108. The Story of the Woman from Bāhiya State

Once Buddha was living in the city of Vesāli in the gabled chamber in the Great Grove. This Dhamma story was delivered about a certain Licchavi king. He was a very pious man, pleased with the law of the Buddha and the community of the monks. He thought: “Buddha is mine. Dhamma [the law] is mine. Sangha [the community of the monks] is mine.” Constantly, he used to confirm the five precepts without committing any violation. On the full moon days, he observed the higher precepts. One day this king invited the Buddha and the community of monks for lunch, and he especially decorated his palace and performed his Dāna [alms giving] ceremony.

His queen had a very fat body with fat limbs. She was pale like a dead body, and had no beauty. All that she had was fatness and height. After the alms giving, Buddha preached about the advantage of alms giving and gave appreciation in rejoice of their merit.

The Buddha returned home to his own apartment. In the evening, the monks assembled to listen to the Buddha. Before the Buddha’s arrival the monks who assembled there started a discussion. And they said, “See, brothers, such a pious and handsome king has no beautiful queen with noble features. Her body was very fat, and she had no physical beauty or merit. How can this king live with such a woman?” They were involved with such a discussion when the Buddha entered.

The master approached the preaching hall and sat on the well-prepared seat as if a sun glittering over Mount Meru’s rocks. The Buddha asked, “Monks, in what type of a discussion were you involved before I arrived, and how much more is there to go?” Then the monks said, “Your lordship, in whatever you advised us not to talk about, such as speech about kings and thieves, the thirty-two types of prohibited speech, we were not engaged. We had pious thoughts, such as: ‘Buddha is mine. Dhamma is mine. Sangha is mine.’ With such regard for the triple gem, that handsome Licchavi king was living with an unpleasant-looking fat queen. How can they live together in the palace? We were involved with such talk.”

“Monks, not only in the present has this Licchavi king lived with such an unpleasant-looking woman. He has done so even in the past very long ago.” And the Buddha kept silent.

Then, one monk out of those assembled monks, making an Añjali with his hands kept up on his head as if a plantain tree fallen down with the heaviness of bananas, knelt down in the presence of the Buddha, prostrated himself before the feet of the Buddha who is endowed with 108 physical beauties, and requested respectfully, “Your lordship, now it is clear to us why in this present life this handsome king is living with this ugly-looking queen. The past story, though, is covered to us as if a spark in ashes. Therefore, please be kind enough to disclose this hidden story to us that is covered as if a gem covered with clay on the ground. We request you to disclose the past story as if taking out the moon from behind a covering dark cloud.” Then the Buddha who was requested to speak by the monks disclosed this story of the past:

Long ago in the past there was a king called Brahmadatta in Benares. Our lord the Bodhisatta, the Enlightenment Being, who was fulfilling the ten perfections, became his minister. At that time a certain fat woman who lived in a remote area and who had no particular attractive physical appearance lived by working as a servant. While she was going nearby the palace compound, she wanted to go to the bathroom. As there was no bathroom, she did what she had wanted to do outside. She covered her body with a hand cloth. The king was looking at this through the window and thought, “This woman being in such an open place attended to her needs covering herself with a little piece of cloth so as to avoid fear and shame, and she got up quickly. There is no doubt that she must be a very healthy woman with good physical ability. From such a body, if there be born a son, no doubt he would be a lucky meritorious person. Therefore, it would be good to make her my queen.” Then the king, having made such a decision, determined whether or not she was married. Finding out that she was unmarried, he summoned her to the palace, had her sit on a heap of gems and married her, pouring sacred water on her head.

She became very loving to the king, and the king became more and more pleased with her. In due course she delivered a baby boy. After the death of the king, he became a Universal Monarch who was endowed with the seven noble gems and who ruled the whole universe making it one kingdom.

At that time the Enlightenment Being was known as Bāhiya and seeing the prosperity of the woman who came from the Bāhiya state, he thought, “It is good to speak at this time about her to the king.” And in a respectful way, he said, “Your lordship, why do not people learn what they have to know about things. This queen who was born in a remote village and who had shame and fear was covering herself with a hand cloth, did her physical needs and achieved the very high position of queen, being first among 16,000 women in the palace. She gave birth to a son who has unlimited fame and prosperity and an immense retinue.

“As the queen came to such prosperity, therefore it is good to learn what we have to know about things from this.”

Emphasizing the value of learning good qualities, the Enlightenment Being said,

“Furthermore, your lordship, there are many people in this world who would like to learn writing, reading, mathematics, music, astrology, meter, lexicology, and poetic adornment3, and who would like to gain the advantages of having learned these things. However, there are good human qualities that people do not want to learn and follow and many do not know the good results that following such qualities can gain. To understand that, this queen who was born in a remote village and who maintained her cultural values when in an emergency she needed to use the bathroom is a very good example. Following shame and fear she was capable of pleasing your lordship’s mind, and came to be the queen of your lordship.” And in this fashion, he stated the value and the results of good education.

The lord Buddha, the master, delivered this Dhamma sermon and emphasized the noble truth of suffering, the cause of suffering, the absence of suffering, and the path leading away from suffering, and finalized the story of this Bāhiya-Jātaka with the following connection of the story of the past to the present.

“The king at that time was the same king as today, and the queen was the same queen. The minister who advised the king with the Dhamma and how to maintain the well-being of subjects, and who taught good and bad to them, being wise, was I the Lord Buddha.” The moral: “Look deeper than appearances.”

Link: 108. The Story of the Woman from Bāhiya State

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