JIP 06 2 Epics

Journal of Indian Philosophy (2006) 34: 229286 DOI 10.
1007/s10781-005-5020-x ALF HILTEBEITEL
Springer 2006
ASVAGHOSAS BUDDHACARITA: THE FIRST KNOWN : CLOSE AND CRITICAL READING OF THE BRAHMANICAL SANSKRIT EPICS
" " The topic of Buddhism and the Mahabharata is one I have taken 1 up at a few points, and most recently in an article by that title (forthcoming-a) whose basic points are (1) that there has been a convergence from dierent quarters pointing towards the epics being an Aokan or post-Aokan text, with Madeleine Biardeau hypothes s " " sizing contemporaneity between Aoka and the Mahabharata, and s James Fitzgerald, Nick Sutton, and I seeing the epic as a post-Aokan s production; and (2) that the epic either portrays Yudhisthira :: (according to Fitzgerald and Sutton) or the killing of the Magadhan king Jar"sandha (Biardeau and I) against an Aokan or greater a s Magadhan2 background. Meanwhile, there has also been (I think less convincing) discussion of Arjuna in an Aokan mold s (Selvanayagam, 1992). My recent article took up the question from the standpoint of " " infra-Mahabharata considerations alone. For this article, while working along some points I have been exploring in other recent " " essays,3 I approach the question of Buddhism and the Mahabharata intertextually. Greg Bailey has been exploring the P"li canon as a a source for understanding lexical allusions to Buddhism in the " " Mahabharata, notably the ways both use the terminology of pravrtti :
1 See Hiltebeitel (1989) (written in 1979 and delivered in January 1980 at the Seminar on Ancient Mathur", sponsored by the American Institute of Indian a Studies at New Delhi and Mathura); 2001, 163173, 177179. 2 I adopt this term from the oral presentations of Bronkhorst (2005a, b). 3 These points, developed in Hiltebeitel (forthcoming ae), include intertextual " " grounds for considering early Mahabharata reading communities, and evidence that the Mbh archetype elucidated by the Pune Critical Edition would have been read and also transmitted well before the fourth century C.E. Guptas. Early manuscript fragments (see Franco, 2004; Hiltebeitel, 2005, n. 15) and inscriptions (see Vassilkov, 2002), however fascinating, allude only to parts, and by their very nature oer only incomplete pictures. These articles attempt, as this one does, to carry forward my hypothesis in Hiltebeitel (2001) that the Mbh would have been composed in a short period by a committee.
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and nivrtti.4 Although I will return briey to this topic, here I am : concerned mainly with other Sanskrit texts: to begin with, and here Biardeaus sleuthing has been invaluable, the early dharmas"tras, u " " : Manu (Biardeau 2002, I, 6596), and of course the Ramayana (2002, I, 700701 and ., 726; 1999, xxxiiixxxv). Since writing Buddhism " " and the Mahabharata in 2003, the most important new work to bear upon this intertextual situation comes from Patrick Olivelles (2004, 2005) publications on the dharmas"tras and Manu in which Olivelle u calls attention to the likelihood that, soon after the Aokan edicts, s these texts probably provided Brahmanical responses to the Aokan s imperial broadcast of what had already been the Buddhist appropriation of the term dharma. Olivelles propositions demand careful study, but I believe that most of them are likely to be illuminating.
EARLY DISCOURSE ON DHARMA AND KINGS
Olivelles recent publications one revealingly titled The Semantic History of Dharma The Middle and Late Vedic Periods (2004) thus oer a new hypothesis on the innovative character of the Buddhist usage of dharma within the Middle and Late Vedic period (ca. 800400 B.C.E.) that includes the rise of Buddhism. This innovation lies in seizing on a pre-Buddhist usage having to do with the relationship between kings and their Vedic divine model, the god Varuna, to coopt this royal term as chief among a number of royal symbols by which, as leader of an ascetic movement, the Buddha could lay claim to a new type of royal authority. From this standpoint, Aoka as Buddhist emperor deploys his famous inscrips tions to implement this transformation in the realm of imperial Realpolitik. Then the dharmas"tras ower in reaction to the Aokan u s usage to develop dharma as the all-embracing norm of post-Aokan s s" Brahmanical culture,5 followed by the dharmaastras headed by
4 Or pavatti and nivatti; see Bailey (2003), now followed up by presentations on the topic at the London Mbh and Gender Conference, July 2005, and the 4th Dubrovnik International Conference on the Epics and Pur"nas (DICSEP), a: September 2005. 5 " Olivelle, 1999, xxviiixxxiv places Apastambha in the early 3rd century B.C.E., Gautama mid-3rd century B.C.E., Baudh"yana mid-2nd century B.C.E., and a Vasistha possibly down to the 1st century C.E., while in Olivelle (2005, 2021) and :: n. 32, he nds these dates still reasonable but is inclined now to place them somewhat later. In the rst of these discussions he provides good grounds for revising downward from earlier dates (by roughly a century) he had proposed in Olivelle (1993, 71, 94, 101103).
ASVAGHOSAS BUDDHACARITA: THE FIRST KNOWN CLOSE :
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Manu both types of texts giving accented attention to the dharma of " " kings. For whatever Manus dates relative to the Mahabharata (Biardeau, and I agree with her, leans toward the epic being likely earlier [2002, 1, 85], Olivelle toward Manus priority [2005, 24, 3740]), Manu understands dharma in ways that both overlap with " " and signicantly dier from the Mahabharatas understanding of dharma had Olivelle read (Biardeaus 2002 book would suggest holding back on Olivelles quick trigger on interpolations, which he marks o as excursus within the translation itself, some of which could be seriously challenged6). It would then be within the context of these developments that both Sanskrit epics amplify this new Brahmanical outlook with narratives that are precisely about a reformed post-Vedic articulation of dharma still strongly centered as dharma was not only in the Vedas but in the Buddhist usages on the gure of the king. Insofar as both Buddhist and Brahmanical texts seem to use the term dharma knowingly as regards each others usages, we may say that they participated in the heyday of what I would like to call a civil discourse on dharma. Here I wish to re-appreciate Biardeaus take on BrahmanicalBuddhist interactions, in which she proposes two forms of bhakti, Brahmanical and Buddhist, developing along side each other, in the latter case among Buddhists who are for the most part of Indian origins and inserted in the society of castes, fully at home (chez eux) there, with no one desir[ing] their departure, despite this sort of Brahmanical manifesto that the imperium of Aoka provokes in Biardeaus view in the form of s the two epic texts (Biardeau, 2002, 2: 776; see Hiltebeitel, forthcoming-a). As we shall see, the description ts the Buddhist writer Avaghosa, the main subject of this article, to a T, though with one s : caveat: that texts on both sides may be more civil on the level of discourse than they are in the deployment of shared symbols, where the implications can be a bit more sly and daring. The production of the Brahmanical epics within the development of Indian textual genres is thus crucial. Extending beyond a concern found in the earliest dharmas"tras and the grammarian Patanjali (ca. u 150 B.C.E.) to dene the boundaries of a central north Indian " heartland called Aryavarta and widened to Brahmavarta7 where dharma was practiced and Sanskrit was spoken in pure and
See especially Biardeau (2002, vol. 1, 9495) on Manus two-level cosmogony (1.541) and his (Mbh) teaching that the king is the yuga (9.3012). 7 See Bronkhorst (2005a, b); cf. Lamotte (1988, 89) on the early Buddhists somewhat overlapping counterpart.
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authoritative fashion, both Sanskrit epics take up the project of articulating norms of dharma, as both law and teaching, through epic narrative on a civilization-wide scale. What was Epic in India was produced to appear archaic, to give hoary Vedic antiquity to norms that were being freshly minted. The new genre allowed its poets to construct what Bakhtin (1981) calls a chronotope, literally time space, that gave them amplitude to trace two dynastic pasts, " " " " : the lunar (Mahabharata) and solar (Ramayana) dynasties, back to the dawn of creation and to stage their main stories on a heretofore unheard-of and still perhaps unnamed geographical totality: India from Afghanistan (Gandhara) and Assam (Pr"gjyotisa) to the land of a : ] _ a " " : the P"ndyas, and in the Ramayana, to [Sr" Lank". Yet the poets of a: : each epic center their narratives dierently on this overarching norm: " " in the Mahabharata with a King Dharma who is no less than the son of the god Dharma, setting up major griefs in his life as he learns " " : what it might mean to embody such a paternity; and in the Ramayana with a king said to have the qualities of dharma to perfection, with all that might mean in his facing lifes imperfections. While the two texts concur that dharma is an all-embracing civilizational value, they thus allow very dierent things to be said about " " it. One might thus contrast the Mahabharatas insistence that dharma " " : is subtle (s"ksmo dharma) with the Ramayanas emphasis on moral u : " " " " rectitude (maryada). Whereas in the Mahabharata dharma is always " " : up for question, in the Ramayana it is viewed from a standard of one " " who embodies it to perfection. Whereas the Mahabharata gives us a king who questions dharma and is questioned in turn by Dharma " " : his father in various disguises, the Ramayana gives us a king whose apparent perfection in dharma includes a decisive feel for it even in circumstances where questioning it might seem morally appropriate (such as the killing of V"lin; the two ordeals of S" a; the killing of a t" Samb"ka). In this vein, when the P"ndavas and Draupad" hear the u a: : " " " Ramopakhyana, the main version of the R"ma story told in the a " " Mahabharata, as a mirror story of their own situation during their forest exile, the mirror presents a much more forgiving R"ma when a it comes to S" as rst ordeal after her captivity by R"vana, and tells t" a : " " : nothing of the still more harrowing second. The Ramayana places truth (satya) at its moral pinnacle and denes R"mas quite uncoma promising life around that one value. In contrast, when the " " Mahabharata speaks of the highest dharma, it does so more situationally, oering a non-absolutizing ethics of many highest " :s : dharmas while emphasizing non-cruelty (anramsya), non-violence
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(ahimsa), and truth as among the virtues especially pertinent to the king : " (Hiltebeitel, 2001, 202214). With these dierences in mind, one might say that in tone, at least, " " the Mahabharata is closer to the pluralistic, exible, and broad8 " dharma of the early dharmas"tras, which rst dene agama (tradition, u : : or what comes down) and the cultural wisdom of learned sistas among the sources of dharma (whenever it is subtle, so to speak), " " : whereas the Ramayana is closer to the legislative and codifying clean-up operation type of dharma that one nds in Manu (see Olivelle, 2005, 3940). Clearly, one could continue to trace ways that civil discourse on dharma now cuts across texts within the Brahmanical tradition, notably in the M" ams" and the grammarim" : a ans (Aklujkar, 2004). But let us get back to the prominence of dharma in conversations between the two developing religious traditions.
ASVAGHOSAS BUDDHACARITA :
It is against this background that it is worth looking at Avaghosas s : Buddhacarita not only for what it says directly about Buddhism and " " the Mahabharata, about which Avaghosa denitely knows somes : " " thing, but about what his treatment of the Mahabharata might be able to tell us about how dharma, and particularly, royal dharma, remained the hot topic as this intertextual and interreligious game returned to the Buddhist side of the court. In recognizing that " Avaghosa focuses his Buddhist kavya epic on dharma, and positing s : that one of the main things that would have interested him in the Brahmanical epics would have been their treatment of dharma, we might also be able to improve upon earlier treatments of the question " " " " : of what kind of Mahabharata and what kind of Ramayana Avaghosa would most likely have been responding to. This means s : that we rst need to consider Avaghosas likely dates. s : Etienne Lamotte upholds Chinese traditions that Avaghosa was s : contemporary with Kaniska whom Lamotte dates at ca. 12851 : C.E. ([1958] 1988, 591 and 655). However, as Lamotte puts it, this association of Avaghosa with Kaniska comes from fourth and fth s : : century Chinese documentation on Indian origins of poor quality and without historical interest ([1958] 1988, 698), so it is not clear s why he upholds these sources on the connection of Avaghosa with : Kaniska in opposition to others skepticism about it. Johnston :
8
" As Olivelle (1999), xxxix puts it for Apastambha.
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(2004), who after nearly 70 years still oers, I believe, the best discussion of Avaghosa,9 prefers a pre-Kaniska date for him, noting s : : that Chinese tradition made Avaghosa into an exorcist saint (2004, s : xv and xxxv). Taking Kaniskas likely date to be ca. 75125 C.E., : Johnston places Avaghosa between 50 B.C. and 100 A.D., with a s : preference for the rst half of the rst century A.D. (xvii).10 In oering the most sustained recent discussion of the Buddhacarita that I am aware of, the 2005 fth edition of Buddhist Religions: A Historical Introduction by Richard Robinson, Willard Johnson, and Thanissaro Bhikkhu (a.k.a. Georey DeGra), likewise gives Kaniskas date as late rst or early second century C.E. (76), and : treats Avaghosa as preceding him in approximately the rst cens : tury C.E. (5). This edition, which both renes and considerably extends (811) what the fourth edition of 1997 has to say about Avaghosa and the Buddhacarita, contextualizes Avaghosa as a s s : : contributor to a rst-century turn to writing aecting both Therav"da and Sanskrit Buddhist texts, a turn that further parallels a a contemporary development in Indian ne literature in which some of the greatest poets and prose stylists of this period " " Avaghosa, M"trceta, and Arya Sura [were] Buddhist monks (77). s a: : " Richard Salomon points to inscriptional specimens of kavya now available as early as the beginning of the rst century that are consistent with the evidence of literary sources themselves, notably " the works of Avaghosa which point toward a ourishing kavya in s : 11 the rst century A.D. (1998, 233). Most intriguing to me has been " Giuliano Boccalis observation that a totally new kavya sensibility can be noticed when both Avaghosa (see Buddhacarita [B] 4.30) and s : H"la in the Sattasa" (the oldest anthology of Prakrit poems), both a around the same time which for Boccali is the rst century C.E.12
9 Johnstons monumental 10-year study of the Buddhacarita provides a critically edited text through most of the rst 14 cantos (Part 1); translation of those cantos with lengthy Introduction plus extensive notes on the text and the translations (Part 2); and translation of the last 14 cantos mainly from the Tibetan, with an attempted rough reconstruction of the Sanskrit from both fth-century Chinese and later Tibetan translations (Part 3). Reference to Parts will be made only to Part 1. 10 Johnston throughout speaks of Avaghosa as a rst-century A.D. poet; see 2004, s : xiiixvii; xxxviii, xl. He had changed his view since translating the Saundarananda; see Johnston (1928, vi): generally agreed to have ourished early in the second century A.D. 11 See similarly Dimock, Gerow, Naim, Ramanujan, Roadarmel, and van Buitenen (1974, 119), connecting Avaghosa with rst century C.E. praasti inscriptions and s s : " developments in kavya (the author of this segment is Edwin Gerow). 12 Selby (2003, xxvi) dates H"las reign at Pratisthana/Paithan to 2024 C.E. a ::
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introduce women pretending to stumble to attract the heros attention: something, Boccali noted, that we would not imagine in any prior literature, including the Sanskrit epics, which are totally lacking in such stereotypes of love.13 In brief, although there are those who lean toward a second-century dating,14 there is a good weight of varied scholarly considerations favoring the rst century. Moreover, Johnston shows that the Tibetan and especially the fth-century C.E. Chinese translator must have had a Buddhacarita that does not dier much from the oldest surviving Sanskrit manuscript, which he dates to 1300 +/) 50 (vii). Indeed, Lamotte ([1958] 1988, 656) and Beal (1968) give the date of this Chinese translation by Dharmaksema or Dharmaraksa as around : : 420, establishing that a quite stable Buddhacarita, like the one we have, had come to China at least by the early fth century. This guarantees that virtually all the verses of the oldest Sanskrit manuscript (and the three others used by Cowell [1893] that, according to Johnston, derive from it) would be either part of the original or old interpolations (2004, Part 1, viii). This does not deter Johnston from devoting a page to almost certain and doubtful interpolations (Part 1, xviixviii), but these are neither numerous nor extensive.
THE CENTRALITY OF DHARMA IN ASVAGHOSAS BUDDHACARITA :
It is a surprising point to have to make that Avaghosa would be s : centrally concerned with dharma, but others seem to have missed it. According to Robinson, Johnson, and Thanissaro, Avaghosas s : main concern in portraying the Buddhas teaching career is to refute the various Brahmanical positions extant in his day. Thus he emphasizes the philosophical side of the Buddhas teaching role almost albeit not entirely to the exclusion of the religious side (2005, 23). It is important to their presentation that [t]he Buddhacarita is among the earliest extant texts to explicitly state that s there is no self (2005, 91).15 According to Lamotte, Avaghosas : Buddhacarita and Saundarananda are on a level with the classical
Boccali, Introduction to concluding roundtable discussion on Origins of Mah"k"vya: Problems and Perspectives, Origins of Mah"k"vya: International a a a a ` Seminar, Universita degli Studi de Milano, Milan, June 45, 2004. 14 Olivelle (1993, 121), having rst accepted Johnstons 1st century C.E. date, more recently says Avaghosa is generally assigned to the 1st2nd centuries C.E. s : (2005, 24); Strong oers second century A.D.? (1983, 31). 15 : See B 14.84; 15.8086 (teaching to Srenya-Bimbis"ra), 26.18. a
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" " mahakavya. The scholastic parts remain faithful to the traditional vocabulary and phraseology; the narrative and descriptive parts abound in brilliant images, gures of style, complicated metres and learned grammatical forms. The author seems to have wanted to dazzle his less knowledgeable colleagues by fully deploying his brahmanical virtuosity. His search for eect and his conciseness, taken almost to the point of unintelligibility, give the impression of a decadent art (Lamotte [1958] 1988, 591592). Johnston acknowledges Avaghosas interest in refuting Brahmanical traditions, espes : cially with regard to the proto-S"mkhya that Avaghosa puts into the a: s : mouth of Ar"da K"l"ma (2004, lvilxii), and he discusses at length a: aa " Avaghosas standing as a kavya poet (lxxix .). But Johnstons s : Avaghosa is more multifaceted. One point to keep in mind: Johnston s : underscores how the breath of bhakti (xxvi) animates certain " passages emphasizing sraddha or faith,16 but with a restraint toward the miraculous:17 more by devotion to the Buddha and a respect for scripture than a love for the marvelous (xxxixxl).18 Here too Johnston alludes to Avaghosa knowledge of texts, a point I will s : turn to in the next section. But Johnston never once mentions a concern with dharma, coming close only once with a statement that Avaghosas standpoint remains entirely moral, free from any s : attempt at metaphysical speculation (2004, xli; my italics). Scholarly work on dharma by Johnstons time seems to have been rather
16 Most of these are in the Saundarananda, but he also cites Canto 27 in the Buddhacarita (Johnston, 2004, xxvxxvii). See also xxxiv, xxxvii, xcvi, and Avaghosas interest in pari-pratyaya, reliance on others (xxxivxxxv), which s : Johnston relates to Mah"devas ve points about the arhat, and to the Mah"sanghikas a a _ (2004, xxviixxxi), a sect that revered Mah"-Kayapa (xxvii, xxviii), to whom a s Avaghosa gives major billing. See further n. 18 below. s : 17 See Johnston 2004, xxxix and Buddhacarita 1.11, where, rather than mention " the Buddhas descent from the Tusita heaven one reads cyutah khadiva, as if he : : came from the sky. Cf. Saundarananda 2.4850, where such birth miracles are mentioned. 18 See e.g. B 6.68, describing the groom Chandakas return: Sometimes he brooded and sometimes he lamented, sometimes he stumbled and sometimes he fell. So journeying in grief under the force of his devotion (bhaktivaena), he performed s " many actions along the road in complete abandon. The passage combines kavya style, used earlier with the smitten women, with viraha bhakti, with a result that Chandaka acts much like a Gop" The opening of the same canto at 6.58 combines . with this end to make it a bhakti set piece. That Avaghosa recognizes such cons : ventions is an indication that they are established by the time of his composition. See " similarly 9.8 and 9.8082 (a set piece on rajabhakti as inadvertent buddhabhakti by the two Brahmans). On the double sense of bhakti in 4.32, see Johnston 49 n. 32, in agreement with Gawronski (191415, 26).
