The Nālakasutta is divided into two portions ([snp3.11]). The introductory narrative tells the famous story of how the hermit Asita visited the newborn Siddhattha and prophesied his future Buddhahood. He was old and would not live to see the Buddha himself, so he urged his nephew Nālaka to seek out the Buddha when the time came. Many years later, Nālaka heard that the Buddha had indeed appeared in fulfillment of Asita’s prediction. The second portion of the Sutta tells of how Nālaka went to the Buddha and asked about the way of the sage (muni).
Those who know the story of the Buddha’s life will recall the familiar tale of how Asita was the former chaplain of Siddhattha’s grandfather and teacher to his father Suddhodana. He visited the court of King Suddhodana in his grand palace, where a multitude of brahmin soothsayers had foretold that the prince would become either a wheel-turning monarch or an all-seeing Buddha. They will be well aware of how Asita, examining the boy for the 32 marks of a Great Man, was the first to realize that the other soothsayers were wrong: the boy was surely destined to become a Buddha. And they will know that the reason Asita would never see the Buddha was that he was destined to be reborn for many aeons in the formless realms, where beings are removed from involvement in the material dimensions.
What they may not know is that in this, the earliest version of events, none of these details are found. Asita was not a beloved former teacher, and in fact appears nowhere else in the Suttas. There is no mention of a king, a palace, or a court therein, only Suddhodana with his family in his home. No soothsayers are spoken of, nor the 32 marks. There was no “examination” of the boy and his marks; Asita merely “saw” him lying on his cot. Nor does the text speak of conflicting prophecies, for the boy’s destiny was known even to the mere worldly gods before Asita appeared. Asita is not said to have been destined for the formless realms; rather, he is simply old and will not live long. The rebirth in the formless realms was probably intended to show that Asita belonged to the most exalted circles of brahmanical meditators, while also filling an awkward plot-hole: why could he not simply return to see the Buddha from wherever he had been reborn?
The Nālakasutta is, in fact, a rare witness of a transitional phase in the rapidly-evolving legend of the Buddha. Along with [mn123] and [dn14], it is one of the earliest sources for certain crucial aspects of the Buddha’s mythology, in particular the idea that Siddhattha was, from the time of his birth, a bodhisatta destined for enlightenment. Nonetheless, the dramatic and mythological significance of events is not yet fully drawn out, and the relatively simple account of the Nālakasutta was, for all practical purposes, soon overshadowed by the more developed legends. Yet a Sutta like this speaks quietly with a very specific voice. It deserves a hearing on its own terms.
According to the commentaries, the introduction was composed by Ānanda on the request of Mahākassapa at the First Council. While this confirms that it was not the Buddha’s words, in fact it must be considerably later than this, and probably originated a few centuries after the Buddha’s passing. Jayawickrama identifies a range of late features, including multiplicity of late and Sanskritic words, decorative poetics, and a variety of metres, all of which set the introduction quite apart from the passages that follow.
The introductory verses share these late features with those of the Pārāyanavagga. Both passages are called vatthugāthā, a term used nowhere else. In both cases, an elder sage sets the action in motion by urging their younger counterparts to seek out the Buddha. This legendary narrative serves to frame a set of teachings that stem from an earlier age. Such stories fulfill a need for the Buddhist community in the time that they were composed. The Pārāyanavagga is a conversion narrative, which supports the geographical expansion of the Buddha’s teachings in the south of India. The Nālakasutta fulfills a more universal need: to exalt the Buddha’s teachings within the cosmic and eternal significance of the Buddha as a person.
The Buddha gave only sparse details of his early life, so after his death, the Buddhist community swiftly moved to complete the narrative. It is conventional for the birth of a great hero to be heralded with prophecy. The Buddha’s silence on this topic leaves a gap that yearns to be filled. Never mind that the Buddha consistently spoke against the very idea of using marks and signs to tell the future. And leave aside the inconvenient detail that the very essence of his teaching, from his first words until his last, was the practice of the eightfold path, not the fulfillment of a destiny. The mythic impulse is not so easily dismissed. In the early Buddhist community, as the historical Buddha faded from living memory, there grew an insatiable need for stories to keep him alive.
Myth serves this purpose, for it tells of things that “never were, but are always”. This is a not a paradox, but a simple psychological reality. For those who are born into a religious tradition, there is no first moment when the story of the Buddha is heard. It has always been there, told and retold in story, in painting, and in song, surrounding you from before you had the language to hear it. There never was a time when Siddhattha did not become a Buddha. The prophecy of Asita is not a historical record of a soothsayer and his prediction, but rather, is confirmation of the eternal and inevitable reality of the Buddha. It is not a historical account of what actually happened, but a mythological account of what must have happened.
