A Note on the Jataka Tales 14

A note on the Jataka-14

Curiously enough we have no extant version of the Tipitaka here in India. No original manuscript of the Tipitaka is at our hand anywhere. So we donot know the alphabet in which it was written Brahmi or Kharorostri in which it was written The work known as Tipitaka was retrieved by the Europeans from below Buddhist stupa or temple in Ceylone It was found there in Sinhalese alphabet In that case my earlier contention that whether Pali was at all a language widely known in ancient India seems to be a relevant question.

Let us now try to trace back the adventures undergone by the Tipitaka. Presently after the Buddha’s maha parini bbana the Rajagaha get- together took place and the Tipitaka was compiled Centuries passed by and towards the 2nd century BC. Asok embraced the Buddha’s faith. His son Mahendra became a Buddhist monk and it was he who carried the Tipitaka from here to Ceylone. There the Tipitaka was put down in Sinhalese transcriptiont. The same was carved in copper plates and
the plates were buried under a stupa. It waited there in the cool of
the earth forlorn for more than thousand years till the Europeans
came. They retrieved the Tipitak and revealed it to the world in
Roman transcripit. In India however Pali is nowadays being written in Devnagri script And that suggests as it were that studies in Pali has been a continuous practice in India and Pali. Buddhism is our heritage through the ages. But that is a myth Even we did not know anything about Asoka till the British discovered the same for us

Another important information needs to be communicated Although I told earlier that the sermons of the Buddha were only enshrined in the Tipitaka the Tipitaka we encounter has more speakers or authors than the Buddha Therigatha and Theragatha are clear instances Therigatha has a special niche in Indian literature It is an anthology of poems composed by nuns who were followers of the Buddha Think of ancient Indian literature It is also pronouncedly patriarchal. If Kalidasa wrote poems and plays did’nt his daughter if any or his wife or his sister in law try her hand at poetry? But women have been simply erased from human history and this patriarchal history is no history at all. Like Therigatha Theragatha is also an anthology of poems They were composed by saints of the Buddhist order.
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Now let us come to the Jataka As it has been already observed the
Jataka is a part of the Tipitaka and it is an anthology of tales told
by the Buddha himself. But, alas! the so called original Jataka even
in Sinhalese transcript has not been found What they got was a note on the Jataka tales called the Jatakatthavannana. It was edited by
Fausboll. So I want to remind the readers of Sefirah that the
Tales that are being retold by Nandita here are being retrieved from the aforesaid note on the Jataka The style of the Jatakatthavannana is as it seems to me rough and rugged I fancy Buddhavacana or the parole of the Buddha was made of the stuff of honey from heaven. But we are doomed never to have the taste of the same.
Another prescience about the Jataka tales might be of help to the readers of Sefirah To tell that I had better go back to Gaya where Siddhartha attained Buddhahood or enlightenment Siddhartha the prince of Kapilavatthu had proved himself in a tourney and got married When his son was born he called the son an obstruction or Rahula and at once he stealthily left his palace for a life of a recluse in search of indeterminate some which could save the mankind from groans Does it not remind of the demon Gaya who wanted that all things both great and small be liberated from the groans of the existence? No wonder that after a lot of sojourn here and there Siddhartha reached the city of Gaya. In my last write up submitted today only I discussed how the mind body dichotomy was explored by Descartes. The write-up does not appear yet in the Sefirah.


Descartes posited that mind and matter are different substances While mind is recognised through its faculty of thought matter is known through its extension So Descartes wondered how come that they do work together .

With us there cannot be any mind without the body. So body's existence testifies the existence of the mind But at the same time body is understood through the mind Thus body testifies mind and mind testifies the body. But is their any third thing that stands witness to either mind or body or both? None. So may be there is neither body nor mind.

May be Mukta Vasudev might posit that the is ness of the dichotomy suggests their reality and the reality of our existence She seems to be Cartesian in her assertion that once you doubt you exist. But my contention is that we might be the function of a dichotomy. When there is the dichotomy both cannot be true as per Aristotlean logic. Either this is true or that is true. In our opinion either both are true or neither is true .So with this present author reality is indescribable. It beggars description
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I read twice the rejoinder of to my earlier installment on the Jataka and found that both of us see eye to eye on the issue that reality begsscription. Both of us are aware of the limitations of Descarte’s approach. We have our differences too. But let us overlook the point so that we are focused on the Buddha.