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scattered, and he might have had a somewhat nebulous ahistorical view of the term that many still have today. Since Avaghosas interest in the topic of dharma will remain s : central to this essay, I will limit discussion for now to two points that will demonstrate, hopefully suciently, that the unfolding of dharma from a Buddhist perspective is probably Avaghosas most central s : concern. For the rst of these, let me just say quickly that Avaghosa s : clearly makes it his task to attempt a virtuoso rehearsal and contextualization of all the varied Buddhist and Brahmanical uses and meanings of dharma likely to have been known to him. Thus on the Buddhist side he treats all six basic Buddhist meanings of dharma as outlined by Rupert Gethin,19 with precise moments for dharmas (plural) as elements of existence20 and for dharma as inherent quality,21 and for such staples as the saddharma,22 dharmacakra" pravartana (B 15.5444), and even dharmakaya (24.10). And on the Brahmanical side, while giving direct reference to varna (caste) only in : "s passing (4.18) and spinning out debates about aramadharma without
These are 1. the Buddhas teaching, 2. good conduct or good behavior, 3. the truth realized by the practice of the Buddhist path, 4. any particular nature or quality that something possesses, 5. the underlying natural law or order of things, and 6. dharmas plural (Gethin, 2004, 515516 and passim). 20 See especially B 12.106, in which the Buddha is reecting just before the ve companions leave him and he goes to sit under the bodhi tree: By the practice of trance those dharmas are obtained through which is won the highest, peaceful stage, " " ": so hard to reach, which is ageless and deathless (dhyanapravartanad dharmah " " prapyante yair apyate/ durlabham antam ajaram param tad amrtam padam). As : s" : Johnston indicates The reference is to the bodhipaksika dharmas (2004, 184, : n. 106). This is I believe the rst usage in the text of the technical sense of dharmas in the plural. Johnston also reconstructs this plural usage from the Tibetan and Chinese translations also at 17.18 and 24.27. 21 See 12.70, where the prince says thanks to Ar"da K"l"ma but ponders, exa: aa presses reservations, and moves on: For I am of the opinion that the eld-knower, " although liberated from the primary (prakrti) and secondary (vikara) constituents, : still possesses the quality (dharman) of giving birth and also [the quality (dharman)] " of being seed: vikaraprakrtibhyo hi ksetraj~am muktam apy aham/ manye prasavadn : : ": ": harmanam b" jadharmanam eva ca. 22 _ See 13.1 (M"ra as saddharmaripus, enemy of the true dharma); 13.31 (the a divine sages in their pure abodes are devoted to the good law; continuing: they are " " dharmatma, given to dharma (Johnston), whereas M"ras hosts are himsatma, a : " " cruel (Johnston), or given to violence [13.32]). The term also occurs when Asita comes thirsting for the holy Law (1.49) and predicts that the Buddha will deliver it (1.74), and in the ironic words of Chandaka at 6.31, cited below.
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ever precisely calling it that,23 he provides special moments for dharma in the trivarga (10.2838, 11.58), kuladharma (10.39), the three debts a man owes to his ancestors, the seers, and the gods " (9.65), and agama (see 4.83, 7.14, and especially 9.76 and 13.49 for criticism of the uncertainties and wavering of traditional "gamic a authorities). I will return to some of these matters later. Second, I would like to illustrate as a prime example of the salience of this concern, and for its foundational importance of all that follows, how Avaghosa presents the story of the four signs. For the rst s : outing (B 3.2638), the Suddh"dhiv"sa gods create the illusion of an a a old man (26). The prince24 asks his charioteer about it: Is this some transformation in him, or his original state, or mere chance " (yadrccha)?25 Thanks to the gods confusing the charioteer into : spilling the beans about old age, the prince, having learned the truth, started a little (calitah ca kimcid) and oered this rst response: : : " " Will this evil come upon me also? (kim esa doso bhavita mamapi) : : (32) a rather shallow response compared to what he says when next confronted with signs two and three. For now, he asks to be taken back to the city; he cannot take pleasure when the fear of old age " " rules in my mind (jarabhaye cetasi vartmane) (37d). For the second outing (3.3953), the same gods fashion a diseased man. The princes rst thoughts on this are more reective: Thereupon the kings son " looked at the man compassionately (sanukampyo) and spoke: Is this evil (dosa) peculiar to him, or is the danger of disease (rogabhayam) : common to all men? (43). Made aware of the realities, he observes the vast ignorance (vist" : am aj~anam) of men who sport under rn n" the very shadow of disease (46). When he has returned to the palace, his father, sensing the prince had already abandoned him (49), scolds the ocer in charge of clearing the roads, but with no severe punishment, and prepares another outing hoping to change the princes mood. For the third outing (3.5465), the same gods now
"s As Olivelle (1993) shows, Brahmanical arama (life-pattern or life-stage) " formulations were still in ux (see below). Curiously, the Ugrapariprccha, an early : Mah"y"na text probably from around the rst century C.E. (Nattier, 2003, 4145, a a 193), the date likeliest for Avaghosa, shows similar early variation in formulations s : on the stages (bh"mis) of the bodhisattva career (151152), along with intense u recommendation that not only monks but lay householders take up this arduous path to Buddhahood. 24 As I will usually call him, except where Avaghosa uses other terms for him, s : notably Bodhisattva, which, likewise, since it occurs for the living prince for the rst time at 9.30, I will not use to describe him before that point in the text. 25 I follow Johnstons translation unless otherwise indicated.
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fashion a lifeless man, arranging it so that only the prince and charioteer see it (54)! Now the princes question is still more sophisticated: Is this law of being (dharmah) peculiar to this man, or : is such the end of all creatures? (kim kevalo syaiva janasya dharmah : : " " sarvaprajanam ayam " : o ntah)? (58cd). To which the charioteer drs : " " replies, This is the last act for all creatures (sarvaprajanam idam antakarma). Destruction is inevitable for all in the world, be he of low or middle or high degree (59). In short, from rst asking about only himself with regard to old age to asking about whether disease is unique to one or common to all, he is now, when it comes to the dead man, still framing the question in the same way as for the diseased man, but not only asking whether death applies to one or to all but asking after the underlying law (dharma) that results in death. But whereas the prince asks about a law, the charioteer answers him only in terms of acts, very nicely translated as the last act. So the discovery of such a law will remain the princes problem. He is not handed such a law by a charioteer I am, of course, alluding to the Bhagavad G" a or anyone else. Instead of dharma being revealed, it t " is approached through developing insight.26 As elsewhere, there is a convergence point between dharma and mrtyu, and perhaps of the : two with ignorance (here aj~ana). Now the prince suddenly becomes n" faint on hearing of death (rutvaiva mrtyum; 60), grabs the chariot s : rail, and then reects in a melodious voice (61) that this is the end " " " appointed for all creatures (iyam ca nistha niyata prajanam), and : :: " how, to appear happy, men must harden their hearts for them to be in good cheer as they fare along the road (adhvan; 61). He asks to return to the city as it is no time for pleasure resorts (62), but the driver goes at the kings behest to a grove prepared in advance, a park lled with birds and beautiful women, which the prince experiences as if he were a Muni carried there by force to a place presenting obstacles (65). This sylvan pause gives Avaghosa the opportunity to devote the next s : " canto of lacy kavya to the wiles of women (one of whom, as noted, even pretends to stumble), and the princes newfound indierence to them, before he is visited by the fourth sign (5.115). The prince now heads out, again with his fathers permission, to see the forests, taking a retinue of companions (sakhibhis; B 5.2) who
At 7.46, just after the great departure, he tells the rst anchorites he meets that he is still a novice at dharma (me dharmanavagrahasya). Cf. Gawronski (191415, 33), taking this as (of me) who have newly taken to the dharma i.e. who am a neophyte regarding it, and citing 11.7 (cited below) as a further unfolding of this theme.
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are the sons of ministers. He rides Kanthaka, but the charioteer is not with him. Going to distant jungle-land (presumably savannah) he sees the soil being ploughed, and, seeing insects cut up, he mourns for them as for his own kindred (5). Seeking clearness of mind, he stops his friends (suhrdas, 7) and goes to sit beneath a Jamb" tree.27 There, u : reecting on the origin and destruction of creation (jagatah : prabhavavyayau vicinvan) and taking the path of mental stillness (9), he enters the rst trance of calmness (10) and attains con" centration of mind (manah samadhim) (11). And, having rightly : perceived it, he meditates on the course of the world (lokagatim). This meditation soon carries forward from what was brought into focus around the term dharma as he encountered the third sign: A wretched thing it is indeed (krpanam bata) that a man, who is himself : : helpless and subject to the law of old age, disease, and destruction " " "s " (vyadhijaravinaadharma), should in his ignorance and the blindness of his conceit, pay no heed to another (param aj~o) who is the victim n of old age, disease, or death (my italics). For if I, who am myself such, should pay no heed to another whose nature is equally such, it would not be right or tting in me, who have knowledge of this, the ultimate law (paramam dharmam imam vijanato me) (1213).28 He is realizing : : that this law involves a re-cognition of the other with whom all are in this together, which carries forward from the progression through the rst three signs. And after verses 1415 describe this insight further and its neutralizing of the passions in the prince, it is now the moment for the arrival of the fourth sign (5.1621), which, rather than provoking these reections, comes in response to them. Not fabricated by the gods like the other three signs, a sramana : appears as a bhiksu or mendicant (5.16), and says, In fear of birth : and death [I] have left the home life for the sake of salvation (pravrajato smi moksahetoh) (17). He is a homeless wanderer-seeker, : : accepting any alms I may receive (yathopopannabhaiksah) (19), : : and, moreover, a heavenly being who in that form had seen other Buddhas, and has encountered the prince to rouse his attention (smrti) (20), which he gets. For, When that being went like a bird to : heaven, the best of men was thrilled and amazed. And he gained
" " In the Nidanakatha, this episode occurs when he is a mere child with nurses (see Warren, 1998, 5355). 28 " " "s " 5.12. krpanam bata yaj janah svayam sann/ avao vyadhijaravinaadharma// s : : : : " " " " jarayarditam aturam mrtam va/ param aj~o vijugupsate madandhah// n : : " " 13. iha ced aham " : sah svayam san/ vijugupseya param tatha svabhavam// dr : : : " na bhavet sadram hi tat ksamam va/ paramam dharmam imam vijanato me. : : " : :s :
27
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awareness of dharma (upalabhya tata ca dharmasamj~am) and set his s : n" mind on the way to leave his home (21).29 When he returns to the palace, it is with yearning aroused for the imperishable dharma " " : (aksayadharmajataragah) (2526). One might wonder whether : " Avaghosa draws a contrast with the term sanatanadharma, eternal s : dharma, which he would likely have had opportunity to know from both Sanskrit epics. An eternal dharma invokes the eternal Veda and a dharma that, while beyond appearances, is always subtly present, whereas an imperishable dharma could avoid these implications and evoke something that neither perishes nor originates but can always be rediscovered.30 In any case, this birdlike divine creature sets the prince to the task of unfolding this new awareness of dharma he has already begun discovering on his own by setting his mind on departure from home which is clearly not the locus of this dharma, although it will not fail to bear upon it.
ASVAGHOSA THE BRAHMAN, BUDDHIST CONVERT, AND SCHOLAR :
On one matter, all agree, even though it is again only Chinese sources that actually state it: that Avaghosa was a Brahman convert to s : Buddhism. Johnston gives numerous reasons to accept the Chinese tradition on this one point (2004, xviii), and actually hazards to speak of the zeal of the convert (xcvi). But Johnstons rst claim for Avaghosa under the rubric of converted Brahman is that he had an s : acquaintance, so wide that no parallel can be found to it among other Buddhist writers, with all departments of Brahmanical learning (lviii) a topic to which Johnston devotes a whole section under the heading of The Scholar (xlviilxxix). He thus credits Avaghosa s :
29 5.21 gaganam khagavad gate ca tasmin/ nrvara samjahr: e visismiye ca// : : : :s ": " upalabhya tata ca dharmasamj~am/ abhiniryana vidhau matim cakara. s : n" : See Johnston (2004, 65) n. 21 on dharmasamj~a with upa-labh, in the technical sense : n" of the action of the mind in forming ideas or conceptions, based on the perceptions presented to it by the senses. 30 Horsch ([1967] 2004, 439) mentions, without citation, early Buddhist usage of " " sanatana (eternal) and akalika (timeless) for dhamma as correspond[ing] to the " sanatano dharmah of the Hindu philosophers, but that the dhamma is xed : " whether Tath"gatas rise up or do not (citing Samyutta Nikaya 2, p. 24, W. Geiger a trans.). Cf. Nattier (2003, 142): a bodhisattva must be born in his nal life into a world devoid of Buddhism, where he will rediscover its truths for himself.
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with Rg Vedic knowledge,31 familiarity with Brahmanical ritual texts (xlv, lxxviii, lxxiiilxxxiv), the Upanisads (xlvvi), early n" (lli), ti : medical, astronomical/astrological, and ilpa (liiliii) texts, early s S"mkhya, Yoga, and possibly Vaiesika texts (lvilxii), contemporary a: s : " developments in kavya (lxiilxiii), and of course the two epics in some form (our next topics). But in a fascinating oversight or omission, he makes no attempt to relate Avaghosas knowledge of Brahmanical s : dharma to any dharma literature. Perhaps he assumed that the epics were sucient to cover what Avaghosa knew of Brahmanical s : dharma, but that, I believe, would be a very risky assumption. The princes friend Ud"yin does cite epic precedents as to the duty to a fulll womens desire at B 4.6667 (though not the most obvious such case: Arjunas accommodation of Ul"p" which hinges on her interu , pretation of this highest dharma [Mbh 1.206.2333]) counsel which Avaghosa describes as specious words, supported by scrips : " tural tradition (agama) (B 4.83) that the prince deafeningly rejects (8499). But there is probably more than epic precedent when, soon after King Suddhodanas rule is compared to that of Manu, son of the sun (2.16), Avaghosa describes the young prince growing up in s : a kingdom where his father not only practiced all the virtues of selfrestraint, oered large re ceremonies (36), and drank soma as enjoined by the Vedas (37), but judged petitions impartially and " s observed purity of justice (vyavaharauddham) as being holy (ivam) s (39); did not execute the guilty but imposed mild punishments (42), and taxed fairly (44) all this while the king pondered on the a S"stra (vimamara sastram, 52). s " In any case, Johnston makes several astute assessments on Avaghosas erudition that are worth quoting. First, he says that s : Avaghosa writes for a circle in which Brahmanical learning and s : ideas are supreme; his references to Brahmans personally and to their institutions are always worded with the greatest respect, and his many mythological parallels are all drawn from Brahmanical sources s (2004, xvxvi).32 Johnston thus recognizes that Avaghosa partici: pates in what I am calling a civil discourse. Second, Johnston says
31 See Johnston (2005, xlv) and 12425, note to B 14.9: The legend of Vasisthas :: descent from Urva" is alluded to in the RigVeda, which the verse refers to, s although it had already been lost sight of by the time of the epics. 32 See especially B 7.45, where the prince shows respect toward the tapasvins the upright-souled sages, the supporters of religion (dharmabhrtam) of the pe: " nance grove. Johnston (2004, xvi), n. 1 notes two exceptions in the Saundarananda, whose genuineness he doubts. In any case, the point applies to the Buddhacarita.
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that Avaghosas accuracy and even pedantry bind us to assume s : that his learned references are strictly in accordance with the authorities he used, even though these authorities are for the most part no longer extant (xliv). Third, and most important, he observes that Avaghosa seems at times to delight in expressing Buddhist s : views in a way that would remind Hindu readers of their own authorities (lv). If so, for the long run, at least, this was probably wishful thinking, as his verse was little cited after K"lid"sa (lxxixlxxxii) a a and only half-survived in four Sanskrit manuscripts until modern interests somewhat resurrected him. Johnston also remarks that by introducing so much Hindu learning [Avaghosa] oended against s : the puritan moment in Buddhism (xxxvii), which likewise did little to later acclaim him at least in subsequent Indian Buddhist texts, although the Chinese Pilgrim I-Tsing found the Buddhacarita popular in India in the 7th century (Johnston, 2004, xxxvxxxvi) when he travelled in northeastern India around 672. Indeed, that may have been the level at which this Buddhist epic would have had its longest run in India. Recalling Johnstons emphasis on faith and bhakti, it is not uninteresting that a Brahman converted to Buddhism and attentive to Buddhist bhakti could also be familiar with what is similar in the Brahmanical epics.
ASVAGHOSA AND EPIC PRECEDENTS :
For both Brahmanical epics, we thus have the possibility of close reading: both in time, for I do not think it very likely that written versions of either epic can be more than three centuries earlier than Avaghosa, and more likely only preceded him by about a century or s : at the most two; and in relation to the question Johnston raises by insisting that Avaghosa is scrupulous in citing his authorities. With s : these points in mind, it is worth making a few observations about how Avaghosa treats both epics together before looking at the ways s : he treats each distinctly. First, it seems there are recurrent points where he alludes to the two epics either together or alternately. Most striking is the rst such instance when King Suddhodanas court Brahmans interpret the baby princes birth signs and refer to various texts, their authors, and then other heroic gures before Asita arrives to read the signs denitively. To make the point that Anyone may attain pre-eminence anywhere in the world, for in the case of the kings and
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seers the sons accomplished the various deeds their ancestors failed to do (B 1.46), these court Brahmans mention the following instances (I paraphrase from 1.41 to 1.45):
_ 41. Although Bhrgu and Angiras were the founders of families, it was not they who : " s" created (cakratus) the science of royal policy (rajaastra), but their sons Sukra and Brhaspati. : " 42. The son of Sarasvat" Vy"sa, promulgated again the lost Veda (jagada nastam , a :: : vedam) and divided it into many sections, which Vasistha (his great grandfather) had :: not done. " kir 43. And V"lm" was the rst to create poetry (valm" adau ca sasarja padyam), a ki " which Cyavana33 did not do; and Atreya34 proclaimed the science of healing which Atri did not discover. 44. Viv"mitra won brahmanhood (dvijatvam) which Kuika (his grandfather) did s a s not, and Sagara set a limit for the ocean which his Iksv"ku predecessors did not : a achieve. " 45. Janaka gained preeminence in instructing the twiceborn in yoga, and Sura "" (Kr: nas father) and his kin were incapable of the celebrated deeds (khyatani s: : ": karmani) of Sauri (i.e., Kr: na). :s:
" " " " : Verses 4243 establish a clear MahabharataRamayana alternation (Vy"sa and V"lm" a a ki), whereas the rest refer to sages and kings known in both epics. This alternance and fusion, which occurs repeatedly, suggests a kind of proto-lesa intention toward the two epics.35 s : Moreover, it would be hard to explain how Avaghosa would know s : about the two poets, Vy"sa and V"lm" unless he were familiar with a a ki, " " material from the twelfth book of the Mahabharata (if not also the " " : rst) and from the rst book of the Ramayana (if not also the seventh). As Johnston remarks, one may infer from a verse in Avaghosas earlier work, the Saundarananda, that the story of s : V"lm" a kis having taught the poem to Kua and Lava was familiar to s him (2004, xlix). In fact, the verse credits V"lm" with having a ki performed the twins childhood rites, and both V"lm" and the boys a ki 36 with being inspired (dh" mat).