The sutta opens with Asita’s meditative vision of the gods. They are dancing and singing with exuberance, celebrating the birth of the Bodhisatta. The gods are, in this mythological context, able to see the significance of this event, and even to predict specific details like the teaching of the First Sermon in the “Grove of the Hermits”, i.e. the Isipatana near Benares. Asita then hurries to see the newborn babe, where he confirms the prophecy. But he bursts into tears when he realizes that he is too old and will die before witnessing the magnificence of Awakening.
Asita’s tears at the Buddha’s birth echo the tears of Ānanda, who, when he learned of the Buddha’s imminent demise, could not bear to face life without his beloved Teacher. Did Ānanda—the putative author of this story—wish to emphasize Asita’s emotional vulnerability here, drawing on his own experience? We cannot say, but we can say that this kind of narrative echoing is an outstanding feature of early Buddhist mythic narratives. Ostensibly unrelated texts in different collections are formed with an eye to mirroring related events. While the vatthugāthā as we have it appears to be later than Ānanda, there is no doubt that Ānanda himself was the literary founder of the Buddha’s legend. The texts are profoundly influenced by his methods and sensibilities, and it is, I believe, likely that such details were originated by him.
What can we say about the sage Asita? He appears without explanation or context, yet unhesitatingly takes a position of prominence in the home of a powerful man. It is as if the text assumes that audience will be familiar with him, and will take such confidence for granted. A survey of related early texts suggests that Asita fulfills an archetype that we shall call the “dark hermit”. It is, I believe, the loss of awareness of this archetype that prompted the later tradition to say that he was the family chaplain, since they needed a new explanation for the familiarity and respect with which Asita was received in Suddhodana’s home.
The word asita can have a variety of meanings in Pali, including “black” and “unattached”. The latter seems like a good name for a hermit, and it is indeed the explanation given in some Sanskrit and Tibetan sources, where it is taken as akleṣa. But the text also refers to him as kaṇhasiri “dark splendor”, and later texts also call him kāladevala, “Dark Devala”. It would seem, then, that the relevant sense of asita is “black”. The Pali commentary confirms that this is a reference to his skin color.
His name and status as a “dark hermit” (isi) link him with other passages in a way that is surprisingly revealing. The similarly-named hermit Asita Devala (“Devala the Dark”) appears in the Assalāyanasutta ([mn93]), where the Buddha relates to the prideful brahmin student Assalāyana how Asita Devala challenged seven hermits on the doctrine of caste. In the Ambaṭṭhasutta ([dn3]) we find yet another “black” hermit, this one named Kaṇha, whose story is also told by the Buddha in a conversation with a prideful brahmin student.
All of these passages, while quite different, have a range of features in common. A powerful hermit (isi) named “black” appears in a quasi-legendary narrative. They are an outsider, who though respected and associated with the brahmanical tradition, is not exactly a part of it. They challenge the accepted order of things. Kaṇha is the son of a slave-girl, and his descendants became regarded as brahmins. Asita Devala, likewise challenging the brahmanical notions of lineage, is notably not identified as a brahmin, in contrast with the “seven Brahmin hermits” (satta brāhmaṇisayo).
The “dark hermits” appear in marginal spaces. Asita Devala is in a wilderness hermitage, while Kaṇha learns magic in the south. The latter detail is especially interesting, as during the Buddha’s time, the south of India was largely unknown, and was regarded as outside the sphere of civilized Aryan lands. While the Nālakasutta itself says nothing of Asita’s origins, both the Mahāvastu and the Nidānakathā place him in the south. In the Pārāyanavagga we shall meet another sage who, having made his way to the remote southern lands, encountered an exponent of dark magics there.
All of this evokes a tradition of outsider ascetics of a dark skin color, known for their magical abilities, and associated with the south. It would seem likely that these are a cultural memory, and perhaps cultural reality, of non-brahmin or pre-brahmin ascetics or shamans who predated the arrival of the brahmins in India. They interacted with the brahmins in complex ways, sometimes being adopted by them and changing brahmanical culture from the inside.
