A Son's Fury, and an Attempted Matricide
Three weeks into his father's confinement, Ajātaśatru asks a question carefully worded to avoid admitting what he already assumes. The gatekeeper's honest answer reveals the secret that has kept the king alive — and turns the prince's rage, for the first time in this story, directly against his own mother.
A Question Asked to Avoid Its Own Answer
三、就禁母緣中，即有其八。
一、從時阿闍世下，至猶存在耶已來，正明問父音信。此明闍王禁父日數既多，人交總絕、水食不通，二七有餘命應終也。作是念已，即致宮門，問守門者：「父王今者猶存在耶？」
問曰：「若人食一飡之飯限至七日即死。父王以經三七，計合命斷無疑。闍王何以不直問曰：『門家，父王今者死竟耶？』云何致疑而問猶存在者，有何意也？」
答曰：「此是闍王意密問也。但以萬基之主，舉動不可隨宜。父王既是天性情親，無容言問死。恐失在當時，以成譏過。但以內心標死，口問在者，為欲息永惡逆之聲也。」
Third, within the condition of the mother's imprisonment, there are eight points.
First, from "at that time Ajātaśatru" down through "is he still alive," this makes plain his own question about news of his father. This makes plain that Ajātaśatru, having already confined his father for many days, with all human contact entirely cut off and no water or food able to reach him, reckoned that, past two full weeks, his father's life ought certainly to have ended by now. Having thought this, he went to the palace gate, and asked the gatekeeper: "Is my father, the king, still alive even now?"
Question: "A person who has eaten but a single meal is generally reckoned to die within seven days. The king, his father, had already gone without food for three full weeks — by this reckoning, his life should certainly have ended, beyond any doubt. Why, then, did Ajātaśatru not simply ask directly: 'Gatekeeper, has my father, the king, already died?' Why did he instead express uncertainty, and ask whether he was still alive — what is the reason for this?"
Answer: "This is Ajātaśatru's own private, veiled way of asking. It is simply that the ruler of an entire kingdom cannot act however he pleases, on any impulse at all. His father was, by nature, still bound to him by the closest bond of kinship — he could not bring himself to ask outright whether he had died. He feared that, were he to lose his composure in that very moment, this would only give rise to further reproach and blame. It was for this reason that, though he had already, within his own heart, presumed his father dead, he asked with his own mouth whether he was still alive — wishing, in this way, to forestall any further report of his own monstrous rebellion."
Shandao reads this small piece of dialogue as an act of self-protection rather than genuine uncertainty — Ajātaśatru already knows, by his own arithmetic, that his father should be dead, and asks the softer question anyway, "wishing to forestall any further report of his own monstrous rebellion." Even a ruler capable of imprisoning his own parents, on this reading, still calculates how his own words will sound afterward. The moment is small, but it keeps the story's own moral logic consistent with everything Fascicle 1 already established about this sūtra's audience: not a monster acting without any self-awareness at all, but an ordinary, damaged person, still capable of flinching from his own worst act even as he commits it.
The Gatekeeper's Full Disclosure
二、從時守門人白言下，至不可禁制已來，正明門家以事具答。此明闍世前問父王在者，今次門家奉答。白言大王，國大夫人已下，正明夫人密奉王食。王既得食，食能延命。雖經多日父命猶存。此乃夫人之意，非是門家之過。
問曰：「夫人奉食身上塗麨，衣下密覆出入往還，無人得見。何故門家具顯夫人奉食之事？」
答曰：「一切私密不可久行，縱巧牢藏，事還彰露。父王既禁在宮內，夫人日日往還，若不密持麨食，王命無由得活。今言密者，望門家述夫人意也。夫人謂密外人不知，不其門家盡以覺之。今既事窮無由相隱，是以一一具向王說。」
言沙門目連已下，正明二聖騰空來去，不由門路，日日往還，為王說法。大王當知。夫人進食，先不奉王教，所以不敢遮約。二聖乘空，此亦不猶門制也。
Second, from "at that time the gatekeeper reported" down through "we could not possibly restrain her," this makes plain how the gatekeeper answered him with the full facts of the matter. This makes plain that, Ajātaśatru having just asked whether his father was still alive, the gatekeeper now offers his own reply. From "he reported to the great king: the great lady of the realm" onward, this makes plain the queen's own secret feeding of the king. The king, having received this food, was thereby able to prolong his own life — and though many days had passed, his father's life still continued. This was entirely the queen's own doing, not any fault of the gatekeeper's.
Question: "The queen presented her food with the flour smeared upon her own body, secretly covered beneath her clothes, going in and out repeatedly, seen by no one at all. Why, then, did the gatekeeper make plain the whole matter of the queen's own feeding?"
Answer: "No secret can ever be kept entirely forever — however skillfully and securely it may be concealed, the matter eventually comes to light regardless. With the king confined within the palace, and the queen going in and out day after day, had she not secretly carried this flour and food to him, the king's own life would have had no way to continue at all. As for calling it 'secret' here, this is simply speaking from the queen's own point of view, as the gatekeeper reports it — the queen herself believed it was secret, and that no outsider knew of it, yet the gatekeeper had, in fact, already come to realize it in full. Now, with the matter no longer able to be concealed at all, he reported every detail of it, one by one, to the king."