Another Bh"rgava; but see Johnston (2004, 10 n. 43). a Perhaps alluding to Caraka; see Johnston (2004, 70, n. 43). 35 Johnston (2004, xciiixcvi) observes something analogous in Avaghosas s : allowance of double Brahmanical and Buddhist meanings in samdhi passages with a : negative disappearing (3.25; 12.82 [he probably means 12.81]). 36 " kiriva dh" ams ca dh" Saundarananda 1.26cd: valm" m " : mator maithileyayoh; see : Johnston (1929, 3 n. 26): inspired for dh" mat, refering to V"lm" a kis poetic " " : inspiration in composing the Ramayana and to Kua and Lavas artistic skill in s ": : repeating it. Yet Johnston (2004, xlix) says, As regards the Uttarakanda, I can nd no reason to suppose that the poet knew any portion of it.
34 33
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But Avaghosa also has a point in making epic and other s : Brahmanical mythological allusions, though some of them are certainly obscure.37 It is to bring across a realization that, no matter how illuminating heroic, sagely, and divine precedents may be as parallels, they are ultimately irrelevant to the achievement of the Buddha. In making this thoroughly intelligible Buddhist point, Avaghosa is distinguishing his work from both epics, where heroic s : and divine precedents are repeatedly cited, and especially, in the " " Mahabharata, cited by Vy"sa and Kr: na,38 although numerous other a :s: narrators employ the same device. Thus, for instance, once the prince has undertaken his great departure, he dispenses with royal precedents for returning home from the forest, including the precedent of R"ma, saying to one of his fathers emissaries, And as for a your quoting the instances of R"ma and the others to justify my a return [home], they do not prove your case; for those who have broken their vows are not competent authorities in deciding matters ": ": " of dharma (na te pramanam na hi dharmanicayesv alam pramanaya s : " pariksaya vrata) (B 9.77). R"ma may oer a precedent but not an a : ": authority (pramanam)! Moreover, we are left with the tantalizing question of what vow R"ma might have broken,39 for it is almost a certainly king R"ma, son of Daaratha, who is being kept in focus a s here, even though Avaghosa can also refer to R"ma D"arath" and s a as : R"ma J"madagnya in one and the same breath.40 Further along, one a a hears similarly how Vasistha, Atri, and others came under the :: dominion of time; so too Yay"ti, etc., and hundreds of Indras, a ": " whereas Sambuddhas entered nirvana (24.3842). Finally, in the last canto, when seven kings are ready to go to war over the Buddhas s a bones and cite as heroic precedents for doing so Siup"las stand
For unknown and uncertain references and usually Johnstons discussion thereof, see 41.1618; 4.7275; 4.80 (? Kar"lajanaka); 9.20; 9.6970; 11.15, 11.18; a " 11.31 (Mekhala-Dandakas); 13.11 (Surpaka, the shes foe); 28.32 (Eli and Paka). :: 38 For some discussion, see Hiltebeitel ([1976] 1990, 261266) (Kr: na reveals di:s: vine precedents for Arjunas killing of Karna), 289296 (Vy"sa and Kr: na reveal a : :s: divine precedents for Yudhisthiras Avamedha); 2001, 73 (idem), 49 and 118120 s :: (Vy"sa reveals precedents for the polyandric marriage of Draupad" a ). 39 I do not think it could be a marriage vow, since if there is such a thing in the " " : Ramayana or the Buddhacarita, prince Sarv"rthasiddha (B 2.17) has just broken his a marriage vow as well. 40 See in the same canto B 9.25, where the prince hears about both R"mas and a Bh": ma as exemplars of doing deeds to please their fathers. See also 9.69, where he s hears, So too R"ma left the penance grove and protected the earth, when it was a " oppressed by the indel (anaryais) on which Johnston is no doubt right that this probably refers to Bh"rgava R"ma (2004, 137, n. 69). a a
37
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against Kr: na, the end of Vr: nis and Andhakas over a woman, :s: :s: Bh"rgava R"mas decimation of the Ksatriyas, and R"vanas infata a a : : uation with S" a (28.2831), the point couldnt be clearer that heroic t" precedents from the Brahmanical epics are dangerous. Or, as Brockington puts it in the case of the destruction of the Vr: nis and :s: Andhakas, the story gures as a moral warning (1998, 484). Yet we will also have occasions to note that Avaghosa, probably s : " both as a kavya poet and a Buddhist convert, could have his reasons for treating epic allusions with a little play. At Buddhacarita 4.16, for instance, Ud"yin begins urging the women to show some gumption in a seducing the prince: Of old time, for instance, the great seer, Vy"sa, a whom even the gods could hardly contend with, was kicked with her " foot by the harlot (veavadhva), K"isundar" Johnston says, The s as . story is unidentied and it is uncertain if K"isundar" is a proper as name or not (2004, 46 n. 16). But most likely it unfolds, a bit bawdily, from the night Vy"sa spends happily siring Vidura with the a udra servant-woman of the K"" princess Ambik", whom Ambik" S" as a a adorns with her own jewels so that she looks like an Apsaras (svair " m " " bh": anair das" bh": ayitva apsaropamam; Mbh 1.100.23) i.e., a us : us beautiful heavenly courtesan and sends to Vy"sa in her own stead, a apparently to try to fool him (100.23101.1). No doubt this maid would also be from K"" and thus either named K"isundar" or as, as described as the beautiful K"" woman. Sullivan, who discusses as this and a similar verse in Avaghosas Saundarananda (7.30), cons : isundar" to have been Ambik" herself, but this is a more siders K"s a a unlikely solution since Ambik" would have had to confront Vy"sa a a directly to have (in Sullivans words) so decisively rejected him (1990, 291), and since the verse is intended as inspiration in the arts of seduction. In eect, Ud"yin would be saying, If nothing else works, a give the prince a kick. As we now proceed to the epics themselves, I think we can thus allow ourselves a caveat with regard to Johnstons insistence that Avaghosa is scrupulous in citing authorities. I certainly believe that s : he wants to be understood by those who know the epic texts, but it is unlikely that he or they knew them only as written texts, since by his time they no doubt already served as the basis for oral adumbrations in both Brahmanical and Buddhist circles in which either and indeed both together could have some fun with the text. This point is worth keeping in mind as we now address the more serious matters that interest Avagosa in juxtaposing the life of the Buddha to scenes in s : both epics, not only separately but together, where they exemplify
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their dierent but also complementary guidelines on a basic problem raised by the Brahmanical dharma of householder kings.
" " THE BUDDHACARITA AND THE RAMAYANA :
" " : As Johnston points out, Avaghosas treatment of the Ramayana is s : " " more direct than that of the Mahabharata, since, as we have already begun to notice, he makes frequent reference to the life of the " " : Ramayanas main hero. Johnston picks up on the Buddhacaritas closing colophon, where the poet writes of himself as Avaghosa of s : S"keta [i.e., Ayodhy"],41 for a likely explanation. a a
" " : The case is entirely dierent with the Ramayana, for which an inhabitant of S"keta, a the scene of its most poignant episodes and the capital of its dynasty, could not but keep a warm place in his heart, however his religious beliefs had changed. Avaghosa s : never tires of reminding us that the Buddha belonged to the dynasty of his home and 42 strikes this note in the very rst verse of the Buddhacarita.
From this no doubt important point, Johnston turns to enquire to what extent he [Avaghosa] knew the poem in its present form s : (2004, xlviii), favoring the view of Andrzej Gawronski, who, he says, has
proved conclusively, as I hold, that Avaghosa knew certain portions of the second s : book, the Ayodhyak"nda, in very much the condition that we have them in to-day a: : and that he took pleasure in drawing a comparison between the Buddha quitting his home and R"ma leaving for the forest. That he knew the continuation of the story is a proved from a reference in B., xxciii. 31 [concerning the bad precedent, just cited, of R"vanas doomed infatuation with S" a], but whether in the present form or not is a : t" not clear from the wording. It certainly does seem that there are many future passages in the later books likely to have inuenced the Buddhist poet. The question " really turns on whether Avaghosa knew some or all of the passages in the Ram., s : describing how Hanum"n visited R"vanas palace and saw the women asleep. (2004, a a : xlviii)
" " : In fact, Gawronski limited his discussion to Ramayana Book 2 because he found the parallels more direct there and a larger comparison too unwieldy (1919, 2728); he felt enabled to conclude with a sucient amount of certainty that at the time of Avaghosa there s : " " : existed at least Book II of the Ramayana (but most probably the remaining genuine books also) in much the same form as is known to us to-day (40). Gawronski agged most of the Book 2 passages that
41 Johnston (2004), Part 3, 124. Cf. Lamotte 656: a native of S"keta who had a converted to Buddhism. 42 Johnston (2004, xlvii). See also Buddhacarita 10.23; 13.1 (implied); 14.92; 17.6.
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" I will discuss. As to the well-known kavya question of the similarities between Hanum"ns viewing the sleeping women in R"vanas palace a a : and the Buddhacaritas sleeping harem scene on the night of the Buddhas great departure, Johnston says he will refrain from giving " " : a denite answer until there is a Ramayana critical edition (2004, xlvii). On this matter, Brockington takes a favorable view, as do I, of V. Raghavans demonstration (1956) that Avaghosa borrows the s : ": : harem scene from Sundarakanda 5.79, including parallels in wording (Brockington, 1998, 485). Beyond these probably unnecessary cautions, Johnston makes some interesting observations about intratextual intricacies: that there is a problem with whether Viv"mitra is seduced by Ghrt"c" as s a : a , " " : Avaghosa has it along with a verse in Ramayana Book 4, or s : " " : Menak", who is the seductress in the story in Ramayana Book 1;43 a " " " and that Avaghosa would seem to have needed the Ramopakhyana s : to explain why he has V"madeva and Vasistha visit Rama in the a :: forest (Johnston, 2004, xlixl). But these cautions and conundrums have to do not with the heart of Avaghosas interests in the s : " " : Ramayana, but with his selective pattern of making allusions as ultimately negative precedents, which I have already discussed. The heart of the matter is, as Johnston puts it, that Avaghosa took s : pleasure in drawing a comparison between the Buddha quitting his home and R"ma leaving for the forest (xlviii). Indeed, the a Buddhacarita has this much in common with the P"li Vessantara a ": Jataka, which, as Gombrich (1985) shows, involves detailed but more indirect and deected correspondences not between R"ma and the a Buddha, but between R"ma and the Buddha in has very last life as a Prince Vessantara.44 For Avaghosa, however, it is not just a matter of poetic pleasure s : " " : (such as might be the case the Ramayanas sleeping harem scene), as Johnston seems to imply. What interests Avaghosa is the opportus : nity R"mas departure oers to draw a contrast between Brahmanical a
" For the rst, Johnston (2004, xlix) gives Ram 4.35.7, which is 4.34.7 in the Baroda Critical Edition; the second is CE 1.62.413. As Lefeber (1994, 289) notes, some commentators identify the two Apsarases as one and the same. 44 Gombrich astutely suggests that this deection to a previous life reects the hostility of Therav"da Buddhism (though the VJ story was not conned to the a " " :" Therav"da) to the values embodied in the Ramayana, and agrees with Bechert a " " : (1979, 28) that this would further have to do with the Ramayanas being unacceptable to the Sinhalese because it contradicts their view of the islands history _ " " : especially in Ramayana Book 6. Avaghosa would not have this Lankan problem s : with V"lm" a ki.
43
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dharma and Buddhist dharma. Taking into account only the rst fourteen cantos of the Buddhacarita (the ones for which we have Sanksrit texts), the prince, up to his enlightenment, has no less than 13 interlocutors with whom he hones his views on dharma: 1. his charioteer, through the rst three signs (B 3.2665); 2. Ud"yin (4.9 a 23, 5699); 3. the Sramana who appears as the fourth sign (5.921); 4. : " " a a noblemans daughter (rajakanya), elsewhere45 known as Kis" Gotam" whose words of praise upon seeing his return from the , fourth sign crystallize his silent resolve to pursue the means to nal ": ": " nirvana (parinirvanavidhau matim cakara) and the imperishable : dharma (5.2326); 5. his father (5.2746, this being the only point where he addresses his son directly); 6. the horse Kanthaka46 (5.68 72, a one-way conversation in which the prince voices his readiness for the great departure after the Akanistha deities have arranged :: the sleeping harem scene); 7. his groom Chandaka (6.152, when the prince sends him home after making the great departure);47 8. the anchorites of a Bh"rgava penance grove, there with their wives (7.1 a 58); 9. the Purohita (9.8151) and 10. the Minister (9.5279),48 jointly sent by the king to the penance grove to speak for him and the : Iksv"ku line (9.4); 11. Srenya-Bimbisara, king of Magadha (10.22 : a 11.71); 12. Ar"da K"l"ma (12.183); and 13. M"ra (13.169). a: aa a In at least four of these cases, Avaghosa relates the princes s : " " : departure directly to the Ramayana (or in the fourth case possibly to " " " the Ramopakhyana). First and foremost, King Suddhodana compares his grief to that of Daaratha friend of Indra, and envies Daaratha s s for going to heaven when R"ma did not return (B 8.7991): Thus a the king grieved over the separation from his son and lost his steadfastness, though it was innate like the solidity of the earth; and as if in delirium, he uttered many laments, like Daaratha overs whelmed by grief for R"ma (8.81). Grief (oka) is of course the a s
45
" " And in dierent circumstances; see the Nidanakatha version in Warren (1998,
59).
46 Avaghosa speaks of it as King Suddhodanas horse, which he has ridden in s : battle (5.75). It is not born, along with the groom, at the same time as the Buddha, as " " in the Nidanakatha (see Warren, 1998, 48). 47 Assuming that Chandaka is dierent from the unnamed charioteer. 48 ": Referred to, when the prince dismisses them, as tau havyamantrakrtau, the ocers who were in charge of the kings sacrices and his counsel chamber (B 10.1).
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" " : " " Ramayanas underlying sthayibhava or stable aesthetic emotion in " relation to karuna, pity as its predominant aesthetic avor : _ (ang" rasa),49 and it characterizes King Suddhodanas feelings for his 50 son throughout the Buddhacarita. Second, the groom Chandaka says, I cannot abandon you as Sumantra did R"ghava (6.36). a Third, when he and the riderless horse return, the townsfolk shed tears in the road, as happened of old when the chariot of Daarathas s son returned (8.8). Fourth, as already noted, the chaplain (purohita) and minister are compared, as emissaries, to V"madeva and Vasistha a :: visiting R"ma in the forest (9.9). a But there are also indirect allusions to the R"m" story. Indeed, if a a " " : the two emissaries seem to step into their roles with Ramayana ech51 oes, the same can be said of the princes encounter with the many R: is who dwell in a penance grove together with their wives (B 7.3). I :s would propose that Avaghosa builds up this scene to represent the s : " vanaprastha (married forest dweller) mode of life idealized in the " " : forest books of both epics,52 but especially in the Ramayana, where R"ma meets a distinct set of Vedic sages, one of whom, Atri, is a explicitly ensconced in the forest with his wife Anas"y" (see u a Hiltebeitel, forthcoming-b). In any case, the princes descent in the " " : Ramayanas dynastic lineage is certainly invoked when the teats of the ashram cows in this workshop as it were of dharma (7.33)53 ow upon rst seeing the prince as the lamp of the Iksv"ku race : a (7.6)! Further, while each of these 13 interlocutors voices or hears words in the princes presence, his abandoned wife Yaodhar"s s a words in his absence are, I think, also spoken in evocation of S" a: t"
49 50
See my discussion in Hiltebeitel (forthcoming-b). See 1.76 (Suddhodana warned not to grieve over his sons inevitable enlight" " : enment); 6.1920 (with likely Ramayana echoes in the princes reference to the road of his [Iksv"ku] ancestors) and 6.3031 (Chandakas response); and especially 9.13 : a 15, 9.29 (as aired by the Purohita, whom the prince answers on this point at 9.3335). Meanwhile others also grieve throughout Canto 8 (oka is mentioned twelve times s there) when it is realized that the prince has not returned with Chandaka and Kanthaka. 51 " " They are not found in the Nidanakatha. 52 See Biardeau (2002), vol. 2, 7071, 7576, 82 on these often married forest hermits, their hospitality to epic princes, and their probably prior portrayal as well in the dharmas"tras. u 53 See Johnston (2004, 98 n. 33), crediting Garwonski (1919, 1415) on this reading, but I think a little too quickly dismissing his extension of the image to mean forge, smithy, making the penance grove like a forge of dharma in full activity " (dharmasya karmantam iva pravrttam). :
251
If he wishes to carry out dharma and yet casts me o, his lawful partner in the duties of religion and now husbandless, in what respect is there dharma for him who wishes to follow austerities separated from his lawful partner? Surely he has not heard of our ancestors, Mahasudara and the other kings of old, s who took their wives with them to the forest, since he thus intends to carry out dharma without me. (8.6162).54
Whoever Mah"sudara may be,55 Yaodhar" would count R"ma a s s a a among her husbands Iksv"ku ancestors. This thread of direct and a : " " : indirect Ramayana evocations comes to a decisive climax, in a passage cited earlier, when the prince tells his fathers Purohita and ": Minister emissaries that R"ma is not an authority (pramanam) on a dharma (9.77). For now, it must suce to note that Avaghosa nds seven of s : the 13 champions of Brahmanical dharma the father, the groom, the riderless horse (rather than the empty chariot), the two emissaries, the wife, and the anchorites (with their cows) suitable, even if at a stretch, for evocations of the R"ma story. It would take more space a than it merits to demonstrate that, even beyond these seven, all 13 speak for one or another form Brahmanical dharma including, as " " : we shall see, M"ra. Suce it to say that through the run of Ramayana a precedents that ends with the prince dismissing them, it is, from early on, the variegated dharma (dharmam vividham) (B 2.54) performed : by King Suddhodana as a astra-pondering king one who, among s" other duties, has just secured the continuance of his royal line through the birth of his son (2.5253) that anchors all these Brahmanical concerns. The ultimate irony of this portrayal of Brahmanical royal dharma by a Buddhist poet comes across when Chandaka makes one of his last appeals: You should not desert, as a " nihilist the good law (saddharmam iva nastikah), your loving father, : who yearns for his son (6.31).
54 " " " " : m/ " sa mam anatham sahadharmacarin" apasya dharmam yadi kartum icchati/8.61. : " : m " kuto sya dharmah sahadharmacarin" : / vina tapo yah paribhoktum icchati// : : " " " " " 62. : noti n"nam sa na p"rvaparthivan/ mahasudaraprabhrt" pitamahan/ sr : u : u s : n " " " vanani patn" sahitan upeyusas/ tatha hi dharmam madrte cik" : ati. rs : : Gawronski (1919, 3536) remarks that the previous lines 8.55-58 of Yaodhar"s s a lament and her contrast of the easy life he has enjoyed thus far and the drawbacks " of dwelling in a hermitage have another Ram parallel, but the words there are " Daarathas, the verses occur in a long interpolation (Ram 2, Appendix 1, no. 9, lines s 180187), and the theme is perhaps rather a cliche. 55 Johnston (2004, 117) notes that he is presumably the Mah"sudassana of the a genealogies of the D" pavamsa and Mah"vamsa. a : :
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" " : This Ramayana-related nexus runs mainly through the Buddhacaritas rst nine cantos. Indeed, the only continuation I can see in later cantos comes after the Buddhas enlightenment, when The seers of the Iksv"ku race who had been rulers of men, the royal seers and the : a great seers, lled with wonder and joy at his achievement, stood in their mansions in the heavens reverencing him (B 14.92). What a lovely twist to leave us wondering whether R"ma is among them! a " " : Within this Ramayana skein, there seem to be two sets of concerns, each with numerous subsidiary considerations: grhasthadharma, or : the duties of a householder; and priorities regarding the second and "s third stages of life as they bear upon kings in the scheme of aramadharma, the ideal sequence of the four stages of life a term not used in the rst half of the Buddhacarita, but one whose currency is certainly implied, as when King Suddhodana tells the prince not to violate their proper order (5.32).56 This of course means that the two concerns intersect, since according to the classical formulation of "s the arama system (Olivelle, 1993, 27, 30) the householder mode is the second life-stage. We see this intersection from the Buddhacaritas rst mention of grhasthadharma, which, ttingly, comes right when King Suddho: dana rst faces his sons determination to abandon both home and his succession to the throne, and thus frames the issue as one of royal dharma. Says the father to the son:
But, O lover of dharma, it is now my time for dharma, after I have devolved the sovereignty onto you, the cynosure of all eyes; but if you were to forcibly quit your father (gurum), O rmly courageous one, your dharma would become adharma. Therefore give up this your resolve. Devote yourself for the present to householder " dharma (bhava tavan nirato grhasthadharme). For entry to the penance grove is : agreeable to a man, after he has enjoyed the delights of youth. (B 5.3233).57
Note that entry to the penance grove (tapovanapravea) is also s used for the forest-dwelling anchorites when they return to their dharma workshop at 7.58. This suggests that the term characterizes " the third life-stage of the forest dweller or vanaprastha (even though the text does not mention the term), and that King Suddhodana, at least, conceives the tension between him and his son as
See Olivelle (1993, 121 and n. 30), so translating vikrame at 5.32c, and commenting that Johnstons translation misses the point; cf. 10.33, discussed below. 57 " 5.32. mama tu priya dharma dharmakalas/ tvayi laksm" avasrjya laksmabh"te/ u : m : " sthiravikramavikramena dharmas/ tava hitva tu gurum bhaved adharmah// : : " " 33. tad imam vyavasayam utsrja/ tvam bhava tavan nirato grhasthadharme/ : : " " s : purusasya vahahsukhani bhuktva/ raman" tapovanapraveah. : : : yo
56
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one to be worked out between the dharmas of the second and third life-stages, and not the second and the fourth. This is so even after the prince hears the noblemans daughter utter the ambiguous word nirvrta by which she is describing the woman who would be : " blessed (Johnston, 2004, 66) or happy to have such a husband as he, but which lls him with the supreme calm (amam param) that s ": inspires him to win parinirvana (5.2425) and tells his father that he ": has decided to seek moksa (5.28), preferring that to the word nirvana, : which is not used elsewhere in the rst fourteen cantos to describe the princes quest for it. Almost perversely, King Suddhodana avoids talking in such terms and, in the passage just cited, immediately rephrases his sons resolve into a premature decision for the penance " grove and the implied vanaprastha-dharma. Indeed, King Suddhodana carries his seemingly deliberate misunderstanding to an oer to go to the forest rather than his son (5.32).58 This matter of untimely dharma being adharma percolates along through the princes interactions with Chandaka (6.21), the kings two Brahman emissaries : (9.1417; 9.53), and even Srenya Bimbis"ra (10.33), and gives the a prince several opportunities to trump these Brahmanical concerns for "s the inherent timeliness of aramadharma with Buddhist rejoinders that there is no such thing as a wrong time for dharma (6.21; cf. 9.3738, 11.6263). On the whole, such concerns parallel the situa" " : tion in the Ramayana, which does not concern its hero with any inclination toward moksa or the fourth life-stage of renunciation : (samnyasa).59 : " " " : Yet the prince begins to break past this Ramayana scenario in the penance grove when he tells the anchorites that one of the reasons he does not stay with them is that their practice of tapas yields merely Paradise (divam, svarga; B 7.1826, 4853).60 Unlike King Suddhodana, the anchorites know what he is talking about and tell him that if he prefers liberation (which they call both apavarga and moksa) :
On abdication by kings in favor of their sons, see Olivelle (1993, 116): The epics contain numerous accounts of famous kings who followed this custom (with citations, n. 15). 59 " " : "s This would be one reason why the Ramayana has little to say about the arama " system. Finding only one reference (Ram 2.98.58), which he would like to see as an " " : interpolation, Olivelle (1993, 103) supposes that the Ramayana would be older than this system, but his dates (pre-5th century B.C.E.) for this epic are, I believe, far too early. 60 That svarga is a this-worldly condition is emphasized from the beginning when we learn that King Suddhodanas kingdom was like svarga to his subjects upon his sons birth (B 2.1213).
58
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over Paradise (7.5253), he should seek out Ar"da K"l"ma. They a: aa " " : clearly know of a fourth stage of life. With this, we put the Ramayana " " behind us and turn to Avaghosas treatment of the Mahabharata, in s : which all four life-patterns are a matter of major scrutiny and debate. " " This returns us to the matter of dating the Mahabharata relative to the dharmas"tras and Manu (see Section Early Discourse on Dharma u " " and Kings above). As Olivelle beautifully shows, the Mahabharata "s knows the aramas both in their original system (1993, 15355) known to the dharmas"tras, where they are four dierent lifelong u choices (vikalpa) to be made before marriage, and in their classical system (14851) favored (though not exclusively) by Manu (129), which staggers the four through a males life. I think that in airing both " " systems, the Mahabharata brings them under debate such as Olivelle himself mentions (6970), taking them up au courant with their treatment in the dharmas"tras some time during the second to rst century u B.C.E. and probably soon before Manu further codies them. The Buddhacaritas view that there is no wrong time for dharma then looks to be a typically Buddhist expression of the pro-choice position that " " Manu, unlike the dharmas"tras and Mahabharata, seeks so energetiu cally to suppress (131136, 147, 176). Indeed, while making a negative " " evaluation of this position, the Mahabharata includes a prophesy to King M"ndh"tar by Visnu in the guise of Indra that would seem to link a a :: "s ": " : ": free choice of "ramas (aramanam vikalpah) with the proliferation of as _ " Buddhists (bhiksavo linginas tatha) after the passing of the Krta age : : (Mbh 12.65.25). In any case, I do not share Olivelles (1993) acceptance " " of a period of eight centuries of Mahabharata composition (148), or, as will become clear in what now follows, his view of the admittedly late " " didactic sections of the Mahabharata (161). And indeed, Olivelle seems recently to have been rethinking these very matters (2005, 56, 2324, 3738).
" " THE BUDDHACARITA AND THE MAHABHARATA
" " Johnston sees the Mahabharata as posing dierent problems from the " " : Ramayana, proposing that Avaghosa might know it in a form no s : " longer available to us (2004, xlvi), perhaps even in an early kavya form, which is now irretrievably lost to us (xlvii),61 and noting that, As for proper names, allusions to the main characters are very thin
61
I would just say that this leads us nowhere.
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(xlvixlvii). Johnston is certainly right that the Buddhacarita is nearly " " silent on the Mahabharatas main story. The text does not mention Arjuna, Yudhisthira, Draupad" Duryodhana, Karna, and so on. And , :: : given that fact, we can go even a little beyond Johnston and say that Avaghosa is not really interested in touching base with any of this s : epics high dramas, as he is with R"mas departure from Ayodhy". Yet a a Avaghosa does refer to the entire destruction of the Kurus at B s : 11.31, to Bh": ma for a story known to the Harivamsa but not to the s : epic at 11.18; to P"ndu and M"dr" at 4.79; and to many legends a: : a found in the MBh, but not always in quite the same form (xlvii). Curiously, he neglects to mention references to Vy"sa and Kr: na, most a :s: of which I have noted, and which have one point of interest in that " " : several of them come, combined with similar Ramayana references, near the Buddhacaritas beginning and end,62 where we might consider them as points for his readers entry and departure, or frames. Yet once we look past the allusions and negative precedents, we nd " " that Avaghosa engages the Mahabharata for much the same reason as s : " " : the Ramayana: his interest in the relation between Buddhist and Brahmanical dharma in connection with questions that bear on the princes great departure. But now the discourse is taken to a higher register: from the constraints of the princes tussle with his father over the royal protocols for grhasthadharma and the ascetic regimes of the : forest-dweller, we move on to the search for the true dharma. From the time that the anchorites in the penance grove tell the prince to seek out Ar"da K"l"ma through his meetings en route with his fathers two a: aa : emissaries and King Srenya -Bimbis"ra of Magadha, and nally, after a his meeting with Ar"da and the period the prince performs penances, a: the challenge of M"ra, the princes quest for moksa takes hold. And a : with it, we nd what I would propose are two kinds of close but indirect " " readings of the Mahabharata: one concerning some of its didactic teachings mainly about moksa,63 and one referencing an early : " " Mahabharata episode that I have already mentioned, the killing of Jar"sandha, king of Magadha. Let us look rst at the latter. a Despite the anchorites admonition that the prince should head north to pursue the highest dharma, and take not a step towards the south (B 7.41), he proceeds south into the Magadha capital of : R"jagrha, ruled by King Srenya-Bimbis"ra, on his way toward Ar"da a : a a:
On Vy"sa, see not only 1.42 but 4.16 (discussed above) and 4.76 (implied); on a Kr: na see 1.45, 28.2829. :s: 63 ": As pointed out above, the term nirvana is barely used in the rst half of the Buddhacarita.
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K"l"mas hermitage in the Vindhyas.64 Certain verses describing his aa approach are interesting:
6. On seeing him, the gaudily-dressed felt ashamed and the chatterers on the roadside fell silent; as in the presence of Dharma incarnate none think thoughts not directed to the way of salvation, so no one indulged in improper thoughts. 9. And R"jagrhas Goddess of Fortune was perturbed on seeing him, who was worthy a : of ruling the earth and was yet in a bhiksus robe, with the circle of hair between his : brows, with the long eyes, radiant body and hands that were beautifully webbed.65
For the very rst time, Avaghosa describes the prince as dressed, or s : disguised, as a bhiksu (bhiksuvesam), just like the Sramana who : : : : appeared before him in that guise as the fourth sign. Indeed, that it was " " a guise for the Sramana is emphasized in the Nidanakatha, which : remarks that it was a sign of things to come sent from the gods, since there were no bhikkhus at the time of fourth signs appearance (Warren, 1998, 57). Along his way, the prince stills the improper thoughts of those who see him appear like Dharma incarnate, thoughts not only of the citys bon vivants but of R"jagrhas Goddess of Fortune a : (laksm" who understands that, despite his bhiksu dress or guise, he is t : ), : : to rule the earth. When King Srenya, who might thus have reasons for concern, sees him too from a palace balcony, he orders an ocer to report on the princes movements. The prince moves calmly, now begging for food apparently for the rst time that it is the rst time is " " suggested in the Nidanakatha, where he has to force down some almsfood that is disgusting (see Nakamura, 2000, 124125) accepting what comes to him without distinction. Taking his meal at a lonely " " rivulet (Avaghosa does not, like the Nidanakatha, have him nearly s : vomit), from there he climbs Mount P"ndava (B 10.1314). Hearing of a: : : this destination, King Srenya, who is now described as ": : ryah pandavatulyav" : which Johnston translates, in heroism the peer of P"ndus son, but which could be simplied to in heroism equal to a a: :
64 7.57; see 7.58: leaving the penance grove, he proceeded on his way, presumably, as pointed out to him, toward Ar"das hermitage at Vindhyakostha (7.54), a: :: which Johnston locates in the Vindhyas, noting evidence that the Vindhyas may have been the site of a S"mkhya school associated with the name Vindhyav"sin (2004, 102, a: a n. 54), whom Larson and Bhattacharya date to ca. 300400 C.E. (1987, 15, 143). Ar"da/Ar"da never seems that far south in other sources. a: " a: 65 10.6. tam jihriyuh preksya vicitravesah/ prak" : avacah pathi maunam " : / rn yuh : : : : ": : " :" " dharmasya saksad iva samnikarse/ na kacid anyayamatir babh"va// s u : : " ": : " 9. dr: tva va sornabhruvam ayataksam/ jvalachar" : subhajalahastam/ ram : : s: " " " : " : tam bhiksuvesam ksitipalanarham/ samcuksubhe rajagrhasya laksm": . : : : : : : h
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P"ndava then ascends the same P"ndava Mountain (17), where he a: : a: : sees the bodhisattva (18) sitting in majestic beauty and tranquility like " some being magically projected by Dharma (tam r"palaksmya ca : u : " samena caiva dharmasya nirmanam ivopavistam; 19). : :: Although I have found no one who has given it a moments notice, Buddhist tradition itself thus makes one of the ve peaks of R"jagrha, a : or at least part of one of them, the P"ndava Mountain. This is the case a: : " " already in the Suttanipata, from the Khuddaka Nikaya, which, usually accepted as part of the P"li canon, is certainly older than Avaghosa, a s : and seems to be a basis for the more developed account mentioning the " " same mountain in the Nidanakatha.66 The latter is ascribed to the fth century A.D., although Johnston thinks that Avaghosa may be s : presumed to have used an earlier version [of it], no longer in existence " " (2004, xl), as one of his sources. In the Mahabharata, not surprisingly, there is no mountain by that name. Rather, when Kr: na, Arjuna, and :s: Bh" ma approach Magadha to kill Jar"sandha and reach a certain a Mount Goratha, they set eyes on Magadha city (Mbh 2.18.30), which Kr: na describes as having ve beautiful mountains: the wide :s: Vaih"ra, Var"ha, Vr: abha, R: igiri, and Caityaka that stand guard a a :s :s " " over Girivraja (19.23).67 We note the Mahabharatas name for the 68 " " city is Girivraja, not R"jagrha. The Mahabharata means by this a : name not just the Magadha capital but the mountain corral (giri-vraja) where Jar"sandha keeps 86 of the worlds hundred kings a imprisoned (see Biardeau 2002, vol. 1, 327).
66 See Nakamura (2000, 122, 124); Thomas ([1927] 2000, 68). Mount P"ndava is a: : " also a stable xture in The Gilgit Manuscript of the Samghabhedavastu, being the 17th : " " and Last Section of the Vinaya of the M"lasarvastivadins (Strong, 2001, 14) and the u Lalitavistara (to judge from Poppe (1967, 134)). 67 As noted by Brockington (2002, 79), a ve-verse Southern Recension insertion amplies the description of the mountains (2.206*, after 2.19.10), but adds nothing noteworthy for our purposes unless perhaps that Caityaka is girirestha, the best of s :: peaks (line 2), and that the ve are now numbered as P"ndara (presumably a: : Vr: abha, unless, perhaps under Buddhist inuence, this interpolation is trying to nd :s an alternate place for an intentionally disguised or just garbled P"ndava mouna: : tain), Vipula, V"r"ha, Caityaka, and M"tanga (R: igiri), the latter reminding us aa a _ :s _ perhaps of the Untouchable R: i Matanga of a forest hermitage near Kiskindh" in the a :s : " " : Ramayana and of the splendid mountain named after him at Vijayanagar. 68 Biardeau (2002, vol. 1), 330 introduces a little uncertainty as to whether Girivraja and R"jagrha are the same, but that they are early and later names for at least a : parts of the same city seems well enough established. See van Buitenen (1975, 1516); Lamotte (1988, 1718); Schumann 1989, 90. The Buddhacarita uses both R"jagrha a : (10.1 and 9) and Girivraja (11.73). For the Mbh to use only Girivraja is probably an archaism.
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Buddhist tradition thus references the P"ndavas, and one may a: : " " assume the Mahabharata, and in all likelihood the Jar"sandha epia sode, when it has the prince cross the P"ndavas tracks on P"ndava a: : a: : 69 Mountain. From this, the most straightforward assumption would be that the Buddhists have named as P"ndava Mountain the a: : mountain, or at least part of the mountain, which Kr: na, Arjuna, and :s: Bh" ma now ascend: the Caityaka Peak, as seems to be borne out by s details supplied by H. W. Schumann.70 Yet Avaghosa goes beyond : other Buddhist sources in describing the Bodhisattvas trek here. And though it is not a matter one can demonstrate with a perfect parallel t, it seems from some of Avaghosas new themes, similes, and s : points of emphasis that he does so not only out of a residue of " " folklore but with a Mahabharata textually in view. Rather than go over the Jar"sandha episode in detail, as several a have done71, I present the following chart of parallels and oppositions, which should suce to give a basic idea of why a journey of
69 Indeed, if one assumes that the Buddhist tradition works from oral Magadha stories before the epics written textone would presumably have to presume a " " proto-Jarasandhavadhathen the Suttanipata account may be older than the Mbh, " since the Suttanipata is thought to present some of the earliest sources on the Buddha legend (Lamotte, 1988, 660; Nakamura, 2000, 19, 12324, 13134; Thomas, [1927] 2000, 273). From this standpoint, the Mbh would still remain within its game plan if it concealed the name P"ndava Mountain. But more likely the Buddhist story a: : develops this detail in the post-Mauryan period. 70 That is, by correlating the map in Schumann (1989, 90) with what he says on p. 46: the P"ndava hill, the north-easterly of the ve hills surrounding R"jagaha. a: : a The map names six mountains around Old R"jagaha or Giribbaja: Vaibhara to a the west, Vipula north, Rama northeast, Chattha with the Vulture Peak to the east, Udaya southeast, and Sona southwest. Chattha Mountain would thus be in the right position to be both the likely alternate for Caityaka and another name for P"ndava, a: : although the map does not show this latter name. Note that Vaibhara is the only other mountain with a similar name in both texts. R"jagrha became the site of a : " eighteen vast monasteries (Lamotte, 1988, 1718 (19) presumably viharas, from which, of course, comes also the name Bihar. Lodhra trees cover the P"ndava a: : Mountain (B 10.15), or all ve peaks (Mbh 2.19.4). 71 See Biardeau (2002, vol. 1, 324354) and vol. 2, 755758, for her most recent discussion; Brockington (2002); van Buitenen (1975, 1118); Hiltebeitel (1989) and (forthcoming-a). I am not persuaded by Brockingtons method of dating the whole episode as late and added: he seems to accept the criterion of grounds of content [73], and includes among his own criteria starting from the premise that [it] is anomalous [74], that it is extraneous to the plot of the MBh [80], and, I think most basically, observing that it reects relatively late Vaisnava-Saiva opposition [82]). :: But it is striking that he proposes for its composition an immediately post Mauryan _ Sunga date (2002, 8485) of the later part of the 2nd century or, perhaps most probably, the rst century B.C. (86). Such a date for me is not, however, late; rather, it is attractive for the larger Mbh archetype, parts and whole, which, as Brockington mentions (79), includes the episode (see Hiltebeitel, 2001, 2031, 2005).
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two P"ndavas and Kr: na to Magadha would have interested Buda: : :s: dhists before Avaghosa. Further, by accenting what appear to be s : Avaghosas most important innovations in bold face,72 it should s : " " aord a basic idea of what interested him in the Mahabharatas " Jarasandhavadha episode in particular. I suggest that one rst read the unaccented sequence that reects the prior Buddhist story (items 1, 2, 4, 6, 8, 11, and 14), and then the whole alignment to see what Avaghosa seems to have made of it. s : The rst thing worth noting is that Avaghosa introduces an epic s : tone to the episode: Magadhas Laksm" shows her favor on the : : prince; Srenya now challenges the prince to ght him.73 The challenge : is particularly gratuitous,74 and when it is noticed that Srenya makes it upon seeing the prince in the garb or guise of a bhiksu, one gets a : " " " good index that Avaghosa is taking the Mahabharatas snataka garb s : or guises as his epic touchstone.75 In each case it is a matter of responding to a challenge posed by thinly disguised Ksatriyas: in one : " case three Ksatriyas disguised as snataka Brahmans,76 in the other a : prince in a mendicant garb that some texts, including some passages " " in the Mahabharata, say should be restricted to Brahmans.77
72 In these determinations, I have consulted the treatment in other versions in Nakamura (2000, 120124), Thomas ([1927] 2000, 6870); Strong (2001, 1018); and Poppe (1967, 133142). On the other hand, it is fascinating to see how all of Avaghosas clearly Indian nuances are lost in the Sanskrit-to-Chinese translation; s : see Beal (1988, 111119). 73 : Hara misses this challenge when, just before it, he takes King Srenya at B 10.26 to be requesting the Bodhisattva to unbusom himself to him as his intimate friend (2001, 164). In the Buddhacarita they are not yet the friends they become. 74 " Note how the Suttanipata achieves an opposite eect by having Bimbis"ra hurry a as far as he can by chariot, which might denote a challenge, and then walk the rest of the way to the princes position on P"ndava Mountain (Nakamura, 2000, 122). a: : 75 " " : This garb could also have Ramayana echoes, since both R"vana 3.44.8; 47.6) a : and Hanum"n (4.3.8; 3.21; 5.14) make rather famous turning-point appearances in a the form of a bhiksu (bhiksur"pa) : : u 76 " See Olivelle (1993, 220221): A snataka is considered so sacred and his status so eminent, that many authorities give him precedence over even a king: if a king meets him on the road it is the king who should salute the latter with respect (with " citations). Van Buitenen actually wonders whether the meaning of snataka might be extended to anyone under a studious vow of life, and to include the new mendicants who followed the Buddha or J" na, but that cannot be made out (1975, 17). 77 See Olivelle (1993, 195 and n. 40), noting that there are numerous texts in the " " Mahabharata that declare religious mendicancy to be the special dharma of Brahmans: 3.34.4950; 5.71.3 [both addressed to Yudhihira], and pointing to Mbh " 12.1025 where this point made to Yudhisthira at the beginning of the Santiparvan. :: Although never using the compound bhiksarama, the Mbh sometimes uses bhiksu or : "s : bhiksuka to cover the fourth life stage (12.14.12; 12.37.28; 14.45.13). :