All this begs the question: are these various hermits, in fact, one and the same? Several modern commentators have remarked on the apparent “confusion” between the Asita of the Nālakasutta and the Asita Devala of the Assalāyanasutta. But this way of thinking assumes that there were originally different individuals, whose separate identities later became conflated. As a monk, however, I am keenly aware of how, when an ordained person appears to others, they are wrapped in two robes: the ochre robes that protect the body, and the robes of preconceptions and projections. I would suggest that the “dark hermit”, while a genuine reality of life in ancient India, was perceived in terms of an archetype or stereotype. When we encounter a dark hermit in our texts, we are seeing a partially-differentiated figure drawn from the archetype. That is not to say that there is not an actual person at the root of the story, only that their depiction is shaped by cultural stereotypes.
Since kaṇha is simply the Pali spelling of Sanskrit kṛṣṇa, it is further tempting to associate these hermits with the famed god Krishna of later Hinduism. Indeed, it may be that the deity known as Krishna is first attested in Buddhist texts, for a tale in the Ummaggajātaka (Ja 542) tells of how the outcaste maiden Jampāvatī was made queen by King Kaṇha Vāsudeva. Like the dark hermits, he transgresses the expected conventions of lineage. Vāsudeva is, of course, a common name of Krishna. It would be, however, overly literal to claim that these were the same historical figures. These contexts are vague and legendary, framed as reports of days of yore, and associated with weird magics. They tell us something of how such figures were thought of, and how they challenged the narrow assumptions of brahmanical theories of lineage.
All this tells us that Asita the “Black” sage or “Dark Splendour” appears in the Nālakasutta as a figure of legend, a marvelous and revered font of wisdom and magic, come to disrupt the notions of legacy and succession. Unlike the other dark hermits, he is implied to be a brahmin, or at least, so much is suggested when he is described as “master of marks and hymns” (lakkhaṇamantapāragū). “Hymns” are the Vedas, while “marks” are signs discerned as a basis for prophecy, most famously the 32 marks of the Great Man. Like other brahmanical figures of note—including Indra and Brahmā himself—he serves to uplift and validate the Buddha in the eyes of the brahmins.
The descriptions of the gods and the home of Suddhodana are unusually colorful and vivid, although still fairly restrained compared to later Indian literature. Notably, the verses mostly avoid using royal language in the depiction of Siddhattha’s home and family. Suddhodana is not referred to as king, and his residence is described simply as a “home” (bhavana). The infant is referred to as kumāra, which can mean “prince”, but can equally well mean simply “boy”. Given that there is no mention of a king, the humbler translation seems preferable. The lavish descriptors and honorifics are used only of the boy, not for his family or home. The only “royal” language is the antepūra from which the sage departs at the end. This was a kind of walled compound inside which the rulers resided. But the description overall is quite compatible with what we know of the Sakyans from the early sources, namely that they were an aristocratic republic who elected “rulers” (rājā) from the leading clans to serve as rulers for limited periods. In later legend, of course, Suddhodana was elevated to the status of a king, but it seems the current Sutta predates this.
The gods on Meru’s peak refer to the newborn baby as bodhisatta, “one intent on Awakening”, which is the only time this term occurs in the Suttanipāta. The earliest usage of bodhisatta was, it seems, to refer to Siddhattha after he had left home and was actively seeking Awakening. There is no suggestion in the major Sutta passages that such Awakening was predestined, or indeed, that predestination or prophecy was possible. The burden of the vatthugāthā, in fact, is to establish the reality and reliability of prophecy. From here, it was but a small step to infer that the bodhisatta was already destined to become Awakening in a past life long ago.
As to the main teaching passage, it is one of the classic “sage” (muni) texts in the Suttanipāta. In his opening question, Nālaka tells the Buddha that the Asita’s words had come true. This establishes a connection between the two parts, and suggests that, while the details of the vatthugāthā are late, they may have drawn from a genuine story of a sage named Asita who spoke of a Buddha. Nālaka’s brief mention, however, says nothing of prophecy, and might just as well have been spoken in a situation similar to the Pārāyanavagga, where an elder sage encouraged a student to seek out the Buddha. It is rarely the case that such legendary narratives are either entirely factual or entirely invented.
The Buddha urges Nālaka to practice restraint in all circumstances, leaving behind the tempations of the worldly life. He is not sugar-coating it, but warns that the path wil be hard. Seeing one’s oneness with all creatures, one would never harm any of them. The life of as renunciant is solitary, devoted to meditation under a tree, and walking for alms content to receive little or nothing. The text occasionally evokes teachings from elsewhere in the Nikāyas, as when the Buddha says to practice as if “licking a razor’s edge”, per [sn35.235:4.1] or [thag16.2:12.4] with “tongue pressed on the roof of the mouth”, per [mn20:7.2], etc.
The sutta concludes in praise of the virtues of silence.
