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Sacred Texts: Buddhism

Buddhism in Translations - § 43. How to Obtain Wealth, Beauty, and Social Position.

Henry Clarke WarrenPali Canon TranslationsTheravada Buddhism

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This is a canonical Buddhist scriptural passage from the Pali Canon's Anguttara-Nikaya, belonging to the Theravada tradition of early Buddhism. In it, Queen Mallika questions the Buddha about why women differ in physical beauty and social standing, and the Buddha explains these outcomes as karmic consequences carried across rebirths. The core argument is a systematic matrix: ugliness results from anger and irascibility in a past life, poverty from failure to give alms, low social status from envy toward others' good fortune — with beauty, wealth, and high status arising from the corresponding virtues. The passage is distinctive for its explicit, mechanical treatment of karma as a ledger that precisely maps specific moral behaviors to specific physical and social outcomes in subsequent lives, with no ambiguity about causation. Queen Mallika then applies the framework to herself, acknowledging her own past-life failings as the explanation for her current ugliness despite her wealth and status, and takes a formal vow to reform. The text closes with her taking refuge in the Buddha, making it also a conversion narrative that models how the teaching should be received and acted upon.

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