We were talking of the frame of references as to the self into which the Buddha was born. Unlike Descartes the ancient Indians did not separate mind from the body With them mind is physical A few days back the scientists felt that the seat of the mind is in the brain and it could be the function of the network of nerves where neurons are nodal points Well the inventor of the guillotine used to save the skulls of those who died being guillotined with the hope that one day he would be able to discover the seat of mind. But when the son leaves home getting newly married mothers heart breaks She does not have any pain in her head When the teddy boys threaten an Indian in the down town of Liverpool his knees shiver. Nothing happens in the head.May be the mind is every where in the body and not at any particular place. Although most of the illnesses now a days are described by the doctors as psychosomatic they do not know how to set the mind right with their needles and scissors
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Be that as it may the ancient Indians used to speak of four planes of mind in mind intellect ego and consciousness just as those of us who use Freudian paradigm speak of conscious pre -conscious and unconscious mind and according to them mind is physical unlike consciousness . And the Buddha was born into this kind of thought and he out rightly rejected the notion of any permanent self On the surface this is where. Buddhism it is claimed differs from the traditional Indian religion or call it Hinduism to get rid of periphrasis and ambiguity. But ironically enough the Jataka tales under study launched by Mitu and Mousumi are but the tales told by the Buddha culled from his experiences of earlier births If the Buddha did not believe in a permanent self how is it that he could tell us the stories of previous births.

Tarry here a little. It is commonly presumed that while Hinduism believes in a soul or a permanent self that can journey through myriads of births and deaths Buddhism does not pin its faith on a permanent self or soul One of the distinguishing features of Buddhism is its middle path Middle path does not mean walking along the middle of a road in Calcutta so that you can be easily run over Middle path means not being logo centric.

What is not being logo centric? Well we have already introduced our readers with Ananda. Ananda had a friend named Bachhagotra. Bachhagotra was an intellectual who had thousand and one queries Ananda told him that the lord Buddha was capable of satisfying any query whatever So Bachhagotra met the Buddha Bachhagotra------Sir is there any thing called soul? Buddha-----I do’nt know whether there is any soul . Bachhagotra -----Is there no soul in that case?
Buddha------ I did not say that there is no soul. On the surface the Buddha either simply did not answer. Bachhagotra. Or else he did not know the answer to the questions that Bachhagotra raised. Later he told Ananda that if he had told Bachhagotra that soul is permanent then Bachhagotra would believe that the soul is permanent. On the other hand if he had told that there is no soul then Bachha would believe that there is no soul This is how the Buddha stuck to the Middle Path and avoided logo centrism.
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On the surface while Hinduism pins its faith on a permanent self or soul Buddhism claims that nothing is permanent whatever. The so called soul or the self is an agglomeration of the five Skandhas in (1) form (2) feeling (3) cognition (4) formation (5) consciousness .
The five skandhas or heaps that one finds in a living body of man is (1) the body which is the form skandha (2) As soon as the body or the form is there, their is the feeling skandha. (3) Feeling skandha leads one to think which feeling is a joy and which feeling is a pain. Thus thinking gives rise to cognition the third skandha. (4) The cognition of weal and woe impels one to seek happiness ; this is the fourth skandha known as formation.(5) Acting requires a certain amount of wisdom or consciousness which is a kind of small intelligence – it is the fifth skandha. According to the Buddha each one of the constituents of the self is impermanent and hence there can't be a permanent thing called the self or the soul.

On the surface though Hinduism believes in a soul that transmigrates from one body to another it is also permanent only in relation to the plane of the mundane world where we are engaged in getting and spending. But on another plane the so called permanent souls are like bubbles in the air. Because I have already referred to the causal sea where from the soul leaps up like oil film on oil and wherein the souls are dissolved. In fact seen from a particular plane nothing exists but the causal sea. Thus from the stand point of Hinduism the souls are permanent seen from one level and impermanent seen from another.

There are many other salient features which they say distinguish Hinduism from Buddhism. But it is only true on the surface and we may touch on them if opportunity comes.

Let us fire point blank at the question – if the Lord Buddha had not believed in the permanence of the soul or self how come that the Buddha speaks of his experiences of his eariler lives in the Jataka tales.
Well the Buddha says that the self or the soul does not exist after death. But the desire or the tanha – Sanskrit trishna that the self cherished lingers even after one dies. It seeks gratification.
And to that end it enters into a particular womb and undergoes a fresh lease of life on earth or any other plane in the multiverse.

