika, after it was shown that good fortune, once truly earned, can never be stolen away.

Anathapindika had once given away so much in charity that his own treasury ran dry, yet a spirit who dwelt above the gate-tower of his mansion — driven from her post for having urged him to curb his generosity — won back her place only by using her own power to recover for him three ancient hoards of buried wealth. Word of his restored splendor reached a brahmin learned in reading the marks that show where good fortune (Siri) resides in a household. Coveting such luck for himself, he came to Anathapindika's house as a guest and, searching with his trained eye, perceived that the merchant's fortune had settled in the comb of a white cock kept in a golden cage.

'Give me that cock,' said the brahmin, and the ever-generous Anathapindika gave it at once. But in that same instant the fortune slipped out of the cock and lodged itself in a jewel hidden in his turban. The brahmin asked for the jewel; it too was given — and the fortune fled again, this time into the staff Anathapindika carried for his own defense. That staff was handed over as well, yet the fortune would not rest even there, but passed instead onto the head of Anathapindika's own wife. Since no brahmin may demand that a householder surrender his wife, the schemer saw that his theft had failed completely. Ashamed, he confessed his true purpose and departed. When Anathapindika reported this strange episode to the Blessed One, the Master said, 'This is not the first time, householder, that your good fortune has proved impossible to steal,' and at Anathapindika's request told this story of the past.

Long ago, when Brahmadatta reigned in Varanasi, the Bodhisatta renounced the world and took up the ascetic's life in the Himalayas. In time he came down to a city at the foothills for salt and seasoning, and there an elephant-trainer, struck by his bearing, took him under his roof and saw to all his needs.

In those same days, a gatherer of firewood, overtaken by nightfall on his way home, lay down to sleep beneath a tree in a deserted rest-house where two cocks roosted on a branch above him. Toward dawn the two birds fell to boasting. The lower cock said, 'Whoever kills me and eats my flesh will find a thousand pieces of gold before the sun is high.' The cock perched above him laughed at so small a prize and answered, 'Whoever eats the flesh of my body shall this very day become king; whoever eats the flesh of my outer parts shall become commander of the army, or, should a woman eat it, chief queen; and whoever eats the flesh that lies by my bones shall become treasurer, or chaplain to the king.'

The stick-gatherer, who understood the speech of birds, lay still until both cocks had fallen asleep again, then crept up, seized the boastful one, and wrung its neck, thinking, 'Today I shall be king!' He woke his wife and had her pluck and cook it, and the two of them went down to the river to bathe before their meal, leaving the pot to simmer over the fire. While they bathed, a sudden gust of wind toppled the pot into the water, and it was carried downstream, still covered and whole, until it drifted to where the elephant-trainer's men were watering the elephants at the river's edge.

The Bodhisatta, perceiving by his penetrating insight what had befallen the cock and what fortune now lay hidden in the pot, came to the elephant-trainer's house and had it opened before him. With his own hand he divided the meat: the flesh of the body he gave to the elephant-trainer to eat; the flesh of the outer parts he gave to the trainer's wife; and the flesh that lay by the bones he kept for himself. Then he said, 'On the third day from now you shall become king of this city, and your wife shall be chief queen; as for me, I shall become your chaplain.'

It came to pass exactly as he had foretold. A neighboring king marched against the city and laid siege to it. The reigning king, unwilling to risk his own life in the field, dressed the elephant-trainer in royal armor and set him upon the state elephant to lead the defense, while he himself stayed hidden within the palace. In the battle that followed, an arrow found the true king where he stood apart, and he fell dead; but the elephant-trainer, arrayed as king, broke the siege and drove the enemy from the gates. Since the throne now stood empty and he alone had led the city's defense, the ministers raised him to kingship in earnest. He took the dead king's queen as his own chief consort, and the ascetic who had divided the fated meat became his chaplain, honored and provided for all his days.

Having told this story, the Blessed One identified the birth: 'Ananda was the king who fell in that battle, and I myself was the ascetic who became the new king's chaplain.' Siri, the good fortune at the heart of this teaching, the Master said, does not cling to cunning or to theft, however skillful the hand that reaches for her; she comes to rest only where merit sown in former lives has already prepared her seat.