Palace Coup

After the failure of his attempt to create a schism, Devadatta turned to Prince Ajatashatru in order to further his schemes:

Then Devadatta went to Prince Ajatashatru and said to him: “Formerly men were long-lived, now they are short-lived. Maybe you will die while still only a prince, so why do you not kill your father and become king? And I shall kill the Blessed One and become the Buddha.” (Ibid, p. 259)

In the account given in the Pali Canon, Prince Ajatashatru needs no more prompting than this. Other accounts portray the prince as, at first, horrified by the suggestion:

The prince replied, “The debt of gratitude that I owe to my father and mother is greater than the moon and the sun. I shall never be able to repay their long years of rearing me to adulthood. Why then do you provoke me to commit such a treacherous deed?” Devadatta, however, skillfully wove his words and seduced the prince’s mind; and in the end Ajatashatru agreed to do Devadatta’s bidding. (Buddha-Dharma, p. 550)

According to one account, Devadatta pointed to a broken finger that Prince Ajatashatru had since infancy and told the following story:

A long time ago, King Bimbisara was anxious to have an heir. Having heard from a soothsayer that a certain hermit living in the mountains would be reborn as his son three years later, the king immediately sent him a messenger asking him to terminate his own life, but the hermit refused to do so. The angry king ordered the messenger to kill him if he still refused to commit suicide. The hermit thus died determined to take revenge.

Soon Queen Vaidehi became pregnant. The king rejoiced, but was horrified to hear from the soothsayer that she would bear a boy who would do harm to the king. So he told the queen to give birth to the baby on the roof of the tower and let it drop to the ground. She did as told, but the baby miraculously survived with only damage to his little finger. (Three Pure Land Sutras, p. 7)

According to another account, Devadatta explained the true meaning of the name “Ajatashatru,” which is usually taken to mean “One Whose Has No Born Enemy” or could be taken to mean “Unborn Enemy.”

The manner of Ajatashatru’s birth was this. When King Bimbisara was already past his middle years, his consort Vaidehi found herself with child. She was addicted with a strange malady that made her thirst for blood from the king’s shoulders, though she did not act on her desire at first. But each day she became increasingly emaciated. The king asked her why this was occurring, and upon learning the cause he squeezed blood from his shoulder and had her drink it. A seer prophesied, “The child that is born will regard his father the king as his enemy.” Because of this dark prophecy, she attempted to abort the fetus a number of times. But the king succeeded in restraining her, and finally she gave birth to a son. Because the sage predicted that even before the child’s birth that the child would become his father’s enemy, he was named Ajatashatru, which meant Unborn Enemy. Devadatta recounted this in detail and succeeded in leading Ajatashatru astray. (Buddha-Dharma, pp. 550-551)

These fantastic stories aside, it is more likely that the actual reason Prince Ajatashatru agreed to depose King Bimbisara was because he wished to further his own ambition to make Magadha the greatest of the Indian republics by conquering his neighbors, but his father was content to maintain the fragile peace that existed at that time. Among the rival princes in the royal families of the Indian republics filial piety was not nearly as important as gaining the throne and furthering one’s political ambitions. In any case, Ajatashatru decided to act on Devadatta’s promptings and attempt to kill his father and take the throne:

Prince Ajatashatru thought: “The Lord Devadatta is mighty and powerful; he should know.” He fastened a dagger on his thigh, and then in broad day, fearful, anxious, suspicious and worried, he tried to slip into the inner palace. The king’s officers at the entry to the inner palace saw him as he did so, and they arrested him. On searching him, they found the dagger fastened to his thigh. They asked him: “What is it you want to do, prince?”

“I want to kill my father.”

“Who prompted you to do this?”

“The Lord Devadatta.”

Some officers were of the opinion that the prince should be killed and Devadatta and all of the monks, too. Others were of the opinion that the monks should not be killed since they had done no wrong, but that the prince and Devadatta should be killed. Still others were of the opinion that neither the prince nor Devadatta nor the monks should be killed, but that the king should be informed and his orders carried out.

Then the officers brought Prince Ajatashatru before Seniya Bimbisara, King of Magadha, and they told him what had happened.

“What was the officers’ opinion?”

They told him.

“What have the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha to do with it? Has not Devadatta been denounced in Rajagriha by the Blessed One?”

