No. 9.269 MAKHĀ-DEVA JĀTAKA.270 The Story of Makhā Deva.

“These grey hairs,” etc.—This the Teacher told when at Jetavana, in reference to the Great Renunciation. The latter has been related above in the Nidāna Kathā.271

Now at that time the priests as they sat were magnifying the Renunciation of the One Mighty by Wisdom. Then the Teacher entered the assembly, and sat down in his place, and addressed the brethren, saying, “What is the subject on which you are talking as you sit here?”

“On no other subject, Lord! but on your Renunciation,” said they.

“Mendicants, not then only did the Successor of the Prophets renounce the world; formerly also he did the same.”

The monks asked him to explain how that was. Then the Blessed One made manifest an occurrence hidden by change of birth.

Long ago, in Mithilā, in the land of Videha, there was a king named Makhā Deva, a righteous man, and ruling187 in righteousness.272 Eighty-four thousand years he was a prince, as many he shared in the government, and as many he was sovereign. As such he had lived a long, long time, when one day he said to his barber, “My good barber, whenever you find grey hairs on my head, let me know.”

And after a long, long time had passed away, the barber one day found among the jet-black locks one grey hair; and he told the king of it, saying, “There is a grey hair to be seen on your head, O king!”

“Pull it out, then, friend, and put it in my hand!” said he.

So he tore it out with golden pincers, and placed it in the hand of the king. There were then eighty-four thousand years of the lifetime allotted to the king still to elapse. But, nevertheless, as he looked upon the grey hair he was deeply agitated, as if the King of Death had come nigh unto him, or as if he found himself inside a house on fire.273 And he thought, “O foolish Makhā Deva! though grey hairs have come upon you, you yet have not been able to get rid of the frailties and passions which deprave men’s hearts!”274

As he thus meditated and meditated on the appearance of the grey hair, his heart burned within him, drops of perspiration rolled down from his body, and his very robes oppressed him and became unbearable. And he thought, “This very day I must leave the world and devote myself to a religious life!”

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Then he gave to the barber a grant of a village whose revenue amounted to a hundred thousand. And he sent for his eldest son, and said to him, “My son! grey hairs have appeared on my head. I am become an old man. I have done with all human hopes; now I will seek heavenly things. It is time for me to abandon the world. Do you assume the sovereignty. I will embrace the religious life, and, dwelling in the garden called Makhā Deva’s Mango-park, I will train myself in the characteristics of those who are subdued in heart.”

His ministers, when he formed this intention, came to him and said, “What is the reason, O king! of your giving up the world?”

Then the king, taking the grey hair in his hand, uttered this verse—

These grey hairs that have come upon my head Are angel messengers appearing to me, Laying stern hands upon the evening of my life! ’Tis time I should devote myself to holy thought!

Having thus spoken, he laid down his sovranty that very day, and became a hermit; and living in the Mango-grove of Makhā Deva, of which he had spoken, he spent eighty-four thousand years in practising perfect goodwill towards all beings, and in constant devotion to meditation. And after he died he was born again in the Brahma heaven; and when his allotted time there was exhausted, he became in Mithilā a king called Nimi, and reunited his scattered family.275 And after that he became a189 hermit in that same Mango-grove, and practised perfect goodwill towards all beings, and again returned to the Brahma heaven.

The Teacher, having thus discoursed on the subject that not then only, but formerly too, the Successor of the Buddhas had abandoned the world, proclaimed the Four Truths. Some entered the First Stage of the Path to Nirvāna, some the Second, some the Third. And when the Blessed One had thus told the double story, he established the connexion, and summed up the Jātaka as follows: “The barber of that time was Ānanda, the prince was Rāhula, but Makhā Deva the king was I myself.”

END OF THE STORY OF MAKHĀ DEVA.

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