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1. The prince enters the city of 1. Kr: na and the two :s: the ve hills (10.2) P"ndavas approach the city a: : of ve hills 2. The prince makes his rst 2. Following Kr: nas counsel, :s: appearance dressed (or disthe three are disguised as " guised) as a bhiksu (9) snataka Brahmans (18.21) : 3. He seems to onlookers like 3. In Kr: na is prudent policy :s: Dharma incarnate (6) (naya, n" ti), in Bh" ma strength, in Arjuna victory (14.9, 18.3). Prudent policy turns out to have been tricky dharma (see item 14 below). 4. First amazed (visismiye), on- 4. Onlookers fell to wonder" lookers then fall still and ing (vismayah samajayata) : silent and have no unruly (19.27) and are at rst " thoughts (anyayamatir) (2-6) baed 5. The citys Laksm" shows 5. Kr: na soon reveals that Sr" : :s: " favors Ksatriya snatakas favor on the prince (9) : who wear garlands (19.46) 6. The prince climbs P"ndava 6. The two P"ndavas and a: : a: : Mountain (14). After receivKr: na climb Caityaka :s: ing a report of his ascent, so Mountain : does King Srenya, in heroism equal to a Pandava (17) :: renya sees the 7. There they destroy the 7. There King S : tranquil cross- legged Bodhihorn (: ngam) of Caitsr _ sattva being as it were a yaka Mountain (19.18) . horn (srn gabhutam) of the . mountain (18) : 8. King Srenya thus shows 8. The two P"ndavas and a: : deference and hospitality Kr: na come to King s: : by coming to the mountain Jar"sandhas palace, where a they reject his hospitality (19.34)
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Buddhacarita 9.
" " Mahabharata Jar"sandha asks about the a dharma of this rejection, and about the trios disguises
The prince looks to the king 9. like some being magically projected by Dharma (19)
10. The king and prince debate 10. Kr: na and Jar"sandha air a :s: : about dharma: Srenya links opposing views of dharma: the trivarga with aging: pleaKr: na reveals they are :s: " sure for youth, wealth for Ksatriya snatakas, and hold : middle years, dharma for old him as enemy; asking why, age (3417); but the prince, Jar"sandha protests himself a seeing danger in old age and a ruler by dharma (20.35). death, resorts to this dharKr: na says the trio follows :s: ma out of longing for salvadharma in opposing tion (mumuksaya ) (11.7). Jar"sandhas plan to sacria . ce 100 kings to Rudra He should do kuladharma (20.9), but Jar"sandha sees a and oer sacrices (10.39 it as Ksatriya dharma to 40); but he does not approve : treat captives as one pleases of sacrices or of happi(20.26). ness sought at the price of anothers suering (11.64 67), etc. : 11. King Srenya oers the 11. Kr: nas plan will eliminate :s: prince half his Magadha Magadhas sovereignty so kingdom (10.2526), which that Dharmar"ja Yuda the prince explicitly rejects histhira can be universal :: (11.4956) monarch by performing a R"jas"ya sacrice a u renya also challenges the 12. Kr: na challenges Jar"12. S : a :s: prince to ght him, moved as sandha to ght one of the he is by compassion at seeing trio in the guise and garb of " him, a Ksatriya, in the garb snatakas, now revealing : or guise of a bhiksu (10.27 who they are (20.2324) . 32) 13. The prince implicitly rejects 13. Jar"sandha chooses to ght a such a ght Bh" ma (21.3), as Kr: na had :s: devised (20.3234)
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" " Mahabharata
14. The prince promises to 14. The freed kings imprisoned come back as a Buddha in Girivraja recognize that (11.7273), at which point Kr: na protects the dharma, :s: he will preach the dharma and that he is Visnu (22.31 :: : that converts Srenya and 32). many other Magadhans. : Moreover, Srenya mentions the Bodhisattvas appearance precisely " while challenging him, calling him bhiksaramakama, lover of the : "s mendicant stage of life (10.33), thereby providing the one instance in "s the text where arama clearly means mode or stage of life rather than hermitage. Just as King Suddhodana tells the prince not to go "s against the proper order of the implied aramas (see above, n. 56), : so now King Srenya-Bimbis"ra seconds the point with additional a arguments,78 and with this specic challenge to the Bodhisattvas appearance as a bhiksu. Both kings are making a legitimate point, : for they would be speaking as protectors of varnaramadharma, a : "s role that even Buddhist kings come to play in 6th-century inscriptions (Olivelle, 1993, 201204). " Next, as one would expect of an accomplished kavya poet, Avaghosa tips his hand further with his similes. To begin with, when s : the prince has climbed Mount P"ndava, On that mountain (avau),79 a: : he, the sun of mankind (nrs"rya), appeared in his ochre-colored : u " u robe like the sun in the early morning (balas"rya) above the eastern mountain (B 10.15).80 As Gawronski puts it in the only scholarly note I have found on these matters, the future Buddha standing on [or, better, ascending] the P"ndava mountain, clad as he is in his red a: :
78 Srenyas correlation of three periods of life with the trivarga (item 10) is : "s interesting as being not reducible to the arama system, and as having a counterpart " in Kamas"tra 1.2.16 but there with dierent correlations: youth should be devoted u " to aims (artha) such as learning, prime years to kama, and old age to dharma and moksa (see Olivelle, 1993, 3031 n. 85, 133, 218). : 79 Gawronski (191415, 37) had noted that some word for mountain was necessary, and proposed girau rather than vane, in the forest, having read the latter in Cowells edition and translation. See Cowell (1968, 106), and Johnston (2004, 143 n. 15) conrming avi as a certain reading based on his primary manuscript and the Tibetan translation. 80 10.15. tasminnavau lodhravanopag"dhe/ may"ranadapratip"rnaku~je// u: u " u : n ": " " ": " u : kasayavasah sa babhau nrs"rya/ yathodayasyopari balas"ryah. : u
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garment, is compared to the rising sun touching the verge of the eastern mountain (191415, 37). That is how Avaghosa describes s : : what King Srenyas ocer sees (10.16), and perhaps what the ocer : : reported back to Srenya. But now, when Srenya himself ascends this same mountain with the heroism of a P"ndava, he sees the tranquil a: : u cross-legged Bodhisattva being as it were a horn (: ngabh"tam) of sr _ the mountain. That is, the rising sun of mankind has become the : horn of the very P"ndava Mountain he and Srenya have just a: : climbed. I cannot imagine that Avaghosa has any other rst pretext s : for introducing81 this singular, surprising, and somewhat strained " " simile than a reference to the Mahabharatas double use of : ngam to sr _ describe what it is on Caityaka Mountain that the two P"ndavas and a: : Kr: na destroy.82 Van Buitenen takes both usages as tower (1975, :s: 69, 70), which is certainly a guess. Biardeau (2002, vol. 1, 351) also calls attention to a verse (Mbh 2.208*) that has the trio break three " drums (bher" and the a wall of a caitya (caityaprakaram) on the peak, ) but this verse is found only in four manuscripts, including the Vulgate (which Biardeau favors), and is clearly an interpolation. The three drums made by Jar"sandhas father are mentioned just before the a insertion (2.19.1516), but without the interpolated verse that follows there is nothing to say they were destroyed, and nothing about a Caitya wall, which is clearly a belated explanation built on the mountains name.83 On the contrary, Kr: na establishes the rst :s: meaning of : nga for the whole passage when he describes Girivrajas sr _ ve mountains as all having great horns and cool trees ": ": "sr _ ": (maha: ngah parvatah sitaladrumah; 19.3). Avahosa could also have a second pretext for using the word s : r _ s: nga to describe the tranquilly seated prince: the words symbolic
81 " Note that the Suttanipata uses dierent images when the kings messengers report back and say, Great king, the bhikkhu sits in a mountain cave on the front side of Mount P"ndava, like a tiger or a bull or a lion (Nakamura, 2000, 122) a a: : scene that could also evoke girivraja as the mountain corral in which Jar"sandha a imprisons the 86 kings. See notes 68 and 69 above on the name Girivraja and the " possibility that the Suttanipata could precede the epic text. 82 a At 19.18, this : nga is described as garlanded, and at 19.41 Jar"sandha mensr _ " tions it again when he asks how the trio broke it (caityakam ca gireh : ngam bhittva : : sr _ kim; 19.41). 83 Kosambi must pick up on some such tradition when he writes, But the senseless desecration of the holy antique caitya at Rajgir (presumably the P"s"naka a a: Cetiya where the Buddha rested so often) by Bh" ma and Kr: na seems wanton sac:s: rilege (2.19.19), unsupported by any other record (1964, 3637; 1975, 126), on which Brockington comments, Why he should see the reference to the monument as being a Buddhist caitya is equally unclear (2002, 7980).
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signicance is brought out in a Harivamsa passage that asks a : question about the same Jar"sandha cycle: a
To what end did the slayer of Madhu (Kr: na) abandon Mathur", that (zebu)s hump a :s: of the Middle Country, the sole abode of Laksm" easily perceived as the horn of the : , " ": earth (: nga prthivyah), rich in money and grain, abounding in water, rich in Aryas, sr _ : 84 the choicest of residences?
This horn of the earth, along side the zebus hump as the sole abode of Laksm" evokes associations of Kr: na with the horn in : , :s: a _ contested situations where he uses his S"rnga bow in battles, and, even more particularly, associations with Visnus Fish and Boar :: " avataras where he uses the single horn or single tusk (in either case, eka: nga) to rescue Manus ark and the earth.85 In other words, sr _ in the Jar"sandha cycle, the horn is a symbol of unique sovereignty in a contested circumstances, which makes it tting that Kr: na and the :s: two P"ndavas break the horn of Magadhas Caityaka Mountain no a: : matter how dicult it is to imagine with their bare arms.86 For they " " are intent, in the Mahabharatas terms, upon eliminating Jar"sana dhas rivalry of Yudhisthira for the title of universal sovereign :: (samraj), and, in the Harivamas terms, upon restoring the unique : " :s centrality of Mathur" to the Middle Country, even in Kr: nas a :s: absence from it. At one level, what is being contested in the Buddhacarita is thus, of course, royal sovereignty, Laksm" who favors the prince even though : , he declines royal sovereignty when Bimbis"ra oers it. But as a Avaghosa registers in further similes, in fact by doubling one simile, s : what is really contested is the dharma: the prince seems to onlookers : like Dharma incarnate, and to Srenya he looks like some being 87 magically projected by Dharma. This is the force of the way Avaghosa unfolds this matter as one that has to do not with a debate s : about the Saiva-Vaisnava overtones of Ksatriya dharma, such as :: : " " occurs between Jar"sandha and Kr: na in the Mahabharata, but one a :s:
84 " kim artham ca parityajya mathuram madhus"danah/ madhyadeasya kakudam u s : : " "s ": " : " dhama laksmya ca kevalam//: nga prthivyah svalaksyam prabh"tadhanadhanyavat/ sr _ u : : " ": aryadhyajalabh"yistam adhisthanavarottamam (HV 1.57.23). u :: :: " 85 See Hiltebeitel (1988, 96) for this passage and an earlier discussion of it, citing Defourny (1976, 1723). 86 That is indeed how Ganguli translates the passage ([188496] (1970, vol. 2), Sabha Parva, 52). 87 Cf. Saundarananda 2.56cd: the Buddha at birth shone with the majesty of holy " " " : " calm like the Law of Righteousness in bodily form (babhraje santaya laksmya dharmo " vigrahavan iva).
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that has to do quite explicitly with oppositions between Brahmanical royal dharma and Buddhist dharma the latter as it is, so to speak, taking shape in the Bodhisattva-princes mind. But the force of the " " Mahabharata story, given the no doubt intended ambiguity of the term caitya, which can have both Brahmanical and Buddhist meanings,88 and given as well the results of over a century of scholarship that has sensed this ambiguity,89 is that it can be taken not only as a story reecting SaivaVaisnava opposition but Brahmanical:: Buddhist opposition as well. That brings us to a third pretext for Avaghosas surprising horn s : simile. For when one takes the force of the horn and Dharma : incarnate similes in conjunction with the fact that it is Srenya, not the prince, who is made equal to a P"ndava in heroism and who a: : sees the Bodhisattva as if he had become the horn of the mountain, : one could take it that Srenya sees not only Dharma incarnate but a cross-legged Bodhisattva appearing as the restored horn of the mountain that the P"ndavas and Kr: na broke down. a: : :s: As I attempted to show in Rethinking Indias Oral and Classical " " Epics, North Indian Alha traditions, both in this Hindi oral epic and " " ": in the Bhavisya Puranas retelling of Alha in Sanskrit, draw on Ismaili : " traditions to transpose the Jarasandhavadha into a Rajput rivalry that was also read in terms of opposition over empire, in this case between " " Hindu and Muslim rule.90 The Mahabharata episode has been open
88 Biardeau richly develops this point; see now (2002, vol. 1, 322 n. 2; 344) (with Grhya S"tra references); 330331; 350. u : 89 See Brockington (2002, 79) and Hiltebeitel (forthcoming-b) tracing this impulse to (the younger) Adolf Holtzmann (189295), and above, n. 83, on Kosambi. 90 " Hiltebeitel (1999, 150164 and 344351) on Ismaili ginans about the Buddha and Kalinga (an allomorph of Jar"sandha), though the stories do not relate the a " two directly. Cf. Khan (2005): although the ginans do not mention the Buddhas preenlightenment entry into Magadha, they bring him in to address Yudhisthiras :: postwar consternation (=Mbh Book 12, etc.), and when he comes before the P"ndavas he has a very strange appearance: apart from posing as a religious a: : mendicant, he looks like a warrior, donning Muslim dress. . . . Besides he is a candala ::" . . . and a leper, from whose body emanates an unbearable odour (2005, 328; cf. 330, 333. 340). After he challenges Bh" ma at the P"ndavas gate, his Satpanth Ismaili a: : teachings are rich in overtones of bhakti and are presented as dharma (329, 333). Undercutting the Brahmans who are performing a huge sacrice on Yudhisthiras :: behalf, he says their sacrice is useless (as does the half-golden mongoose at the end of Mbh Book 14), yet before he retires to the Himalayas he convinces the P"ndavas to sacrice a cow (none other than the K"madhenu or Cow of Wishes) a: : a for a nal shared meal that will make possible their liberation (128131). As Khan " says, the ginans may draw not only on Hindu sources but Buddhist ones (326, 337341) one wonders, with what ironies.
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to such readings because it has to do with religious overtones of rivalry over empire, which itself is one of the reasons it cannot be persuasive, no matter how many stylistic criteria one enlists, to argue " " " that the Jarasandhavadha is extraneous to the Mahabharata.91 This is the real hinge upon which Avaghosa opens his close reading of this s : episode. For although it may look like a weak point to align the Bodhisattva with Kr: na on the matter of the Bodhisattvas double :s: appearance as Dharma incarnate, we are at the deepest level at " " which Avaghosa engages this Mahabharata scene: the level of s : Brahmanical versus Hindu bhakti, which we have seen underscored by Biardeau. The position of Kr: na in representing Brahmanical :s: dharma in the Jar"sandha episode is decisive. For the rst thing to a " " strike one is that the Mahabharatas actual Dharma incarnate, Dharmar"ja Dharmaputra Yudhisthira, is precisely not among the a :: trio assaulting Magadha, among whom, as Bh" ma says rst and Kr: na then conrms, Kr: na represents prudent policy (naya, n" s: s: ti), : : Bh" ma strength, and Arjuna victory (Mbh 2.14.9; 18.3). Yet what Yudhisthira says before the trio departs is pertinent to this train of :: associations. Fearing Jar"sandhas might and ready to change his a mind about performing a R"jas"ya, he says, Bh" and Arjuna are a u ma my two eyes, Jan"rdana I deem my mind (manas); what kind of life a shall be left for me without mind or eyes (mana caksur vih" s nasya)? : s: ti) (Mbh 2.15.2).92 Kr: na supplies policy (naya, n" that will turn out : " to be tricky dharma, or more precisely upayadharma.93 But it will be done fully in accord with the mind of King Dharma. Indeed, the two verses that identify Kr: na with policy and Arjuna with victory res:s: onate with the famous tag line that rst occurs right after the Bhagavad G" a when Drona tells Yudhisthira, as if he needed to know t " : ::
91 See Hiltebeitel (2001, 8), noting that this sequence provides in a urry most of the Mbhs usages of the terms samraj, emperor, and samrajya, empire, and : " : " mentioning some of the scholars who continue to hold the view that it is late and extraneous, which has now been revisited by Brockington (2002). 92 See Biardeau (2002, vol. 1, 328) on this passage. 93 " On n" as upayadharma in the Mbh, see Bowles (2004, 154158, 165). See ti especially 154 and n. 34, citing Mbh 12.101.2 and 128.13, both from the " " " Rajadharmaparvan, but the latter from an adhyaya transitional to the Apaddharmaparvan. Bowles comments: The idea of a dharma of strategy, a strategic dharma, or an expedient abundant in dharma, is, in many ways, collateral with the idea of a proper form of conduct (dharma) for a king in times of distress, since a king must employ some form of strategy or policy to overcome diculties that might arise " for his kingdom. Indeed, in a n" context, upayadharma could almost be considered a ti " " synonym for apaddharma. Although he explains it only as upaya, Kr: na is of course :s: " the master of upayadharma throughout the Mbh war.
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it, Where dharma is there is Kr: na; where Kr: na is there is victory :s: :s: (yato dharmas tatah kr: no yatah kr: nas tato jayah) (6.41.55).94 In s: s: : : : : : short, Avaghosas reading of the Jar"sandha episode could be s a : summed up as follows: where Kr: na was, there now is the Dharma :s: looking like the horn of a mountain. It may thus be no mere coincidence that Avaghosa focuses on s : pivotal matters bearing on R"ma and Kr: na in the second books of a s: : each epic, reading each in part through a contrast of Brahmanical and Buddhist modes of bhakti. Yet if structuralism and symbolism have lost their fashion, and are in any case not the most reliable s indicators of textual history,95 we have another marker of Avag" " hosas reading of the Mahabharata that may provide a more reliable : gauge of intertextual history, even though I would argue that they both point to the same historical conclusions. This is the matter of the epics didactic teachings mainly on moksa. : Here we come to a point that several have noticed: Avaghosa s : " " seems to know the Mahabharatas Moksadharma Parvan, or at least : material in it.96 Johnston cites, without ever making it clear if he ever discusses it, a discussion by T. By"d" (n.d.). More recently, Tokuo o naga (2005) spoke on this subject at a London conference a week before I met him at the Dubrovnik conference where I presented a rst draft of this paper, and kindly made his paper available to me when I learned of it. In fact, Tokunaga begins his paper with an acknowledgment of a 1930 book by Tsy"sho Byodo of which the u discussion in English is apparently an appendix. Tokunaga summarizes Byodos work as being interested mainly in philosophical " " matters, with Byodos comparison with the Mahabharata in this
The line is repeated at 9.61.30, and has the variant, Where Kr: na is, there is :s: dharma; where dharma is, there is victory (yatah kr: nas tato dharmo yato dharmas : : s: tato jayah) at 6.62.34 and 13.153.39. : 95 Avaghosa provides one more piece of possible evidence of familiarity with the s : " Jarasandhavadha: a curious pair of verses, one about a certain Kaks" : vat (B 1.10), of whom Johnston (2004, 3 n. 10) says nothing is known; the other about a certain Manthala Gautama, likewise untraced, who carried corpses to please a courtesan named Jangh" (4.17). These verses may recall some equally obscure verses in the a Jar"sandha story where a K"ks" is fathered on a udra woman by a R: i Gautama a a : vat s" :s who dwelt at Magadha because he favored the Magadha vamsa, and was also sought : _ _ out by the Angas and Vangas (Mbh 2.19.57). 96 See Hopkins (1901, 387388); Larson and Bhattacharya (1987, 7, 1415, 110 122, 129140), assuming, I think wrongly, that Samkhya references in the : Moksadharma would be from the rst to third or fourth centuries C.E. (113), and : thus later than Avaghosa, even though they date the Moksadharma itself to 200 s : : B.C.E.-200 C.E. (14).
94
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book centered in the Moksadharmaparvan (2005, 1). According to : Tokunaga,

