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“Where religion meets the world, these narratives present something
for everyone,” the dust jacket of this volume proclaims. And there
is indeed something for everyone in the four “Dívyavadána”
narratives that Joel Tatelman has translated into English here; in
this slim volume (the first in a multivolume edition), released by
the Clay Sanskrit Library, Tatelman has produced a fine addition to
an esteemed series that also offers such choice Sanskrit literary
treats as Valmíki’s “Ramáyana,” as rendered into English by
Robert P. Goldman, Sheldon I. Pollock, and other skilled
translators. Drawing our attention to “the worldly face of religious
literature,” the dust jacket of Tatelman’s entry recommends these
tales as much for their entertainment value as for their historical
or didactic value. To the extent that religious commitments are
instantiated in humble everyday actions like cooking food, building
houses, getting married, and paying off loans, Buddhism does indeed
“meet the world” more frequently than some Buddhological tomes would
lead one to suppose. And Joel Tatelman has a fine sense of how to
present the actions of Buddhist actors, who practice the teachings
while seeking adventure and making money, to English speakers who may
have some vaporous assumptions about the purported non-materialism of
the “spiritual” East.
Tatelman’s translations narrate tales that accent the suspenseful
adventures of non-monastic Buddhist merchants and ruling elites.
Tatelman provides just enough context in his brief introduction to
help the reader appreciate why these texts have many details on life-
cycle rites, beliefs and practices geared toward controlling
conception and fertility, commercial and business life, etc. We
learn such useful things as methods for setting up a caravan (donkeys
are deemed superior, and the wise merchant will find a spot in the
middle rather than at the front or the back), and how to recognize a
city inhabited by hungry ghosts. Beyond their value as tips that any
traveler of any era might well keep in mind, such details tell us a
great deal about the social life of South Asian Buddhists, especially
those living and traveling in the frontier lands of the northwest, in
the early centuries of the Common Era. We learn a great deal more
about what the Sarvāstivādins and Mūlasarvāstivādins aspired to
and valued than we do from many standard works on early Buddhism in
South Asia. And we learn what women, especially lay women, were
doing and thinking, as well as what men thought women were doing and
thinking. While Tatelman’s slim volume does not, in this regard,
provide much commentary on the gender-dynamics of these tales (less
than one might expect in light of the insightful introduction he
provided in his earlier annotated translation of The Glorious Deeds
of Pūrṇa, a study of the Pūrṇāvadāna), it is clear that
Tatelman values what such narratives can tell us about gender in
South Asia.
These are tales that flow from a large wellspring of South Asian
popular literature, much of it of the “penny dreadful” sort.
(“Beware, young man! She appears to have sharp fangs behind those
ruby red lips!”) Though action-packed and seemingly lowbrow in
intended audience, the narratives translated here are situated within
a genre of Buddhist literature that accounts for present-day
escapades by reference to the protagonist’s morally determinative
deeds of the past. The melodramatic narrative worlds of these tales
are shaped by karma, by actions in the past, and follow fairly
predictable patterns according to which an action of one kind yields
an outcome in the form of particular lifescapes (hellish, heavenly,
ghostly, human, animal, and the like) and dramatis personae
encountered. Tatelman’s introduction focuses on those features of
the Avadāna genre that help us to understand the drive for wealth,
adventure, and love that animate these tales. Like Tatelman’s
earlier annotated translation and study of the Pūrṇāvadāna,
this volume’s introduction gives useful information on what Buddhist
texts were in wide circulation during the period in which early
Avadānas were composed (at the beginning of the Common Era), and
about how the translated work adds to our understanding of the genre.
Tatelman has a fine appreciation for lively storytelling, and his
work corrects the tendency to neglect this important means of
conveying the teachings—a tendency that has long characterized the
field of Buddhist studies, despite the fact that monastic libraries
across the Buddhist world are chock-full of these kinds of tales.