One wonders whether there is any real distinction between the traditional philoshopy of Hinduism and the philosophy of the Buddha as to the notion of the soul or the self. Suppose there is a beautiful boy or a handsome girl dancing in the yonder court –yard. Instead of exclaiming – what a handsome girl '- one might exclaim – what a beauty or handsomeness. Is there any real difference between these two expressions? According to Hindu tradition the soul leaps up from the causal sea impelled by desire. Goaded by desire it under goes- myriads of births and deaths. In that case if the word soul or atman were replaced by tanha or desire it makes no difference. Mind can not exist without a body. Mind gives birth to body. Body is the manifestation of mind. The essence of mind is desire. If desire lingers after the demise of the physical body it must be itself another body- call it the astral self or soul or atman whatever name you choose.

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In my last installment, I observed that mind was prior to the body both as per the notions of Buddha and traditional Indian notion Well that might scandalise a few whose perceptions are different But think of a human body which has no life in it Don’t we shudder from it? Even the husband or the wife of a person who is dead fears to touch the dead body of his or her once upon a time better half Don’t we either put the dead body in the grave or else destroy it? If body were the fountain head of life why destroy it ? The truth seems to be otherwise Life or prana dawns earlier and living body follows suit Well life implies eros and thanatos. Eros means zest for life and thanatos means desire for death. These eros and thanatos would not be there if there were no mind So mind appears before life prana. But if mind did not have the intelligence to perceive the dichotomy of life and death there would be no mind. So intelligence appears before mind. But how could the intelligence be there if there were no ego to tell us—this is how you must survive. So ego --the invisible or the imperceptible unless in a living body is at the origin of body. Dont call it fantastic If you pin your faith on Big Bang as a sensible hypothesis, you will tell us that at the outset there was a dot. A dot has neither length nor breadth and still it exists. And the dot exploded into an expanding balloon called the multiverse where we live. Here it should be kept in mind that if the universe or the multiverse were at the outset a mere dot its density was infinite and unthinkable. Science also expresses itself in metaphors. If you ask me wherefrom the dot or the ego did appear for the time being I remain silent. I am not the omniscient one or the enlightened one. I am simply trying to explain the larger mindset or the language where from the Jataka tales sprang In my earlier installment I sought to point out that there is noqualitative difference between the notion of soul and what the Buddhists call tanha that transmigrates from one body to another. A person lives in this world being born into a society. He has to struggle here for survival. And there this man’s scope and that man’s talent haunts him .Man cannot eat the cake and have it too. This is a queer world. Think of Mrs Indira Gandhi at her height. She was worshipped by the whole nation perhaps and her every moment was under public scrutiny. May be she was tired of her busy life and longed for the peaceful life of an ordinary clerk In that life she would be able to enjoy a film or a family life rid of public attention. Such tanha would goad her to another birth where she might find herself far from the ignoble strife of politics.

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I am back at the type writer. In my last installment which I wrote today in the morning I told you that although the Buddha did not believe in the permanence of the soul he pinned his faith on the odysseus of tanha. As I have tried to explicate how mind has to appear before the emergence of body if you take that for granted to pursue the present game of discourse then you will admit that tanha may incarnate into human body And that gives the Jataka tales viability.