Results of his comparison of the texts are summarized under ve heads: (1) myths, (2) S"mkhya teachers, (3) the topic a younger one sometimes supersedes an older in a: achievement,97 (4) thought-historical, rhetorical, linguistic correspondence, and (5) the relationship between the Buddhacarita and the Moksadharmaparvan (pp. 543 : 564). In conclusion, he says that Avaghosa was inuenced by the Moksadharma in his s : : composition of the Buddhacarita (p. 560) (Tokunaga 2005, 1; see now Byodo [1930] 1969, 565568, notably 565 on Avaghosas likely acquaintance with Mah"bh"rata s a a : legends as represented in the present Mbh, and 567568 on Moksadharmaparvan : : comparisons with the Bodhisattvas encounter with king Srenya).
For Tokunaga, this assumption is not impossible, but he moves on to some views of Johnstons: that it is more natural to suppose that the common matter goes back to a single original,98 even though Tokunaga nds Johnston going too far when he states that despite the many parallels we cannot establish that Avaghosa knew s : any portion of the epic in the form in which we now have it (ibid., xlvii; Tokunaga, 2005, 1). I am of course encouraged by Tokunaga on this point, on which John Brockington is both more succinct and " more extensive: Avaghosa denitely draws on the Santiparvan s : (1998, 483). I agree with both Tokunaga and Brockington. I also nd very attractive Tokunagas demonstration that Cantos 9 and 10 of the Buddhacarita involve a reading of (Tokunaga says are based on) the rst forty-ve or so chapters in narrative form of the extant " Santiparvan (ibid.). For reasons that will become clear, if he is right, his demonstration reinforces my hypotheses, and I will refer to it as a supportive argument.99 It would seem likely to be a question not only
See B 1.4145 as cited above in Section Avaghosa and Epic Precedents. s : Johnston (2004, xlvi), noting that much of Ar"das exposition of the S"mkhya a: a: system has close parallels in the Moksadharma, the connection in one case extending : over several verses of the same passage, and suggesting that the common matter goes back to . . . possibly a textbook of the V"rsaganya school. As Larson and a: : Bhattacharya (1987, 131) observe, Varsaganya at Mbh 12.306.57 occurs in a list of : : many older teachers of Samkhya and Yoga. Assuming this list would be from the : rst centuries of the Common Era (ibid.; see n. 96 above), they do not relate Avaghosas portrayal to such a context, but they do note (136, 138), as does s : Johnston (2004, lvi, 172 n. 33), that at B 12.33 Avaghosa may be quoting the s : " " aphorism pa~caparva avidya, there are ve kinds of ignorance from V"rsaganya, n a: : since it is elsewhere attributed to him. They thus allow the possibility that V"rsaganya would be earlier than a rst century C.E. Avaghosa (1987, 137), as the a: s : : Moksadharma reference should, I think, support. : 99 Otherwise, it is not appropriate for me to comment on details, in which I see nothing incongruent with what follows, and indeed some congruence in the passages cited.
98 97
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of elements of the Moksadharma and the Buddhacarita drawing on : " some common sources, but of a reading of the Santiparvan in some state of extant totality. " One trace of the range of Avaghosas familiarity with the Santis : parvan could be his reference at Buddhacarita 8.77 to the story of a Suvarnasth" : : : vin, Excretor of Gold (Fitzgerald, 2004, 23637), told by Kr: na and N"rada toward the beginning of Book 12.100 This a :s: comes not within the segment of the Buddhacarita that Tokunaga discusses, but in the canto just before the two in which he nds " parallels in the rst part of the Santiparvan. In fact, I have also " written on the rst forty or so chapters of the Santiparvan from another angle: that they present Yudhisthira with arguments from the :: Bhagavad G" a for him to reject as inadequate in his postwar situat " tion, while at the same time foreshadowing the need for instruction that will prove acceptable to him: the instruction he receives in all " " four subparvans that proceed from these early Santiparvan adhyayas: " " " the Raja-, Apad-, Moksa-, and Dana-dharma Parvans that, together, : " complete nearly all of the Santi and Anuasana Parvans (see Hiltes" beitel, forthcoming-c). But Tokunaga is certainly right in turning our main attention to Cantos 9 and 10. Canto 9 is The Deputation to the Prince by King Suddhodanas renyas Visit, which we Purohita and Minister, and Chapter 10 is S : have just been looking at from another angle. I would propose that Canto 9 of the Buddhacarita is a hinge chapter for Avaghosa that s : " " : " " allows him to transition from a Ramayana reading to a Mahabharata reading. This means that the Purohita and the Minister get to double not only for R"mas two Brahman visitors in the forest but for the a postwar comforters of Yudhisthira: the rst explicitly, the second :: only implicitly. Yet as I have already attempted to demonstrate, this " " Mahabharata reading would not be limited to Cantos 9 and 10 but carry over from Canto 10 into Canto 11 where it is anchored in the : full meeting with King Srenya as an evocation of the " Jarasandhavadha. Following Canto 12, in which, as now noted, several have long seen parallels between Ar"da K"l"mas proto-S"mka: aa a: hya and certain teachings of the Moksadharmaparvan, this : " " Mahabharata reading would then be concluded in the encounter with
It is Suvarnanisth" s : : : vin in Avaghosas spelling. I am not persuaded by John: stons point (2004, 120 n. 77) that Avaghosas silence on the sons coming back to s : life suggests that the poet knew only a version in which the happy ending had not been added. Avaghosa is not trying to tell the whole story in one verse but making s : what he wants of the story in what is contextually a perfectly intelligible allusion.
100
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M"ra in Canto 13. To understand how Avaghosa makes Canto 9 a a s : hinge to these unfoldings, however, we must note two matters. First, such a Brahmanical deputation of a Purohita and Minister to nd the prince in the forest seems to be an invention by Avaghosa.101 Secs : ond, we must look back to a line near the end of Canto 8 where the Purohita and the Minister dene their mission to King Suddhodana: Just let there be a war of many kinds between your son and the various prescriptions of scripture (bahuvidham iha yuddham astu " tavat/ tava tanayasya vidhe ca tasya tasya) (B 8.85cd). For these s two speakers, this war will be a struggle with Brahmanical scriptures, which the prince will handle rather easily; but, more than this, it sets the terms for the Bodhisattvas inner struggle102 that carries through all these cantos to his ultimate contest with M"ra. a What I would like to emphasize, however, is that, important " " as it is that Avaghosa knows something of the Mahabharatas s : Moksadharma Parvan, it is even more interesting that he knows and : uses the term moksadharma. Before examining the three usages that : occur in the surviving Sanskrit portions of the rst half of the Buddhacarita, all in the segment just described, it is worth noting the tenor of two likely further usages of the term in subsequent cantos, assuming that Johnston is consistent in choosing the phrase law of salvation in his attempt to reconstruct the Sanskrit from the Tibetan and Chinese translations. First, resting after his enlightenment and preparing to preach, the Buddha saw that the law of salvation was exceeding subtle (B 14.96). And second, just after turning the Wheel of the Law with his rst sermon and converting his rst ve disciples, the Omniscient established the Law of Salvation with further preaching and more conversions (16.1). Law of salvation (that is, probably moksadharma) would seem to reach its full impact : as one of Avaghosas terms for the dharma itself as the Law and s : Teaching of the newly enlightened Buddha. In any case, of the three veriable usages, the rst two occur in the exchange between the prince and the Purohita. When the Purohita and the Minister arrive, they nd the prince sitting below a tree
In fact, for his Buddhacarita. In his earlier Saundarananda, the events from the great departure to M"ra take only eight verses (3.29) without mentioning either the a : deputation or the rst meeting with King Srenya. 102 For yuddham, Johnston has struggle (2004, 122) rather than war. Note that Fitzgerald speaks of [t]he inner battle that . . . takes place within Yudhisthira :: (2004, 179) occurring (better beginning) at Mbh 12.17, while Arjuna briey refers to " " this process as still lying ahead: Now conquer yourself (vijitatma . . . bhava) (22.10cd). It continues through Books 12 and 13, and indeed beyond.
101
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(B 9.8). In being the rst to convey the message of the princes father, the Purohita seems to mix the kings sentiments with some new words of his own. Now acknowledging that the princes xed resolve with regard to dharma will be realized as his future goal, but invoking once again the fathers massive grief that the prince is doing this at the wrong time (9.1416), the Purohita continues:
17. Therefore enjoy lordship for the present over the earth and you shall go to the forest at the time approved by the scriptures (astradr: te). Have regard for me, your s" : s: unlucky father, for dharma consists in compassion for all creatures. 18. Nor is it only in the forest that this dharma is achieved; its achievement is certain for the self-controlled in a city too. Purpose and eort are the means in this matter; for the forest and the badges of mendicancy are the mark of the faint-hearted. 19. The dharma of salvation (moksadharma) has been obtained by kings even though : they remained at home, wearing the royal tiara, with strings of pearls hanging over their shoulders and their arms fortied by rings, as they lay cradled in the lap of imperial Fortune (laksm" 103 : ).
The Purohita goes on, purportedly in the fathers words, to mention Bali and Janaka of Videha among several otherwise obscure kings104 who were versed in the method of practising the dharma that leads t " to nal beatitude (naihreyase dharmavidhau vin" an) even while they :s remained grhasthas (2021), and further recalls the deeds done by : _ a a Bh": ma, who sprang from the womb of Gang", R"ma, and Bh"rgava s a R"ma, to please their fathers (25). And he concludes by again a recalling the grief caused to others whom the prince has left behind (2629). One notes that the Purohita does not cite Yudhisthira, who :: heard Bh": ma preach on moksadharma in the Moksadharma. But s : : Avaghosa would seem to implicitly acknowledge Yudhisthiras s : :: precedence; for while Yudhisthira claims to want to pursue moksa, he :: : ultimately listens to Bh": ma and the others who circle around his s doing exactly what the Purohita is claiming can be done by citing kings who obtained moksa while remaining at home. : " " When the prince replies after a moments meditation (dhyatva muh"rtam) (B 9.30), he says that fear of the three signs left him no u choice but leaving, even knowing the fatherly aections involved (31);
103 _ : " " " 9.17. tad bhunksva tavad vasudhadhipatyam/ kale vanam yasyasi astradr: te/ s" : " : s: " anistabandhau kuru mayy apeksam/ sarvesu bh"tesu daya hi dharmah// u : :: : : : " 18. na caisa dharmo vana eva siddhah/ pure pi siddhir niyataa yatiinam/ : : _ : buddhi ca yatna ca nimittam atra/ vanam ca lingam ca hi bh" s s rucihnam// : " : 19. maul" dharair amsavisaktaharaih/ key"ravistabdhabhujair narendraih/ u : : :: : _ " : " laksmyankamadhye parivartamanaih/ prapto grhasthair moksadharmah. : : : : 104 Johnston cannot trace some of these (2004, 126127 n. 20).
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in a world of wayfarers, why cherish grief? (35).105 However noble it is that his father wishes to hand over the kingdom to him, he rejects kingship as an abode of delusion in which are to be found fearfulness, the intoxication of pride, weariness and the loss [or oppression, or squeezing] of dharma by the mishandling of others " " : (parapacarena ca dharmap": a) (3940).106 It may be praiseworthy d " for kings to leave their kingdoms and enter the forest in the desire for " ": : dharma (dharmabhilasena), but it is not tting to break ones vow and forsaking the forest to go to ones home; for a man of resolution who has gone to the forest out of desire for dharma, to return to the city would be like eating ones own vomit, like reentering a burning house (4447). And now, with precise and loaded words on our central point, he says:
48. As for the revelation (ruti!) that kings obtained nal emancipation (moksa) while s : " remaining as householders (nrpa grhastha),107 this is not the case. How can the : " : dharma of salvation (moksadharma) in which quietude (ama) predominates be recs : " onciled with the dharma of kings (rajadharma) in which severity of action (danda) :: predominates?108
Going on to argue that quietude and severity are incompatible (ama ca taiksnyam ca hi nopapannam) for a king (49), he even s s :: : subjects the Purohitas armative proposition to three other quarters of a four-sided argumentation:
50. Either therefore those lords of the earth resolutely cast aside their kingdoms and obtained quietude, or, stained by kingship, they claimed to have attained liberation on the ground that their senses were under control, but in fact only reached a state that was not nal.
These responses may recall the Suka story near the end of the Moksadharma: parvan, in which Janaka of Videha is cast, even in his own palace, as an expert on renunciation, and in which Vy"sa confronts his fatherly aections for his ultimately a aectless son Suka as the latter makes his moksa-departure. See Hiltebeitel (2001, : 278322). On Janaka in other such contexts, see Olivelle (1993, 238-240). 106 For squeezing, see Bowles (2004, 154 n. 34), on dharmam prap": ya at Mbh d 12.101.2. Johnston (2004, 131 n 40), also notes a usage of dharmap": a at Mbh 13.4566 d " = Critical Edition 13.96.10, which is a verse in which Agastya tells that he has heard, " Time harms (kills, saps) the energy of dharma (kalo himsate dharmav" ryam), : coming in a series of stories about when it is dharma not to accept gifts (13.9496). 107 Johnston (2004), translates, As for the tradition that kings obtained nal emancipation while remaining in their homes. . .which I change for the obvious points of emphasis. 108 " s " " 9.48. ya ca rutir moksam avaptavanto/ nrpa grhastha iti naitad asti// : : " : " : " : " samapradhanah kva ca moksadharmo/ dandapradhanah kva ca rajadharmah. : :: :
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51. Or let it be conceded they attained quietude while holding kingship, still I have not gone to the forest with an undecided mind; for having cut through the net known as home and kindred I am freed and have no intention of re-entering that net.109
What a crystal-clear Buddhist critique of the ambiguities of the Brahmanical position. And, I think implicitly, what a subtle response to the nearly interminable indecisiveness and ultimate resignation to " rajadharma and grhasthadharma, while putting aside moksadharma, : : of Yudhisthira Dharmar"ja. a :: The third usage comes early from M"ra, ngering an arrow a (B 13.8) as he rst verbally challenges the Bodhisattvas right to sit beneath the bodhi tree:
9. Up, up, Sir Ksatriya, afraid of death. Follow your own dharma (cara svadhar: mam), give up the dharma of liberation (tyaja moksadharmam). Subdue the world : with both arrows and sacrices, and from the world obtain the world of V"sava.110 a
This is the rst and only usage of svadharma in the rst 14 cantos of the Buddhacarita, and, as far as I can see, the only one likely in the entire text. Note that whereas in the rst usage of moksadharma the : Purohita says it is possible to combine moksadharma with : grhasthadharma, and in the second the prince contrasts moksadharma : : " a with rajadharma,111 M"ra now contrasts it with svadharma. Indeed, as we now see, Avaghosa uses contrastive terms with a s : " " denite Mahabharata cache, and ones by which he might be intending to prickle Brahmanical ears with references not only to the postwar predicament of Yudhisthira, who of course wants to do something :: like what the Buddha does and is persuaded not to, but also Arjuna, who has some similar inclinations before the war, and is likewise
109 " " " " " " " " 9.50. tan nicayad va vasudhadhipas te/ rajyani muktva samam aptavantah// s : " "_ " " " " ": rajyangita va nibhrtendriyatvad/ anaistike moksakrtabhimanah// :: : : " : " " " 51. tesam ca rajye stu samo yathavat/ prapto vanam naham anicayena/ s : ": : " " "s : : chittva hi paam grhabandhusamj~am/ muktah punar na praviviksur asmi. : n : : That householders can obtain liberating knowledge could be seen as the M" ams" m" : a position; see Olivelle (1993, 238240). 110 13.9. uttistha bhoh ksatriya mrtyubh" ta/ cara svadharmam tyaja :: : : : : ": s " " " moksadharmam//banai ca yaj~ai ca vin" lokam/ lokat padam prapnuhi vasavasya. n s ya : Schreiner (1990) brings out that there is a variant varasva dharmam, choose dharma, for cara svadharmam. Weaker, and non-contrastive (see just below), I think we can treat it as secondary. 111 " As to such a contrast, a further likely usage of rajadharma occurs when the Buddha goes to Koala to meet King Prasenajit, and hears from him, O Lord, I s " have suered and been harassed by passion (raga) and the kingly profession " (rajadharma) (20.10), to which the Buddha replies at length (1251) as to how kings can benet from the Buddhas teaching or law (1417), earlier called his (moksa-)dharma. :
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counselled against them.112 Indeed, from the rst word uttistha, the :: imperative Up, up or Arise, Avaghosa puts M"ras insulting s a : challenge in the simplest language of the Bhagavad G" a,113 recalling t " especially BhG 2.3137 where this command at 2.37 is preceded by double urgings that Arjuna do his Ksatriya svadharma in some of : Kr: nas most insulting prods, goading him, just as M"ra does the s: a : Bodhisattva, to stop looking like he is abstaining from battle through " fear (2.35). But the beginning of the Santiparvan remains Avaghosas s : rst frame of reference, for, as already noted, early in his postwar predicament Yudhisthira, who has more trouble than Arjuna in :: accepting this svadharma concept,114 hears similar arguments. Just after Yudhisthira says he is renouncing the kingdom and going to the :: forest, Arjuna begins his insulting and mocking replies, as if he had been insulted himself (which he has not):115
What misery! What pain! What heights of sissy feebleness (aho vaiklavayam uttamam)!116 That you should renounce this Royal Splendor (r" after doing inhuman s ) deeds! Having killed your enemies and acquired the earth which came to you by " your own Lawful Duty (svadharmenopapaditam) how can you renounce every: " thing now that your enemies are slain, unless you are daft (buddhilaghavat)? How can " a eunuch be a king (kl" basya hi kuto rajyam)? (Mbh 12.8.35a).
Fitzgerald is probably right in this translation to take svadharmena : " " upapaditam as implying Yudhisthiras svadharma, and that Arjuna is ::
112 Olivelle (1993, 103106, 150) also sees their dilemmas in parallel and brings out "s that, in contrast to Arjuna who never hears about aramas in the G" a, Yudhisthira t " :: wants to hear about them at length. See 12.33.12, where Yudhisthira disconcertingly :: "s ": asks, Grandfather, tell me about some especially good hermitages (aramams ca " : " viesams tvam mamacaksva pitamaha) (Fitzgerald, 2004, 243), or especially good s : ": life-stages; and 13.57.42c where, to his brothers and wifes great relief, he is nally "s said to have no longer longed to dwell in a hermitage/life-stage (narame rocayad " vasam). Olivelles treatment of the G" as emphasis on svadharma and varna (caste) t " : "s rather than arama is full of implications for understanding these two brothers dierences (105106, 197), but it is not likely that the author [of the BhG] would not "s have known the classical [arama] system (Olivelle, 1993, 105) such as it was known " to the author of the beginning of the Santiparvan. 113 Kr: na tells Arjuna Arise! four times: BhG 2.3; 2.37, 4.42, and nally more or :s: less decisively at 11.33. M"ra uses the verb three times in his short speech (13.913), a twice in the imperative. 114 See on this point Hiltebeitel (2001, 90); Sutton (2000, 318). 115 See Fitzgerald (2004, 182183), and my discussion of this passage in Hiltebeitel (forthcoming-c). 116 Kr: na, of course, likewise begins his taunts of Arjuna in Bhagavad G" a 2 with, t " :s: " Do not act like a eunuch (klaibyam ma sma gamah), P"rtha, it does not become a : you! (BhG 2.3; van Buitenen, 1981, 71).
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not saying that the earth has been delivered by svadharma itself that is, handed over to Yudhisthira on a silver platter, as it were, by :: Ksatriya svadharma, which, as Vy"sa soon tells Yudhisthira, proa : :: 117 duced the whole holocaust. But if we note that Arjuna embodies svadharma above all, Arjuna could be deepening the insults by implying that the victory was his doing. Arjuna goes on to deliver further bits of what he can still remember of the G" a, which he claims t " to have forgotten by Book 14 when he asks Kr: na to repeat it, and s: : Vy"sa summarizes some G" a theology as well (12.26.1416; 32.1115; a t " 34.47) (see Hiltebeitel, forthcoming-c) all to no avail, because Yudhisthira nds these arguments inadequate, eventually requiring :: Vy"sa to come up with a ritual solution (the Avamedha sacrice of a s Book 14), which Vy"sa, of course, already anticipates in this early a " Santiparvan sequence (12.32.2024). The upshot for Avaghosa is that M"ras challenge to ght and s a : perform Ksatriya svadharma rather than pursue moksadharma not : : only invokes Arjunas recalling of the Bhagavad G" a, but puts t " Kr: nas words into the mouth of the devil. As we have seen, :s: Avaghosa can be a bit arch at times when he symbolically juxtaposes s : : Kr: na and the Buddha. Unlike King Srenya, who also if only in the :s: Buddhacarita challenges the Bodhisattva to ght, M"ra must be a overcome, and, with him, so too must such (from the Buddhist perspective) convenient and self-serving ideas as the svadharma of princes.118 But let us now return to the opposition between moksadharma and : " rajadharma. These terms, of course, provide the title topics of the rst " and third subparvans of the Santiparvan. But they are also part of
