Dictionary of Pali Proper Names v2.c29.443

v2.c29.443

2. Bījaka.—A slave of Videha, present when the ascetic Guṇa expounded his doctrine to King Aṅgati, and it was approved by Alāta. Bījaka also agreed that Guṇa’s teaching accorded with his own experience. He remembered his previous life, when he had been born as Bhāvaseṭṭhi of Sāketa and had done many acts of virtue and piety. But at present he was the son of a poor prostitute leading a wretched life. Even so, he always gave half his food to any who might desire it, kept the fast, and led, in every way, a virtuous life. But virtue, he said, was useless; it bore no fruit. So saying, he wept. When Rujā (q.v.) heard this, she said that Bījaka’s sufferings were due to evil actions done in the past in earlier lives.¹ The scholiast explains² that in the time of Kassapa Buddha, while Bījaka was seeking a lost ox, a monk enquired of him the way which he had lost. Bījaka was angry and abused the monk, calling him a slave. His birth as Bhāvaseṭṭhi was due to some earlier good done by him, but in this birth he became a slave. Bījaka is identified with Moggallāna.³