The King and The Fruit-Girl

Once upon a time when Brahmadatta was king at
Benares, the Bodhisatta was his minister and his temporal
and spiritual adviser.

Now one day the king stood at an open window looking
into the palace court. And at this very moment the
daughter of a fruiterer, a beautiful girl in the flower of
her youth, stood with a basket of jujubes on her head
crying, "Jujubes, ripe jujubes, who'll buy my jujubes?"
But she did not venture into the royal court.

And the king no sooner heard her voice than he fell in
love with her, and when he learned that she was un-
married he sent for her and raised her to the dignity of
chief queen, and bestowed great honour upon her. Now
she was dear and pleasing in the king's eyes. And one
day the king sat eating jujubes in a golden dish. And the
queen Sujata, when she saw the king eating jujubes, asked
him, saying, " My lord, what in the world are you eating ? "
And she uttered the first stanza :

What is this egg-shaped fruit, my lord, so pretty and red of hue,
In a gold dish set before thee? Pray tell me, where they grew.

And the king was wroth and said, "O daughter of a
greengrocer, dealer in ripe jujubes, do you not recognise
the jujubes, the special fruit of your own family ? " And
he repeated two stanzas :

Bare-headed and meanly clad, my queen, thou once didst feel no shame,
To fill thy lap with the jujube fruit, and now thou dost ask its name;

Thou art eaten up with pride, my queen, thou findest no pleasure in life,
Begone and gather thy jujubes again. Thou shalt be no longer my wife.

Then the Bodhisatta thought, " No one, except myself,
will be able to reconcile this pair. I will appease the
king's anger and prevent him from turning her out of
doors." Then he repeated the fourth stanza:

These are the sins of a woman, my lord, promoted to high estate :
Forgive her and cease from thine anger, king, for 'twas thou didst
make her great.

So the king at his word put up with the offence of the
queen and restored her to her former position. And
thenceforth they lived amicably together.

Ja.t 108 (Buddhaghosha xvr., The Modest Girl) is a similar tale of a king who
marries a village girl because of her good behaviour. The ballad of king Cophetua
and the beggar-maid (Percy's Rel. i. 189, ed. 1876) appears to have been known to
Shakspere, cf. L. L. L. i. 90, 311 and iv. 1. 66. It contains the same feature as the
jataka:

She had forgot her gowiie of gray,

Which she did weare of late.
The proverb old is come to passe,
The priest, when he begins his masse,
Forgets that ever clerke he was.

The tale is here told of a previous birth of Pasenadi, king of Kosala, who wished
to marry into the Sakya clan, but was tricked into marrying a slave-girl, the daughter
of a Sakyan prince.