Poetry and Compositional Structure of the Sanskrit Buddhist Narrative Supriya Sarthavaha Jataka in Bhadrakalpavadana

Email

Whatsapp

Facebook

Pinterest

Twitter

Copy link

The present title of the Asiatic Society's publication is a valuable addition to its Bibliotheca Indica series, edited by Professor Soma Basu (Sikdar) and Professor Nicholas Kazanas. The work was initially undertaken by the former as the Rajendralala Mitra Research Fellow for Buddhist Studies at the Asiatic Society, Kolkata between 1998 and 2001. She had undertaken the study for a critical edition of the text Bhadrakalpavadana (Sanskrit Buddhist narrative in verse), a Sanskrit manuscript, collected by B.H. Hodgson from Nepal and is available in the collection of the Asiatic Society, Kolkata. Dr. Rajendralala Mitra documented and edited it and it was published by the Society in 1882.

While Basu (Sikdar) was engaged with her assignment subsequently found out that seven chapters in the manuscript, as mentioned above, were missing including the Supriya Sarthavaha Jataka. She further studied other two manuscripts, one collected from Nepal and another from Cambridge Digital Library, Cambridge University Press, 1883, which covered the missing link. The authors proceeded by further studying the extant manuscripts and reconstructed the text based on these manuscripts. Finally, these were translated and processed for publication. Thus, this volume "presents the complete translation along with all the technicalities of a text-critical edition" (Preface, xiii). The Preface and the longish Introduction gives the entire background of the present work with a vivid description, explanation and elaboration and makes it a lucid reading, intelligible even to an uninitiated reader.

This important publication becomes very relevant in the context of the bicentenary of Dr. Rajendralala Mitra, the first Indian President of the Society (1885), when the Society is currently engaged in a number of academic programmes for the observance of this historical occasion. It also fulfils another mission of out the commitment laid under Azadi ka Amrit Mahotsav by way of disseminating our rich cultural resources.

1. As Buddhism rises, according to the general tenet, in the latter half of the 6th cent. BCE, Buddhists begin to contribute to Indian literature. The Avadana literature is the largest corpus of Buddhist Sanskrit texts available to us. It may be considered also as one of the more extensive bodies of ancient Indian story literature. The Avadanas are the best models for personal conduct; they depicted forms of religious practices and served local Dharma traditions, celebrated important figures in the tradition and, of course, entertained people. Not only Gautama the Buddha, but also an excellent story- teller accomplished the task of instructing and giving delight through stories. The framework whereby a person's present situation in life is explained by the Buddha by narrating one of his past lives is a defining feature of the Avadana genre.

2. In the backdrop of the dominant Vedic or Brahmanical system with all the philosophical, religious and social components, Buddhism arose as a protestant sort of religious and philosophical tradition. Since they have a common background, Buddhism and Brahmanism share many common concepts and customs. As Coomaraswamy contends, "the more profound is one's study of Buddhism and Brahmanism, the more difficult it becomes for him to distinguish between the two. Buddhism differs in approach towards the existence of a Creator God (Isvara), Eternal Self (sasvata atman), and its transmigration to a new body as propounded by the Upanisadic philosophy and best reflected in the Srimadbhagavadgita, social classification on the basis of action and not by birth and so on, it definitely accommodated numerous elements and concepts of the Vedic philosophy, obviously because Buddhism arose on the Indian soil and in the Indian society".