Garland of the Buddha's Past Lives (Volume 2). Aryashura
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convert the wicked to become good. Taking the Bodhi·sattva’s self-sacrificial actions as a paradigm, as portrayed for example in ‘The Birth-Story of the Great Monkey’ (27), the righteous king should be a model of moral conduct for his _____________
people and practice a virtue based on compassion and non-violence, protecting his society and sacrificing himself for his subjects.
Although narratives such as “The Birth-Story of Ayo·griha’ (32) extol asceticism over the householder life, the ascetic life is not viewed as a necessary path for all. The king acts as a moral exemplar for society and is urged, as a layman, to support ascetics and brahmins with gifts (25.50 [29], 28.83 [49]). Nevertheless, the values that form the basis of proper kingship are essentially renunciate virtues based on non-desire and non-violence. As such, they fundamentally grate against conventional notions of kingship which focus on the pursuit of profit (artha) and on the acquisition and consolidation of power through violence.22 In contrast to the Machiavellian type of king who follows the pragmatic teachings of the Arthasastra, the ideal Buddhist king should eschew politics and military power in favor of virtue:23
Neither power, treasury nor good policy
can bring a king to the same position
as he can reach through the path of virtue,
however great his effort or expenses. (22.151 [94])
The reader may well ask whether such an ideal is really possible. Can a king really give up violence and be a paradigm of compassion if he is to maintain power? One way of tackling this matter is to take an alternative approach from simply reading the text in terms of providing straight-forward didactic messages. As Steven Collins has argued (1998: 414ff), the tension between the ideal and the actual is inherent in the very nature of a renunciate ideology, ________
particularly an ideology expressed through the normative medium of texts. Seeking both to transcend and inform the ordinary world, Buddhist renunciate values are, by necessity, engaged in a constantly oscillating dialectic with human society and kingship, involving both conflict and resolution. Given the inherent complexity of this relationship, while various Buddhist texts do espouse the notion of a non-violent, compassionate king, one need not necessarily take such statements solely at face value. Rather than treating such passages simply as offering genuine alternatives to kingship, one can, as Collins suggests, also view them as (often ironical) comments on actual kingship made from an ideological remove.
The “Garland of the Buddha’s Past Lives” expresses a similar ambiguity regarding the Bodhi·sattva’s virtue in general. In ‘The Birth-Story of the Great Monkey’ (27), the Bodhi·sattva’s self-sacrifice for a community of monkeys is portrayed as a model of virtue to be followed by the king witnessing the event. Elsewhere, however, the text is at pains to stress the miraculous nature of the Bodhi·sattva’s unique feats of virtue, asserting that they are “unable to be imitated” by others (Volume 1, preface, v.4). A paragon of virtue, the Bodhi·sattva thus acts both as an ultimate moral standard that shapes and informs the ordinary world and as a transcendent ideal whose exceptional and superior quality serves to inspire the intense devotion that lies at the heart of Arya·shura’s work.
The Sanskrit Text
For stories 21–34 I have used Heinrich Kern’s edition (1891) as a base text, which I have then emended by referring to manuscript readings provided by Peter Khoroche in his “Towards a New Edition of Arya-Sura’s Jatakamala” (1987). I have particularly followed the readings of the earlier manuscripts N and T For stories 33 and 34, I have benefited greatly from the text-critical comments of Michael Hahn (2001). A list of all emendations made can be found at the end of the volume.
I am very grateful to Andrew Skilton for his helpful comments on the introduction and translation.
Notes
1Bodhi·sattva: a person who vows to become a perfectly awakened Buddha by fulfilling the perfections (paramita). The word bodhi/sattva literally means “awakening being.” K.R. Norman (1997: 104f.) argues that the word is a back formation from the Prakrit bodhi/satta, the Sanskrit equivalent of which is either bodhi/sakta or bodhi/sakta. These two compounds can be translated as “aspiring for awakening” (literally “attached to awakening”) and “capable of awakening” respectively.
2 See also 28.95 [57]: “Those who are compassionate and great in reason are not afflicted by their own pain as much as by the pain of others.”
3 See also ‘The Birth-Story of the Great Monkey’ (27), in which the Bodhi·sattva endures pain to save his troop of monkeys.
4 In ’The Birth-Story of the Antelope’ (26), the Bodhi·sattva is, however, later betrayed by the person who declares these words. ________
Another notable story in which enmity is overcome by friendship is ‘The Birth-Story of the Goose’ (22), in which a hunter’s aggressive intentions toward a flock of geese cease when he witnesses the devotion shown by a goose for his king (see especially 22.112 [65]). Here the king who ordered the capture of the geese is so impressed by the friendship shown by the pair of geese that he proclaims his own friendship for them (22.144 [88]): “May this friendship never be severed now that it has been embarked upon. Place your trust in me. For a union of noble beings never decays.”
5 See also volume 1, 7.42–61 [20–31] and this volume 23.30 [13], 23.117 [62]–118 [63], 26.58 [30], 34.43 [22].
6 The propriety of Sumukha’s devotion is, however, debated in a group of verses (22.56 [26]–72 [38]), in which the Bodhi·sattva argues that his general’s actions are unpragmatic and will bring no “benefit” (artha), whereas Sumukha appeals to the authority of “virtue” (dharma). It is noteworthy that this context-free, absolutist form of morality advocated by Sumukha is usually the type of virtue espoused by the Bodhi·sattva in other stories.
7 See, for example, 24.18 [8], 25.40 [21], 26.16 [8]–17 [9], 27.39 [15]–56 [28], 29.68 [47]–69 [48], 30.30 [14], 30.35 [18], 30.44 [22], 31.178 [93].
8 See also the ‘Birth-Story of Maitri-bala’ (vol. 1, story 8) for a connection between the Bodhi·sattva’s sacrifice of his body and his gift of the teaching as a Buddha. There the Bodhi·sattva’s blood and flesh, eaten by five demons, is directly compared with the “ambrosia of the teaching of liberation” given by the Buddha at his first sermon to five ascetics (see v. 59 and the epilogue). This theme has particularly been analyzed by Reiko Ohnuma (2007: 199ff.).
9 Stories 22, 24, 25, 26, 27, 30, 33, 34. Stories 33 and 34 are different in style to the other animal stories, a fact that may point to the Jatakamala being incomplete, or to the possibility of interpolation, or simply to a difference in literary technique. Apart from ________
their noticeably short length, neither story contains a description of the forest or a depiction of a clash between animals and humans, both of which are prominent themes in the other animal stories.
10 See, for example, vol. 1, 6.6–7, 15.6, 16.4 and this volume 22.95 [52], 25.27 [14], 25.32 [17], 27.4.