Tatelman’s volume is also invaluable as a source of information about
devotional rituals that some older Buddhological tomes assume all
monks would rightfully eschew. For example, one story narrates
Śākyamuni’s visit to a frontier town where Buddhist monks and
missionaries have encountered doubt and conflict. He transports
himself to the frontier using his psychic powers, seated in his
perfumed chamber, accompanied by a devout goddess who shades him with
a bákula branch. After performing amazing deeds and winning the
attention and faith of the townspeople, he miraculously emits hair
and nail relics from his living body, to be enshrined in a reliquary
at the request of a group of women who converted to Buddhism at the
sight of his glorious body. We are told that for one who has
acquired merit over many lifetimes, seeing a Buddha has a greater
effect on the mind than twelve years of meditation (na tathā
dvā|daśa|varṣ’|âbhyastaḥ śamathaś cittasya kalyatāṃ janayati ... yath” ôpacita|kuśala|mūla|hetukasya sattvasya tat
prathamato Buddha|darśanam) (pp.184–185). The valet goddess who
had accompanied him from the Buddhist heartland to the frontier town
then plants her branch onto the central shaft of the stūpa built
over the living relics and takes up residence there. “‘Lord, I shall
remain worshipping here at this Stupa,’ and there she stationed
herself. Some people call the shrine ‘Matrons’ Stupa’; others,
‘bákula-Shaft,’ and to this day it is venerated by those monks who
are given to the veneration of shrines” (p. 187).
The book contains two suspenseful tales of adventurous young men
going to sea to find their fortunes (“The Story of Shrona Koti·karna” and “The Story of Purna”). These adventure-seekers get more
adventures than they dare to dream, of course, often of the ghoulish,
vampirical, ghostly, or otherwise potentially fatal sort. Moral
virtue is instantiated in physical beauty, heroic strength, quick-
witted MacGyver-like responses to heroic ordeals, and in the
acquisition of wealth (although of course the best form of wealth is
wealth-in-circulation, not wealth that is horded). The third story
in the volume, that of Prince Súdhana, demonstrates that generosity
to fellow beings and indefatigable courage in defense of one’s
beloved (even if she is a nonhuman kínnari nymph, considered
dispensable by many at court) are virtues that give rise to awakening
as a Buddha in a later life. The story of Prince Súdhana is a
jātaka (also known as a bodhisattvāvadāna), narrating
events from a Buddha’s former life. The prince must overcome the
wicked machinations of a jealous royal minister and pass through a
hero’s trials to be with his beloved nymph. Because it is a past-
life story, Tatelman points out, the redactors do not let monastic
priorities like celibacy prevent them from producing an engaging
romantic narrative. Even the awakened Buddhas, the narrative
suggests, have been buffeted by the psychic and material effects of
erotic love, and in pursuing such love affairs in a heroic way, they
successfully laid the foundation for full awakening.
“The Story of Makándika the Wanderer” relates several jātakas set
in lands outside the Mágadhan heartland. It includes that of the
trader Sínhala, who astutely avoids being consumed by a band of
female ghouls when shipwrecked off the coast of Sri Lanka. It also
includes the jātaka of a wanderer who helps to settle (or further
unsettle—it is hard to say) the complicated domestic situation of
King Udáyana of the Vatsas. King Udáyana had made quite a few
matrimonial alliances with other rulers. The intrigues between co-
wives in his court, as depicted in this narrative, would put the
scriptwriters of the Sopranos to shame. Jealousy toward
Shyámavati, a devoted lay follower of the Buddha, leads one co-wife
to plot the death by arson of Shyámavati and her five-hundred
companions. Being devout and accomplished, they seize the
opportunity to seek voluntary death and go on to exalted post-mortem
destinies, and so the story ends on a triumphant note.
Tatelman’s translation makes for a particularly good study aid in
that it is faithful to the Sanskrit (which is printed on facing
pages) without much loss of elegance. The syntax of the English
approximates that of the Sanskrit, which makes for easy Sanskrit
training. Given the paucity of adequate Sanskrit textbooks (not to
mention texts useful for the student of Buddhist hybrid Sanskrit),
this volume thus stands out as an excellent teaching tool.
I do have a few quibbles. The text could have used more vigorous
editing. For example, on page 165 we find the following sentence
that appears to be a hybrid of interrogative and imperative: “Think
what is to be done?” Tatelman’s failure to propose a translation or
provide substantive commentary on the compound caitya|śalākā|grahaṇe, used as an epithet for the monk Purna—the translation
“[first in] getting meal tickets” leaves caitya untranslated—frustrates this reader. But no doubt the editorial policies for
producing these tiny books limit what translators can do to satisfy
the curiosity of readers.
Paired with a contribution to critical theory in Buddhist studies
(such as those to be found in the works of Bernard Faure, Rita Gross,
Janet Gyatso, Alan Cole, or Reiko Ohnuma), this lovely edition would
give an upper-level undergraduate or beginning graduate student a
fairly rich palette of colors to work with in depicting the narrative
worlds that the “Dívyavadána” and similar texts establish, as well as
the ideological commitments that structure those worlds.
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by H-Net, all rights reserved.
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