A recluse, once a co-disciple of the Buddha in the holy life. Once, when the Buddha visited Kapilavatthu and wanted lodging for the night, Mahānāma suggested that he should go to the hermitage of Bharaṇḍu. The Buddha acted on this suggestion and spent the night there.

When Mahānāma arrived the next morning, the Buddha talked to him about the three kinds of teachers:

those who have full comprehension of sense desires only but not of objects of sense or of feelings;

those who have full comprehension of sense desires and of objects of sense; and

those who have comprehension of all three.

Would their conclusions coincide, or would they differ?

Here Bharaṇḍu chimed in and asked Mahānāma to say they would be the same. However, the Buddha contradicted him, whereupon Bharaṇḍu said they would be different; but the Buddha again contradicted him, and even, also, a third time. Grieved at being slighted by the Buddha in the presence of Mahānāma, an important Sakyan, Bharaṇḍu left Kapilavatthu, never to return (A.i.276 f).

The Commentary explains (AA.i.458) that he had lived in the same hermitage as the Buddha, when they were both pupils of Āḷāra Kālāma.

Bharaṇḍu had the reputation of being able to secure the best and choicest alms in the city.