Now the Buddha of Kapilavatthu is the narrator of the tales of the Jataka. He claims that the tales hark back to his earlier life. From this it logically follows that the Buddha of Kapilavatthu had undergone numerous births and deaths before he became the Buddha or the enlightened one. This is important for understanding the Jataka tales. But before dwelling on the aforesaid important motif let me tell how Buddha came to know of his earlier birth Well may be I told you earlier Siddhartha left his home when his child Rahula was born. He became a wandering monk He met many people who claimed to have attained the absolute truth as to the existence He followed their prescriptions. But they were of no avail to him. In fact everyone has to make his road to truth As soon as.he reaches truth the road built by him vanishes. When another man ventures a journey towards truth and freedom he cannot trace the steps of his forerunner. He must build a fresh road to reach salvation So having not found any proper preceptor who could
guide him through the encircling gloom to perpetual light Siddhartha came to Gaya. I have already told you about the great demon Gaya. His body has hallowed the region of Gaya. There only on the banks of Niranjana Siddhartha sat under a tree and burst into a soliloquy-- Let my body be sapless here. Let my skin and bones and flesh go to utter destruction. Unless I attain the enlightenment. I will not budge from here. And then an epic battle started between Mara and Siddhartha. Mara stands for the attachment to the worldly life. Siddhartha overcame Mara the
way Jesus overcame Satan. When the battle was lost and won enlightenment dawned upon Siddhartha and Siddhartha became the very Buddha-the Buddha of Kapilavatthu.
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Mind you the Buddha at the hour of enlightenment could see myriads of lives that he had undergone till he became Buddha or the en lightened one He saw them as it were in a flash. Don’t say that it is impossible. You can see a whole life story of a boy growing into man and die in a dream that might have covered 15 minutes only here on earth. So the Buddha may have seen myriads of his life in all its details within the span of two and half hours And Buddha recollects only 547 births of his in the Jataka tales.
It must be rememberd however that all these stories belong to Buddha’s journey through births and deaths only when the Buddha was a Bodhisattva. Believe it or not according to traditional Hindu and Buddhist faith a soul or tanha has to undergo 86 lakhs of births and deaths before it takes a human birth And after myriads of human birth one is qualified as Bodhisatta. Now the question arises what is Bodhisattva? Who is Bodhisattva?
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The concept of Bodhisattva is very important in the context of the Jataka Tales. Literally bodhi means enlightenment and sattva means being '. Bodhisattva means an enlightened being. In earlier Buddhism bodhisattva was an appellate of Siddhartha the prince of Kapilavatthu as long he was a seeker As soon as he achieved his enlightenment he was a Buddha In other words Buddhas merit the designation of Bodhisattva prior to their attainment of Buddhahood or full enlightenment Later there was a schism in the Buddhist church and the followers of the Buddha were either Mahayanis or Hinayanis. The followers of Mahayana or the Great Vehicle announced that only those seekers who work hard for the salvation of all things both great and small in the world and who take vows to that end are Bodhisattvas. They only are earmarked to be Buddhas in times to come On the other hand those who work for their personal liberation also attain Buddhahood .But they are known as PratyekBuddha In the context of us therefore Buddhas are nobler than Pratyek Buddhas. But when someone attains enlightenment does he not have good will for every atom in this existence? Let us not join issue with that. So the Jataka must be read as the leaves from the life stories of the very Bodhisattva that was destined to be Siddhartha Buddha. Here I would like to humbly point out that the demon Gaya was also dedicated to the achieving of the salvation of every living being and every particle on earth. No wonder therefore that the Siddhartha Bodhisattva whose vow was also achieving the salvation of the whole existence as such would get at his enlightenment at the hallowed place where the great demons body is at rest that is Gaya in Bihar. Thus it could be safely argued that Siddhartha Buddha’s life story is in consonance with the traditional faiths or so called Hindu faith And will it be too far-fetched to infer that our lord Siddhartha Buddha was but an incarnation of the great demon Gaya.

