Ja 287: Labha-Garaha Jātaka
Translated by W. H. D. Rouse
Edited by E. B. Cowell
Original edition: Cambridge University Press, volume 2, 1895
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“He that hath madness,” etc.—This story the Master told at Jetavana, about a fellow-priest of the Elder Sariputta. This brother came and greeted the Elder, and sitting on one side, he asked him to tell the way in which one could get gain, and how he could get dress and the like. The Elder replied, “Friend, there are four qualities which make a man successful in getting gain. He must get rid of modesty from his heart, must resign his orders, must seem to be mad even if he is not; he must speak slander; he must behave like a dancer; he must use unkind words everywhere.” Thus he explained how a man gets a great deal. The brother objected to this method, and went away. The Elder went to his Master, and told him about it. The Master said, “This is not the first time that this brother spoke in dispraise of gain; he did the same before;” and then, at the request of the Elder, he told an old-world tale.

Once upon a time, when Brahmadatta was king of Benares, the Bodhisatta was born in a Brahmin family. When he grew up to the age of sixteen years, he had already mastered the three Vedas and the eighteen accomplishments; and he became a far-famed teacher, who educated a body of five hundred young men. One young man, a youth of virtuous life, approached his teacher one day with the question, “How is it these people get gain?

The teacher answered, “My son, there fife four qualities which procure gain for those people;” and he repeated the first stanza—

“He that hath madness, he that slanders well,

That hath an actor’s tricks, ill tales doth tell,

Such is the man that wins prosperity

Where all are fools: let this your maxim be.”

 The pupil, on hearing his master’s words, expressed his disapproval of gain-getting in the two following stanzas—

“Shame upon him that gain or glory wins

By dire destruction and by wicked sins.

“With bowl in hand a homeless life I’ll lead

Rather than live in wickedness and greed.”

 Thus did the youth praise the quality of the religious life; and straight became a hermit, and craved alms with righteousness, cultivating the Attainments, until he became destined to Brahma’s world.

When the Master had ended this discourse he thus identified the Birth—“At that time the brother who disapproved of gain was the young man, but his teacher was I myself.”

The Jātaka, or Stories of the Buddha’s Former Births, edited by E.B. Cowell, published by The Cambridge University Press.

Vol. 1, translated by Robert Chalmers, 1895.

Vol. 2, translated by W.H.D. Rouse, 1895.

Vol. 3, translated by H.T. Francis and R.A. Neil, 1897.

Vol. 4, translated by W.H.D. Rouse, 1901.

Vol. 5, translated by H.T. Francis, 1905.

Vol. 6, translated by E.B. Cowell and W.H.D. Rouse, 1907.

These translations are in the public domain. You are free to do whatever you like with them.

Scanned, proofed and formatted at sacred-texts.com, January 2006–February 2010, by John Bruno Hare and others. Thanks to the Sacred Texts Archive for making these texts available in digital form.

Prepared for SuttaCentral by Bhikkhu Sujato.