gift of the body copy

The Gift of the Body and the Gift of DharmaAuthor(s): Reiko OhnumaSource: History of Religions, Vol. 37, No. 4 (May, 1998), pp. 323-359Published by: The University of Chicago PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3176401 .Accessed: 14/06/2014 11:39

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Reiko Ohnuma THE GIFT OF THE BODY AND THE GIFT OF DHARMA

Indian Buddhist narrative literature of all ages and schools is full of stories involving paradigmatic acts of generosity in which an animal or human character gives away his entire body or a part of his body to whomever requests it: King Sibi gouges out his eyes and gives them to a blind man; Prince Mahasattva throws himself off a cliff in order to feed a starving tigress; a hare jumps into a fire in order to feed a hungry traveler; and an elephant removes his own tusks and presents them to an evil hunter.1 The majority of such stories are jatakas, or accounts of the Buddha's previous lives, and serve to demonstrate the great selflessness and compassion cultivated by the Buddha during his long career as a bodhisattva. In terms of the bodhisattva's cultivation of the perfections (paramita), they are almost always classified as preeminent examples of the perfection of generosity or giving (dana). Stories of the bodhisattva's gifts of his body to others were extremely popular in Indian Buddhism, appearing in innumerable variations throughout the history of the literary tradition and exerting a profound influence on Buddhist art, philoso- phy, and culture. They exist in the literature of all Mainstream Buddhist schools2 and (unlike many other types of stories) seem to fully retain their popularity within the literature of the Mahayana.

I would like to thank Gregory Schopen for helpful comments and corrections on an ear- lier draft of this article. Any errors that remain are wholly mine. 1 For a full list of references for each of these four stories, see Leslie Grey, A Concordance of Buddhist Birth Stories (Oxford: Pali Text Society, 1990), s.v. "Sivi," s.v. "Vyaghri" or "Mahasattva," s.vv. "Sasa" and "Sagaka," s.v. "Saddanta" or "Chaddanta," and s.v. "Has- taka" or "Saddanta."

2 I borrow Paul Harrison's term "Mainstream Buddhism" to refer to non-Mahayana Buddhism (see Paul Harrison, "Is the Dharma-kaya the Real 'Phantom Body' of the Buddha?"

? 1998 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. 0018-2710/98/3704-0002$02.00


Gift of the Body

I refer to all such stories collectively as "gift-of-the-body" or dehadana stories. I have borrowed the term dehadana from one such story in particular, which refers to itself as a dehadanavadana, an "avaddna dealing with the gift (dana) of one's body (deha)."3 As far as I can tell, dehadana is not a common term in Indian Buddhist literature, and gifts of the body are more frequently referred to with other terms, such as atma-parityaga (self-sacrifice), sarira-parityaga (renunciation of the body), or adhydtmika-dana (internal gift). By using the term dehadana, I mean to focus specifically on those stories in which a gift of the body (deha) is emphasized or explicitly stated, and the predominant theme is generosity (dana). In truth, however, the category is an artificial one. Bud- dhist stories involving self-mutilation and self-sacrifice fall into several different categories that should ultimately be treated as one large and in- terweaving thematic group, with the various types playing off each other in interesting ways. In order to limit my material, however, I have chosen to focus on those stories in which a gift of the body or a part of the body is emphasized, and to designate such stories as gift-of-the-body or dehadana tales.4

Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies 15, no. 1 [1992]: 44-94, pp. 77-78, n. 2). 3 The story in question is the Sarvamdadabhiddnamahaiirjavadana (Mahajjatakamala no. 45), which involves a king who offers his head to a Brahmin supplicant. The story has been edited in Michael Hahn, Der Grosse Legendenkranz (Mahajjitakamald): Eine mit- telalterliche buddhistische Legendensammlung aus Nepal (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1985), pp. 532-50; the phrase dehadandvaddna appears on p. 550.