Vy"sa could also be equating svadharma with ksatradharma when, upon a : hearing Yudhisthira asking to be told about good hermitages/life-stages, Vy"sa gets a :: him back on track by saying, Do not be depressed, king. Remember ksatradharma. : " These Ksatriyas were surely slain by (their) svadharma, O bull among Ksatriyas (ma : : " ": visadam krtha rajan ksatradharmam anusmara/ svadharmena hata hyete ksatriyah :" : : " " : : : ksatriyarsabha) (12.34.2). Or, since Vy"sa has been hammering away about a : : Yudhisthiras svadharma (12.23.3; 25.31; 26.35; 32.8, 22), he could also be implying :: they were all killed by your svadharma, Yudhisthira. :: 118 See Gombrich (1985, 436) on Buddhist criticism of this Hindu notion: Buddhists do not even have the term svadharma (Pali *sadhamma). . . .
117
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what I call an instructional arc119 of teaching that runs through not only what James Fitzgerald (2004) calls the three anthologies of the " Santiparvan but what he calls the fourth anthology in the Anuasanaparvan. This arc of teaching, levelled at Yudhisthira but s" :: overheard by all the P"ndavas and Draupad" as well (13.57.4244), a: : " " goes through four dharma topics: rajadharma, apaddharma, " moksadharma, and (in the Anuasanaparvan) danadharma. It is this s" : arc or sequence through which Yudhisthira must not only learn :: about kingship and its distresses, but renounce his inclination to seek " moksa, and nally, in the danadharma, abandon his wish to retreat to : an ashram (ibid.) in order to become a giving king. As far as I am able to discern, this fourfold sequence is unique in Indian dharma litera" " ture to the Mahabharata, and may, I believe, be called one of its signature formulations about dharma.120 It presents an outcome that the Buddha must, at least for himself, reject, but not one that he
119 I began using the term arc in discussions at the July 2005 Mbh Constructions Conference at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London, and heard Adam Bowles use it similarly at the September 2005 4th DICSEP meeting. This is tting since Bowless dissertation helped me formulate my usage. On the " sequence of the three Santiparvan anthologies, he writes, A logic of action informs this structure, a logic that models the proper duties of the royal life. A kings desire for salvation must follow the proper completion of his royal duty, or, rather, it follows from the proper completion of his royal duty. The syntactic order of the " Santiparvan text . . . mirrors, therefore, the proper syntactic order of the royal life and the proper order of the kings concerns (2004, 297). In Hiltebeitel (forthcoming-c) I write, after quoting this passage: I believe Bowles has found the right terms here for us to deepen our investigation of the fourth anthology: Would not " danadharma follow moksadharma in the proper syntactic order of the royal life? I : have in mind, to begin with, that the Mbh would be developing this further instruction for kings as a Brahmanical counterpart to the Buddhist (and not just " " " Mah"y"na) danaparamita. See also Hiltebeitel (2005), which introduces further a a considerations on this transition from Book 12 to Book 13. 120 It is, however, worth noting an intriguing parallel, though not a likely inuence one way or another, in the addition of a Bodhisattvapitaka as a fourth canonical : basket (pitaka) by the Dharmaguptakas (see Nattier, 2003, 46 n. 80; 8083, 129, : 27476; Pagel, 1995, 736). With four baskets (which denote collections of manuscipts) we have an analogy with Fitzgeralds notion of four anthologies. And, putting aside the obvious reservation that one collection is for monks and the other for an epic king, there would also be some minimal correspondence in the last " two pairings between the two sets of four in sequence: 1. dharmapitaka: rajadharma; : " 2. vinayapitaka: apaddharma; 3. abhidharmapitaka: moksadharma; and 4. bodhi: : : " sattvapitaka: danadharma with the bodhisattva basket stressing the practice and : " " teaching of the six param" that begin with dana (Nattier, 2003, 154 n. 38; 186). tas Curiously, the Bahurut" s yas, with whom Johnston attempts to link Avaghosa (2004, s : xxxxxxv), also had a bodhisattvapitaka, but in a canon of ve baskets (Nattier, 2003, : " 46 n. 80). I believe that Nattiers study of Ugrapariprccha could open new consid: erations on the sectarian and intertextual placement of Avaghosa (see n. 23 above). s :
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would necessarily reject for all. Indeed, Avaghosa has found it worth s : " engaging, for I believe that his juxtaposition of rajadharma and moksadharma, along with his demonstrations of textual familiarity : " " with both the Rajadharma- and Moksadharma-Parvans of the Santi: parvan, show that he has the rst and third units of this arc rmly in " " view. But what about apad and dana? " With apad the evidence is not very strong, but still worth consid" ering. Apad comes up only once in the rst fourteen cantos, and not in the segment where Avaghosa undertakes what I have called a s : " " Mahabharata reading. When the prince addresses the horse Kanthaka in preparation for his great departure, he says:
5.76. Easy it is to nd companions for battle, for the pleasure of acquiring the objects of sense and for the accumulation of wealth; but hard it is for a man to nd com" panions when he has fallen into distress (apadi) or attaches himself to dharma.121
It is emphasized in this speech that the prince speaks to Kanthaka as " a companion (sahaya) and friend (suhrd; 5.79), but while foreshad: owing that the prince will have to make his battle alone, without friends, as we have seen. Thus the interesting juxtaposition: com" panions are hard to nd for a man who has fallen into apad or " attaches himself to dharma. Since this is the only usage of apad in the Buddhacarita, it is hard to say whether the prince uses the term to dene his present situation, or is speaking disjunctively and implying that, rather than being in distress, he is only attaching himself to dharma. One is perhaps helped by a verse in which Ud"yin says he a " speaks out of friendship oered in adversity, using apad s nearsynonym vyasana (B 4.64) (see Bowles, 2004, 4054), when he counsels the prince to gratify the women who are trying to seduce him between the third and fourth signs. This suggests that the princes " situation is adversity (apad, vyasana) as others see it, but as he is beginning to see it himself when he speaks to Kanthaka, it is not adversity once he has begun resorting to dharma. In this vein, the two " main Apaddharmaparvan units to address the topic of friendship in adversity sequential fables: The Conversation between a Mouse and a Cat beneath a Banyan Tree (Mbh 12.136) and The Conversation between the Bird Adorable and King Brahmadatta (12.137) (see Fitzgerald, 2004, 496498, 512529) are apposite on the limits of friendship in times of distress, particularly when, in the latter, the bird Adorable ultimately denes those limits when
121 ": " " : " " " " 5.76. sulabhah khalu samyuge sahaya/ visayav aptasukhe dhanarjane va : ": " ": " " purusasya tu durlabhah sahayah/ patitasyapadi dharmasamraye va : :s
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she tells King Brahmadatta, who has in her eyes broken trust with her, that the only friends one can truly trust are ones innate friends ": " (mitrani sahajani), the friends one is born with that is, ones own good qualities a passage that itself may recall the Buddhist teaching, Be a friend unto yourself:
Knowledge, bravery, initiative, strength, and fortitude the fth these they say are " ones innate friends by which the wise make things happen here (vidya sauryam ca : ": : ": " " daksyam ca balam dhairyam ca pa~cakam/ mitrani sahajanyahur vartayant" yair n ha : : ": budhah). (12.137.81)
" " Also interesting, and within the Buddhacaritas Mahabharata sector, is a verse using vyasana, where the prince responds to the Purohita:
9.41. For kingship is at the same time full of delights and the vehicle of calamity "s (vyasanarayam), like a golden palace all on re, like dainty food mixed with poison, or like a lotus pond infested with crocodiles.122
But these are no more than reminders of a general theme. In any case, " the disjunctive use of apad and dharma makes it clear that there is no " question of a compound apaddharma. The best we get is a negative " explanation as to why apad would not be used in the rst half of the " Buddhacarita in the sense of apaddharma. Unless perhaps one thinks of M"ra, there are no princes or kings in distress over the possibility a of losing their kingdoms in the texts rst fourteen cantos.123 " As to dana, quite surprisingly there is no use of the term in the rst half of the Buddhacarita. But giving is made an important matter in Canto 18 where, not surprisingly, the Buddha is addressing not a king but one of those wealthy merchants, gahapatis or grhapatis, so : important to both Therav"da and early Mah"y"na texts124 for the a a a economic support of early Indian Buddhism. A wealthy merchant of Kosala named Sudatta, who was in the habit of giving wealth to the destitute, came from the north at night (B 18.12) to see the Buddha in R"jagrha. Having welcomed him, the Buddha turns a : quickly to the fame in this world and the reward in the hereafter [that] arise from giving, and urges that at the proper time Sudatta should give the treasure that is won through the Law (5). After
" u " 9.41. jamb"nada harmyam iva prad" ptam/ visena samyuktam ivottamannam/ " " : "s grahakulam cambv iva saravindam/ rajyam hi ramyam vyasanarayam ca. : " : : 123 As noted in note 111 above, it is a dierent matter in the second half with King : Prasenajit of Kosala, and of course with Srenya-Bimbis"ra too, who will be mura dered by his son Aj"taatru. a s 124 See Bailey and Mabbett (2003, 4353) and passim; Nattier ([2003] 2005, 2331) and passim.
122
279
hearing an initial sermon mainly on impermanence, Sudatta obtained the rst fruit of practice of the Law; and only one drop remained over from the great ocean of suering for him. Though living in the house, he realized by insight the highest good (1516). As with Yudhisthira, whom the Buddhacarita never, of course, crit:: icizes, somebody has to do this job of giving, and must be educated to do it in the right spirit. After a lengthy interval in which the poet describes Sudattas insight in terms of the Brahmanical views he now gives up, including those about a deity (1829), we return to Sudatta a as he is oering to donate a monastery at Sr"vast" (57). Here the Buddha praises giving at length (6180), mentioning that it is one of the elements of salvation (74), expounding on the varied virtues of giving wealth, food, clothes, abodes, vehicles, and lamps (7678), and concluding that Sudattas gift is of the best kind since it has no ulterior motive (79). Sudattas gift will be land: the Jeta grove for the " Jetuvana vihara (8185). The verses on the varied merits of giving " dierent things could be called a capsule Danadharma, since they are " reminiscent of the middle third of the Danadharmaparvan in which Bh": ma regales Yudhisthira on the merits of giving all the same s :: things, though above all, giving food and land to Brahmans. As with " apaddharma, we must again pose a negative explanation, this time as " to why dana is not used in the rst half of the Buddhacarita, but in this case unfolded in the second. It is not a matter of import until the Buddha must develop a post-enlightenment theory of the gift125 albeit without any evidence that it would have been called " danadharma. Nonetheless, as I have shown elsewhere (forthcoming-c), giving food is among the topics brought up toward the end of Yudhisthiras :: " " discussions with Vy"sa in the rst forty adhyayas of the Santiparvan, a where the topics of all four dharma anthologies are in fact anticis pated.126 So if Avaghosa is familiar with that segment, he would be : familiar at least with these topics, if not with the plan and contents of the four subparvans themselves that describe the full arc of Yudhisthiras postwar education on dharma. Actually, however, all :: " " four terms are also developed earlier in the Mahabharata. Not counting the epics Parvasamgraha or table of contents, where : " danadharma is the only one not mentioned, there are, prior to the
See the succinct and elegant essay on this subject, said to be highly theorized in Indian Buddhist textual discourse, by Ohnuma (2005, quoting from p. 102). 126 See Hiltebeitel (forthcoming-c, citing Mbh 12.37.12 and 43) on food and giving.
125
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" " " Santiparvan, 14 usages of rajadharma, 9 of apaddharma, 4 of " moksadharma, and 6 of danadharma, each with both singular and : plural (-dharmas) instances. And insofar as Yudhisthira is addressed : about each of these dharmas, they pace him toward their grand unfolding to him in Books 12 and 13. Further, once past Book 13, there is also follow-up in Book 14 on both moksadharma (Mbh : " 14.2.17; 16.16; 19.63 and 49) and danadharma (14.2.19; 4.7; 94.34), the two that would still be ringing in his (and readers) ears. Early " uses of rajadharma are basic and not surprising. It is the only one of " " : the four mentioned in the Ramayana (7 times), and, as treated in the dharmas"tras and Manu, even Bh" u ma can remind Yudhisthira that :: " Manu spoke on rajadharma (3.36.20). Yudhisthira also hears about :: " apaddharma as something basic and au courant from Vidura after the return dice match, with a warning to proceed carefully as the P"ndavas prepare for exile (2.69.19). But moksadharma and a: : : " danadharma are novel enough matters to be the subjects of " " upakhyanas or subtales told to Yudhisthira and company in the :: Forest Book. From M"rkandeya Yudhisthira learns that he has just a :: :: heard the entire moksadharma (krtsne moksadharme) (3.204.1) in : : : " the speech just recounted by a pious hunter (dharmavyadha) to a " " Brahman in the Pativrata-Upakhyana (also called The Colloquy of the Hunter and the Brahman; van Buitenen, 1975, 617638). And " danadharma is a topic Yudhisthira wants to know about enough to :: ask the author himself, Vy"sa, which weighs more in the afterworld, a " " danadharma or tapas (3.245.26). Vy"sa favors danadharma so long as a one gives rightfully obtained wealth (245.32), which leads him to " " recount the Mudgala-Upakhyana about the Rsi Mudgala who gave : unstintingly to guests what little he had garnered from living righteously o what he gleaned from harvested elds. When an envoy of the gods tries to interest Mudgala in ascending with him to heaven, he tells Mudgala he will nd there the Law-minded, the masters of self, the serene and controlled and unenvious, those accustomed to the " ": Law of giving (danadharmaratah), and champions with the scars showing (3.247.4; van Buitenen, 1975, 703).127 But Mudgala rejects heaven in favor of the eternal and supreme perfection that is marked ": ": by Extinction (avat" : siddhim param nirvanalaksanam) (247.43; s "s m : :" " " van Buitenen, 705). As this upakhyana shows, the unfolding of
127 " It is interesting to see van Buitenen translate danadharma this way for the rst time, having seemingly struggled with it before this: translating it as a dvandva (1.94.11 and 17), omitting its translation (3.155.10), and trying out the merits of " " gifts and just giving earlier in the Mudgala-Upakhyana.
281
" danadharma involves weighting it favorably over tapas: a matter that " is returned to repeatedly in the Danadharmaparvan,128 and one that deserves further study (see Olivelle, 1993, 162170). Indeed, a pref" erence of danadharma over tapas would probably win Avaghosas s : and the Buddhas agreement, as would Mudgalas spurning of heaven ": for nirvana. Within the skein of Books 12 and 13, however, it is clear that what counts most for Avaghosa is moksadharma, which he seems to have s : : ": introduced into Buddhist literature as a way to translate nirvana that would clarify in both Buddhist and Brahmanical circles what is comparable and what is distinctive about Buddhist and Brahmanical dharmas. I remain under the impression that neither moksadharma : nor a would-be P"li equivalent have appeared in Buddhist texts a before Avaghosa.129 s :
POSTSCRIPT ON THE BUDDHACARITA AND ASOKA
Avaghosa oers three verses on Aoka toward the very end of the s s : Buddhacarita (B 28.6364):
63. In the course of time king Aoka was born, who was devoted to the faith; he s caused grief to proud enemies and removed the grief of people in suering, being pleasant to look on as an aoka tree, laden with blossoms and fruit. s
128 From Mbh 13.57 on, see 13.9394, 106, and 109110. In some passages contrasting the two, tapas is associated with sacrice and fasting, as it is in the description of the anchorites in Buddhacarita Canto 7. 129 Avaghosa also uses nivrttidharma in the same vein, contrasted with pravrtti; s : : : see B 7.48, where the prince tells the anchorites, the dharma of cessation from activity (nivrttidharma) is apart from the continuance of active being (pravrttya). Cf. : : " 11.63 contrasting pravrtti with vinivrtti; 5.2425 on nirvrta, as discussed above. : : : " I am not aware that nivrttidharma occurs earlier than the Mbh, where the : " " : ya Moksadharmaparvans Narayan" has seven pertinent references from 12.32528, : ": treating it more or less interchangeably with nirvana and moksa (see Bailey, n.d.-a, : 19, 30). As Bailey notes, while early Buddhist literature in P"li oers evidence of a abstract bodies of knowledge being formed around nivatti and pavatti (nivrtti and : pravrtti), it never develops this opposition in the way it is done in the MBh, which : he identies as the fundamental text which contains the fully developed theories (n.d.-b, 12). Avaghosas usage thus points again in the Mbhs direction. Moreover, s : the fact that Avaghosa uses both moksa and nivrtti (along with pravrtti) in his earlier s : : : : Saundarananda, but not in a compound with -dharma, could suggest that he did " his close reading of the Moksadharmaparvan between writing these two kavyas. For : " his earlier work, he coins the decisive compound moksamarga (17.1; cf. 17.13), which : does not occur in either epic.
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64. The noble glory of the Maurya race, he set to work for the good of his subjects to provide the whole earth with st"pas, and so he who has been called Cand"oka u : : as became Aoka Dharmar"ja. s a 65. The Maurya took the relics of the Seer from the seven st"pas in which they had u been deposited, and distributed them in due course in a single day over eighty thousand majestic st"pas, which shone with the brilliancy of autumn clouds. u
Now one touchstone130 in marking a slightly less than civil recogni" " tion of Buddhism in the Mahabharata has been M"rkandeyas a :: " prophesy about a Kaliyuga overrun with edukas (Mbh 3.188.6467, : 70), eduka being the oldest term for Buddhist reliquaries, to begin :" with those for the bones of the Buddha after his cremation, and " found in both in Sanskrit and P"li as a term for stupas. A Buddhist a counter-prophesy can be found in the Ma~jur" ulakalpa, where the n s m" Buddha tells King Ajata"tru of Magadha (who had by now killed sa : his father Srenya Bimbis"ra): a
After my decease, the masters of the world will kill each other from father to son; the bhiksus will be engrossed in business aairs and the people, victims of greed. The : laity will lose their faith, will kill and spy on one another. The land will be invaded by Devas and Tirthikas, and the population will place its faith in the br"hmins; men will a take pleasure in killing living beings and will lead a loose life.131
Devas and T" rthakas would seem to be Brahmanical temples and " " other holy places served by Brahmans. Note that the Mahabharata passage also makes a rare predictive reference to Brahmanical tem" ples (devasthanas; 3.188.65c), along with Brahman settlements and hermitages of the great R: is, as being supplanted by the Buddhist :s edukas. :" " As John Strong shows, it is Aokas proliferation of st"pas, which s u " " the Aokavadana actually calls dharmarajikas, that marks the trans " " sition from his being called Cand"oka, Aoka the Fierce, to s : : as Dharm"oka, Aoka the Righteous a term for which Avaghosa as s s : lets Aoka Dharmar"ja stand alone, and that gives Aoka the s a s name Dharmar"ja, which is also an epithet for the Buddha, in part a because the building of st"pas represents the reconstruction of the u Buddhas body (1983, 117118). For Avaghosa, as for his Aoka, s s : dharma appears to be more a universal value than a civilizational one: something the Buddhist dharma makes possible for everyone on " " levelled terms. If indeed the Mahabharata presents rst and foremost Dharmar"ja Yudhisthira, perhaps at times in tandem with his brother a ::
130 131
As discussed by Biardeau (2002, 2: 759760), and in Hiltebeitel (forthcoming-a). See Lamotte (1998, 94 [103]), translating Ma~jur" ulakalpa verses 236248. n s m"
283
Arjuna, as an answer to the never quite mentioned Buddha and Aoka, Avaghosa would seem to provide both the Buddha and s s : Aoka as answers to the chief heroes and the main deity of the s " " Mahabharatas never quite mentioned main story.
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Journal of Indian Philosophy (2006) 34: 229286 DOI 10.

