The Wise Judge

At a Glance

• Central figures: The Bodhisatta, reborn as a wise magistrate in Benares; two women - the true mother and the false mother - who both claim a single infant boy.
• Setting: The city of Benares (Varanasi), in the court of the Bodhisatta, who serves as the city’s judge; from the Pali Jataka collection.
• The turn: When testimony and witnesses fail to establish the truth, the Bodhisatta orders the child placed between the two women and commands them each to seize an arm and pull, declaring the winner the rightful mother.
• The outcome: The true mother releases the child’s arm rather than hurt him; the Bodhisatta recognizes her by her refusal and restores the boy to her, while the false claimant is exposed and punished.
• The legacy: The judgment became a model of discernment through compassion rather than evidence - a story the Buddha later told to his monks at Jetavana to illustrate how wisdom cuts through what argument cannot.

A woman ran through the streets of Benares with an infant pressed against her chest, and another woman ran behind her, screaming that the child was hers.

They had drawn a crowd by the time they reached the magistrate’s court. The guards let them through because neither would stop shouting, and it was easier to bring them inside than to quiet them outside. The Bodhisatta sat on a low wooden seat beneath the sala trees in the courtyard. He had been hearing a dispute about an ox. He set the ox aside.

Two Women and One Child

The first woman - call her the mother, because that is what she was - had gone to bathe at the river ghat with her son in a cloth sling. She had set him down on the stone steps for a moment while she wrung water from her hair. The second woman, a yakkhini - a she-demon who had taken human shape - had been watching from the crowd on the ghat. She picked up the child and walked away with him as though he were her own.

The mother caught her before she had gone a hundred paces. She seized the woman’s shoulder. The yakkhini turned and said, calmly, that this was her son, that she had been carrying him all morning, and that this stranger was mad.

People on the ghat had seen both women near the child. No one had seen clearly who set him down and who picked him up. The crowd split. Some believed the mother. Some believed the yakkhini, who was composed and firm-voiced and held the baby with steady hands. The mother was shaking. She looked, to some eyes, less convincing.

They brought the dispute to the court because no one on the ghat could settle it.

The Magistrate’s Questions

The Bodhisatta listened to both women speak. The mother said: he is my son, born in the rains three months ago, and I can tell you the marks on his body - a birthmark on his left hip, a scratch on his right foot from where he kicked at the wicker of his cradle. The yakkhini said: he is my son, born in the rains four months ago, and I can tell you the same marks - the spot on his hip, the scratch on his foot - because I am his mother and I have bathed him every evening since he was born.

The Bodhisatta noted that the yakkhini had heard the mother describe the marks first, and repeated them. But this was not proof. A clever liar could have known the marks some other way.

He asked each woman where she lived. The mother named her street, her husband, her husband’s trade - a potter near the east gate. The yakkhini named a street on the other side of the city, gave a husband’s name, gave a trade. Her answers were quick and detailed. Too detailed, the Bodhisatta thought, but he could not convict on a thought.

He sent a runner to the east gate. The potter was there. He confirmed his wife had gone to the river that morning with their infant son. The Bodhisatta sent another runner to the street the yakkhini had named. No one there had heard of her. But the yakkhini, when told this, said she had only recently moved and her neighbors did not know her yet.

The courtyard was full now. People pressed against the walls. The baby had begun to cry.

The Line Drawn on the Ground

The Bodhisatta stood. He told a guard to draw a line in the dirt of the courtyard. The guard dragged a stick through the packed earth and made a long straight mark.

The Bodhisatta told the guard to set the child down on the line.

He looked at both women.

“Each of you will take one of his arms,” he said. “When I give the word, pull. The one who drags him to her side of the line is his true mother and may take him home.”

The yakkhini’s face did not change. She stepped forward and gripped the child’s left arm. The mother hesitated. She looked at the Bodhisatta’s face, searching for something - a sign that this was not what it seemed. She found nothing. He watched her with the same expression he had worn all morning. She knelt and took the child’s right arm.

The Bodhisatta raised his hand and brought it down.

The yakkhini pulled. The baby screamed. His small body slid toward her across the dirt.

The mother let go.

She let go, and she crouched in the dust, and she covered her face, and she wept - not with the sound of someone who has lost a legal argument but with the sound of someone whose child is being hurt and who cannot bear it.

The Judgment

The Bodhisatta said: “Give the child to the one who released him.”

The courtyard went quiet. The yakkhini still held the boy’s arm. She looked up.

“She let go,” the Bodhisatta said. “A mother’s grip loosens before her child’s bones break. Yours did not. You are not his mother.”

The yakkhini dropped the pretense. Some accounts say she snarled, showing teeth that were not human teeth. Some say she simply set the boy down and walked out of the courtyard without speaking, back into whatever shape she had come from. The crowd parted for her. No one followed.

The mother picked up her son. The scratch on his foot had opened again from the dragging, and a thin line of blood ran across the small sole. She pressed the foot against her sari and held him until he stopped crying. Then she walked home to the potter’s house near the east gate.

At Jetavana

The Buddha told this story to his monks at the Jetavana monastery, near Savatthi, when a dispute arose between two monks over a robe - each claiming the other had taken it. He told the story of the wise magistrate and the two women, and at the end he said: “The magistrate of Benares was myself in a former birth.”

He did not explain the judgment further. The monks who understood it, understood it. The robe was returned to its owner.