Then he stopped the pay of those officers whose opinion had been that Prince Ajatashatru and Devadatta and the monks should be killed. And he degraded those officers whose opinion had been that the monks, having done no wrong, should not be killed, but that the prince and Devadatta should be killed. And he promoted those officers whose opinion had been that neither the prince nor Devadatta nor the monks should be killed, but that the king should be informed and his orders carried out. Then King Bimbisara asked: “Why do you want to kill me, prince?”

“I want the kingdom, sire.”

“If you want the kingdom, prince, the kingdom is yours.”

He therewith handed the kingdom over to him. (Life of the Buddha, pp. 259-260)

This accounting of events seems highly unlikely. The prince’s unforced and straightforward admission of his intent to assassinate his own father to seize the kingdom seems odd, and King Bimbisara’s final decision to just turn over the kingdom to his murderous son seems even more unbelievable. The one thing that doesn’t seem strange is that it would be pointed out that the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha were clear of any involvement in Devadatta’s actions because of his prior public denunciation by the Sangha in Rajagriha. In any case, King Bimbisara was not allowed to retire in peace. Soon after his abdication, Ajatashatru, now king, must have feared that Bimbisara might try to call upon his supporters to regain the throne. Perhaps prompted once again by Devadatta he imprisoned Bimbisara and ordered that he be denied food. Queen Vaidehi, however, found a way to keep him alive, and according to the Sutra of Meditation on the Buddha of Infinite Life the Buddha’s disciples were also able to visit him.

The king’s consort, Vaidehi bathed and purified her body. She mixed honey with the flour of roasted barley and smeared it on her body. When she entered the room in which the great king had been imprisoned, she noticed that his face was haggard and his flesh had wasted away. He had become emaciated in a most pitiful way. His consort shed tears and said, “Truly, as expounded by the World Honored One, prosperity is an ephemeral thing; the fruits of our evil deed assault us now.” The great king said, “I have been denied food, and the long starvation is excruciatingly painful, as if several hundred insects were churning away in my stomach. Most of my blood and flesh have wasted away, and I am about to die.” The king nearly lost his consciousness and he sobbed. When his consort offered him the mixture of honey and flour of roasted barley that she had smeared on hr body, the king devoured it.

After he finished, with tears in his eyes, he turned toward the place where the Buddha dwelt and prostrating himself said, “As the World-Honored One has proclaimed, the glories of this world are ephemeral and are difficult to preserve; they are like dreams and phantoms.” He then turned toward his consort and said, “When I sat on the throne, the country was vast, clothing and food were plentiful, and there was not one thing that was lacking. Now confined in this jail, I am about to die of starvation. My son has been misled by an evil teacher and he turns his back on the teaching of the World-Honored One. I do not fear death; I only regret not being able to receive the Buddha’s teaching and not being able to discuss the path with such disciples as Shariputra, Maudgalyayana, Maha-Kashyapa and others. Truly, as the World-Honored One teaches, the love of human beings is as flighty as a flock of birds that nest overnight on treetops and then go their separate ways to receive their karmically fixed fortune or misfortune.

“The honored Maudgalyayana has destroyed the defilements of the mind and attained supernatural powers, and yet he was struck once by a brahmin who had grown envious of him. It is all the more fitting, then, that I, with my mind filled with defilements, should suffer such grief as this. Misfortune chases after people as closely as a shadow hunting for its body, or like an echo answering its voice. It is hard to meet the Buddha, and it is hard to hear his teaching. Again, it is hard to spread compassion and to govern sentient beings according to the teaching. I shall now end my life and travel to some faraway place. Among those who believe in the teaching of the World-Honored One, there are none who fail to serve it. You, too, my consort, must with reverence guard the teaching; you, too, must put up a barricade against the misfortunes that are sure to come.” The consort listened to the king’s exhortation and burst into tears.

The king put his palms together and reverentially turned toward Vulture Peak and bowed to the Buddha. He then said, “Honored Maudgalyayana, my good friend, with compassion please show me the way that must be taken by a layman.”

Then Maudgalyayana sped towards the king like a falcon on the wing, and every day he expounded the path of the layman. Moreover, the World-Honored One dispatched Purna and had him expound the Dharma for the king’s sake. In this way, the king, for a period of twenty-one days, at the mixture of roasted barley flour and honey and was able to hear the Dharma. His countenance, therefore, was serene and his complexion was flushed with joy. (Buddha-Dharma, pp. 551-552)