13.4 The Story about Prince Abhaya

Dhp 171

Burlingame: Prince Abhaya Loses His Nautch-Girl

Compare: Dhp-a 10.9

Prince Abhaya was given a rich reward by the king, including a dancing girl, but later she died, and the prince went to the Buddha who gave him a teaching about how many times, in life after life, he had wept for this woman, and explained that only fools allow themselves to grieve, and then he spoke a verse.

Keywords: Princes, Dancing Girls, Grief

“Come, look upon this world,” this Dhamma teaching was given by the Teacher while he was in residence at Veḷuvana with reference to Prince Abhaya. [30.5]

It seems that Prince Abhaya suppressed an uprising on the frontier, which so pleased his father Bimbisāra that when the prince returned, the king gave him a girl skilled in dancing and singing, {3.167} and conferred the kingdom on him for seven days. Accordingly for seven days the prince did not leave the house, but remained within enjoying the splendor of majesty. On the eighth day he went to the bathing-place on the river and bathed. Having so done, he entered his pleasure garden, sat down, like Santati the king’s minister, AJ: see Dhp-a 10.9. and watched that girl dance and sing. As soon, however, as that girl began to dance and sing, at that moment, just as in the case of the dancing girl belonging to Santati, the king’s minister, cutting pains arose within her, and then and there she died.

Prince Abhaya was overwhelmed with sorrow at the death of his dancing girl. Immediately the thought came to him: “With the single exception of the Teacher, there is no one who can extinguish my grief.” So he approached the Teacher and said to him: “Venerable Sir, extinguish my grief.”

The Teacher comforted him by saying: “Prince, in the round of existences without conceivable beginning, there is no counting the number of times this dancing girl has died in this manner, and no measuring the tears you have shed as you have wept over her.”

Observing that the prince’s grief was assuaged by the teaching, he said: “Prince, do not grieve; only simple-minded folk allow themselves to sink in a sea of grief.” So saying, he pronounced the following verse:

171. Etha passathimaṁ lokaṁ cittaṁ rājarathūpamaṁ,
yattha bālā visīdanti – natthi saṅgo vijānataṁ.

Come, look upon this world adorned
like a king’s gilded chariot,
where fools become depressed – there is
no bond for those who understand.

At the end of the teaching the prince was established in the fruition of Stream-entry, and the assembly had benefit from the Dhamma teaching.