From "the śramaṇas Maudgalyāyana" onward, this makes plain that these two sages came and went through the empty air itself, not by way of the gate at all, traveling back and forth day after day to expound the Dharma for the king. "Your Majesty should know: the queen's own presenting of food was never authorized by your own command in the first place, and so we did not presume to obstruct or restrain her. As for these two sages traveling through the air, this, too, lies entirely beyond anything the gate itself could ever restrain."
Shandao's gloss on the very word "secret" makes a fine but real distinction: the gatekeeper's report describes what Vaidehī herself believed was concealed, not what actually remained hidden. "The queen herself believed it was secret, and that no outsider knew of it, yet the gatekeeper had, in fact, already come to realize it in full." The scheme that took a full chapter of careful, itemized preparation in Part 12 — bathing, ghee, honey, wax-sealed jewelry — was, on this reading, never actually secure; it succeeded only because those who noticed chose, for as long as they could, not to report it. Once directly questioned by the king himself, the gatekeeper's own loyalty shifts immediately and without hesitation, and Vaidehī's careful concealment collapses in a single sentence.
A Sword Raised Against His Mother
三、從時阿闍世聞此語下，至欲害其母已來，正明世王瞋怒。此明闍王既聞門家分疏已，即於夫人，心起惡怒，口陳惡辭。又起三業逆，三業惡。罵父母為賊，名口業逆。罵沙門者，名口業惡。執劍殺母，名身業逆。身口所為以心為主，即名意業逆。又復前方便為惡，後正行為逆。言我母是賊已下，正明口出惡辭。云何罵母為賊？賊之伴也。但闍王元心，致怨於父，恨不早終。母乃私為進糧，故令不死。是故罵言：我母是賊，賊之伴也。言沙門惡人已下，此明闍世瞋母進食，復聞沙門與王來去，致使更發瞋心。故云有何呪術，而令惡王多日不死？言即執利劍已下，此明世王瞋盛，逆及於母。何其痛哉，撮頭擬劍，身命頓在須臾。慈母合掌，曲身低頭，就兒之手。夫人爾時熱汗遍流，心神悶絕。嗚呼哀哉！怳忽之間，逢斯苦難。
Third, from "at that time, hearing these words, Ajātaśatru" down through "wished to harm his own mother," this makes plain the king's own furious rage. This makes plain that Ajātaśatru, having heard the gatekeeper's own full explanation, at once gave rise to a mind of evil rage against the queen, and spoke evil words with his own mouth. He thereby gave rise to three karmic rebellions and three karmic evils: to revile one's own father and mother as thieves is a verbal karmic rebellion; to revile the śramaṇas is a verbal karmic evil; to seize a sword to kill one's own mother is a bodily karmic rebellion; and since both bodily and verbal action are governed by the mind as their own master, this is likewise called a mental karmic rebellion. And further, evil carried out as a preliminary act is one thing; the actual carrying-out of rebellion itself is another. From "my mother is a thief" onward, this makes plain the evil words that issued from his own mouth. Why did he revile his own mother as a thief? Because she was, in his eyes, an accomplice of a thief. Ajātaśatru's own original intent had been to hold his father in enmity, resentful that he had not died sooner — and now his mother had privately supplied him with food, causing him not to die at all. This is why he reviled her, saying: "My mother is a thief — an accomplice of a thief." From "these śramaṇas are evil men" onward, this makes plain that Ajātaśatru, already enraged at his mother's own feeding of the king, and now further hearing that śramaṇas had been coming and going to see him as well, was provoked into even greater fury — hence his words: "What sorcery is this, that lets this evil king live on for so many days?" From "he thereupon seized a sharp sword" onward, this makes plain that the king's own rage had grown so intense that his rebellion now extended even to his mother. How agonizing this was — seizing her by the hair, sword raised against her, her very life reduced to a single instant. The loving mother joined her palms together, bowing her body low, submitting herself to her own son's hand. The queen, at that moment, broke out in a hot sweat over her entire body, her mind and spirit thrown into anguished confusion. Ah, how tragic! In a single moment of bewildered confusion, she found herself facing this very calamity.
Shandao's own taxonomy — sorting Ajātaśatru's outburst into three karmic rebellions and three karmic evils, distinguishing bodily, verbal, and mental action throughout — imposes a rigorous, almost clinical structure onto a scene of raw, escalating violence. Even his gloss on a single insult, "my mother is a thief," works through the logic precisely: not a thief herself, but "an accomplice of a thief," since her crime, in her son's own furious accounting, was keeping his true target — his father — alive. Vaidehī's own response, in the moment her life hangs on her son's own decision, is neither pleading nor resistance but complete submission: palms joined, head bowed, "submitting herself to her own son's hand." Shandao lets the sūtra's own image of her afterward — a hot sweat, mind and spirit thrown into confusion — stand without further gloss, the one moment in this entire narrative where his own careful, categorizing commentary falls silent and simply lets the scene's horror register on its own terms.
Part 14 Complete
This closes Part 14: Ajātaśatru's veiled question, the gatekeeper's full disclosure, and the king's fury turned directly against his own mother, sword already raised. Part 15 turns to the intervention that stops him — two ministers, Candraprabha and Jīvaka, risking their own lives to argue against a matricide already underway, in the longest single speech this fascicle records.
Continue to Part 15 — Two Ministers' Speech Against Matricide →