1007/s10781-005-5020-x ALF HILTEBEITEL

ASVAGHOSAS BUDDHACARITA: THE FIRST KNOWN CLOSE :

ASVAGHOSAS BUDDHACARITA: THE FIRST KNOWN CLOSE :

" As Olivelle (1999), xxxix puts it for Apastambha.

ASVAGHOSAS BUDDHACARITA: THE FIRST KNOWN CLOSE :

ASVAGHOSAS BUDDHACARITA: THE FIRST KNOWN CLOSE :

ASVAGHOSAS BUDDHACARITA: THE FIRST KNOWN CLOSE :

ASVAGHOSAS BUDDHACARITA: THE FIRST KNOWN CLOSE :

ASVAGHOSAS BUDDHACARITA: THE FIRST KNOWN CLOSE :

ASVAGHOSAS BUDDHACARITA: THE FIRST KNOWN CLOSE :

ASVAGHOSAS BUDDHACARITA: THE FIRST KNOWN CLOSE :

ASVAGHOSAS BUDDHACARITA: THE FIRST KNOWN CLOSE :

ASVAGHOSAS BUDDHACARITA: THE FIRST KNOWN CLOSE :

ASVAGHOSAS BUDDHACARITA: THE FIRST KNOWN CLOSE :

I would just say that this leads us nowhere.

ASVAGHOSAS BUDDHACARITA: THE FIRST KNOWN CLOSE :

ASVAGHOSAS BUDDHACARITA: THE FIRST KNOWN CLOSE :

ASVAGHOSAS BUDDHACARITA: THE FIRST KNOWN CLOSE :

" " Mahabharata

ASVAGHOSAS BUDDHACARITA: THE FIRST KNOWN CLOSE :

" " Mahabharata

ASVAGHOSAS BUDDHACARITA: THE FIRST KNOWN CLOSE :

ASVAGHOSAS BUDDHACARITA: THE FIRST KNOWN CLOSE :

ASVAGHOSAS BUDDHACARITA: THE FIRST KNOWN CLOSE :

book centered in the Moksadharmaparvan (2005, 1). According to : Tokunaga,

ASVAGHOSAS BUDDHACARITA: THE FIRST KNOWN CLOSE :

ASVAGHOSAS BUDDHACARITA: THE FIRST KNOWN CLOSE :

ASVAGHOSAS BUDDHACARITA: THE FIRST KNOWN CLOSE :

ASVAGHOSAS BUDDHACARITA: THE FIRST KNOWN CLOSE :

ASVAGHOSAS BUDDHACARITA: THE FIRST KNOWN CLOSE :

ASVAGHOSAS BUDDHACARITA: THE FIRST KNOWN CLOSE :

ASVAGHOSAS BUDDHACARITA: THE FIRST KNOWN CLOSE :

ASVAGHOSAS BUDDHACARITA: THE FIRST KNOWN CLOSE :

ASVAGHOSAS BUDDHACARITA: THE FIRST KNOWN CLOSE :

The George Washington University

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