Even if we do not pay heed to the theoretical disputes that cropped up between the Mahayanas and the Hinayanas and closely read the texts of the Jataka Tales we find that the Siddhartha Buddha in all his earlier births was dedicated to the well being of his fellowmen and of everything on earth. And no doubt he was a Bodhiusattva in the literal sense of the term----not in the Mahayana sense.
As I have already told you according to Buddhist tradition there were many a Buddha before the advent of Siddhartha Buddha According to Hinayana texts six Buddhas previous to Siddhartha Buddha wereVipasyin Sikhin Viswabhu Krakuchhanda Kanakamuni and kasyapa. Earlier than them there was Dipankar Buddha. As the Nidana katha or the introduction of the Jatakatthavannana or the Jataka tales observes our Siddhartha
Buddha was born of rich parents and his name was Sumedha at the time when Dipankar Buddha shone in the world in all the effulgence of an enlightened self.
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Well when Dipankar Buddha was on earth the Siddhartha Buddha was born of very rich parents and his name was Sumedha Sumedha lost his parents early in his life and he inherited untold wealth. He did not join in any so called economic activity. He felt the meaninglessness of earning money and amassing wealth So what he did was to give away his inherited wealth to the poor. Poor people rushed to him from far and wide and Sumedha entertained them with great enthusiasm. Despite that, his treasury did not wane. Tired of giving away one day he renounced the world for a life in the forests. One day to his utter surprise, he found that there were people in the forlorn place where he used to lead a life of penance. He asked the people as to what made them come to his place. They said in reply that Dipankar was coming that way. The place where Sumedha practised his meditation was a plot of marshy land. The men requested Sumedha to use his esoteric powers so that the marsh did not pose any hindrance to the journey of Dipankar Buddha and his followers. Sumedha agreed to the proposal. But when he found Dipankar Buddha approaching he himself lay down on the marsh instead of developing the land. And Dipankar Buddha did not hesitate. He and his 60000 followers walked on the body of Sumedha and crossed the marsh. Sumedha was so charmed with the person of Dipankar Buddha that he
also thought that he would also strive to achieve Buddhahood. Dipankar was already miles away from Sumedha. But he knew what was taking place in Sumedha’s mind and he said --Yes Sumedha will be a Buddha in times to come And the earth danced and the nature laughed in glee. Mind you when Sumedha thought that he would strive for Buddha= hood he was already a very great person who could easily give away all his wealth and inheritance and who could stand the pressure of a Buddha and his 60000 followers trampling upon him. Despite that he had to pass through myriads of births and deaths .In the meantime many other Buddhas appeared and vanished. The Jataka tales only recollect 547 births and deaths of Sumedha who finally became our much loved Siddhartha BuddhaMitu alias Nandita a social worker of great repute will be doing us great service if she could read the Jataka tales from the standpointof social work. In every birth of his Buddha in his Bodhisattva stage was a leader and his only object was to lift up the groaning humanity from the mire of pain and sorrow Practically such tales as the Jataka tales that have been handed down to us from the antiquity could be visited over and over again for fresh ideas on any and every field. And Prof Mausumi Ghose sojourns in the realm of the Jataka tales in search of economic thoughts. Nandita’s recounting of the Jataka tales serve Mousumi as the material largely. Besides Nanditas point of view also provokes her and enriches her. Mukta’s searching questions also provoke our thought .I have myself tried to give an introduction to the Jataka Tales from the standpoint of Buddhist faith so that the readers can understand the context of the Jataka Tales from Buddhist standpoint. Thus does it not seem that collaboration is already aworking in Sefirah and may be it might bear great fruits in times to come.

It should be noted here that the Jataka tales are in the margin in the world culture today although with the followers of the Buddha they are at the centre and whatever modernity preaches is in the margin Mitu and Mousumi are venturing into the realms of the margin in search of fresh ideas if any.

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In my introduction to Jataka tales I told that the Siddhartha Buddha did not think that he was propounding any new religion different from the traditional religion or Hinduism. In course of our discussion I have tried to point out that Siddhartha Buddha’s enlightenment at Gaya seems to have direct link with the traditional faith regarding the sacredness of the place. I have also tried to show that there is no qualitative difference between the notion of soul in Hinduism and tanha of Buddhism. Let me tell you further according to the received opinion the Siddhartha Buddha did not believe in caste system. But this is not true He believed that the ksatryas were noblest of all the castes. By the by Mahavira at first entered into the womb of a Brahmin woman But since ksatryas seemed to be the higher caste Mahavira’s foetus was transferred to the womb of a ksatrya woman. Further Buddhism apparently does not believe in any supreme god. So does Hinduism at its core. On the surface we speak of the Brahman But the Nasadya Sukta of the Vedas say---Is Brahman conscious or unconscious who knows? Does Brahman himself know whether it is conscious or unconscious? To quote Mukta Vasudev---Reality begs description. So we can not reach it through inference. And when I say while commenting on a poem published in Sefirah----I know therefore I exist Mukta’s ready retort is -------You do not know and therefore you exist. Either both of us are true or none of us are true Reality is something absurd—isn’t it? Mukta always keeps us away from logo centrism with the aid of her peerless wit. And neither Hinduism nor Buddhist faith is at heart logo centric.

Now I have tried to show that there is no great difference between Hinduism and Buddhist faith. But I have already referred to Mahendras missionary activities. He went to Ceylone during the reign of Asoka. It was during Asoka and Kanishka the Buddhist faith was institutionalized and it was spread beyond the borders of India While in course of time Buddhism was almost wiped out from the face of India it was the religion of the majority of the people of Ceylone, Thailand, Burmah etcetera. No wonder that the foreigners could not appreciate the organic link between Hinduism and Buddhism. And Buddhism became a separate religion indeed.