4 For example, not included in the category of dehadana would be the following, closely related types of tales. (1) Stories involving the altruistic self-sacrifice of one's life for someone else, but without any explicit conception of the act as a gift of the body; e.g., the Ni- grodhamiga Jdtaka (Pali no. 12), in which a deer-king offers his life to the king of Benares in order to spare a pregnant doe. (2) Stories involving the loss of a body part and its religious ramifications, but without explicitly conceiving of this loss as a gift; e.g., the Kundldvadana (Divydvadana, chap. 27), in which Asoka's son Kunfla has his eyes gouged out at the com- mand of his evil stepmother and thereby attains enlightenment. (3) Stories in which a character gives away his body in exchange for a Buddhist teaching; e.g., the Suripa Jakata in the Mahavastu, in which the deer-king Surupa offers his body to a hunter in exchange for a Buddhist verse. (4) Stories in which a character uses his body to make a religious offering; e.g., chap. 22 of the Lotus Sutra, in which a bodhisattva burns his body as an offering to a Buddha. I reserve the term dehadana for those stories in which the gift of the body is explicitly stated or otherwise emphasized, and the predominant theme is generosity. Such stories can generally be classified into two types. (1) One type involves the spontaneous gift of the body or part of the body to whatever recipient asks for it, the recipient usually being someone who is not particularly worthy, which serves to highlight the themes of generosity and compassion. Classic examples include Prince Mahasattva's gift of his body to a starving tigress; an elephant's gift of his tusks to a hunter; King Maitribala's gift of his flesh to can- nibalistic yaksas; and King Candraprabha's gift of his head to an evil Brahman. (2) A second type proceeds similarly to the first, except that the recipient of the gift is really the god Sakra in disguise, the request for the body part being intended by Sakra as a test of the donor's generosity. Classic examples include King Sibi's gift of his eyes to a blind man, King Sibi's gift of his flesh to a pigeon, and the hare's gift of his body as food to a weary traveler. For a fuller

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Perhaps what I have found most striking in the course of my research on these tales is the incredible richness of the dehadana theme and the sheer number of issues important in the study of Indian Buddhism for which these stories open a door and offer a springboard. Although generally presented and classified as if they were straightforward illustra- tions of the virtue of generosity (dana), these stories, in fact, touch on a wide array of topics, often striking one as a melting pot of subtexts bub- bling just underneath the surface structure devoted to dana. In addition to the obvious contribution they make to the Buddhist discourse on dana, I have found these tales to be a rich source of material for Buddhist con- ceptions of the body, of gender, of kingship, of sacrifice, of ritual pollu- tion and purification, of worship, and so forth.

But such interesting topics will have to wait for a future occasion. In this article, I wish to deal with a single topic only, one that is limited, moreover, to a particular subset of these tales. In the course of my reading of many stories of dehadana, it struck me that a limited number of dehadana stories preserved in Sanskrit and Tibetan seemed to be engaged in a particular project that was not characteristic of dehadana stories in general. These stories seemed to be using the theme of the bodhisattva's gift of his body in a particularly interesting way that was unique to them alone. It is this use of the theme that I wish to examine here.

It is my contention that within this particular subset of stories, the bodhisattva's body is clearly intended to serve as a symbol for the Buddha's dharma, and thus, the bodhisattva's gift of his body (dehadana) is made parallel to the Buddha's gift of dharma (dharmadana). Although scholars have long recognized the paradigmatic status of these two gifts within the Buddhist discourse on giving,5 no one, as far as I know, has ever posited a parallel or an identification between the bodhisattva's gift of his body in the past and the Buddha's gift of dharma in the present. Yet it is my contention that this is precisely what these particular stories are doing. In the first half of this article, I will demonstrate three different ways in which this parallel is suggested: through the identification of past and present characters, through the invocation of a group of characters known as the

discussion of the category of dehadana, see Reiko Ohnuma, "Dehadana: The 'Gift of the Body' in Indian Buddhist Narrative Literature" (Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan, 1997), pp. 35-43. 5 The distinction between "material gifts" (amisa-dana) and the "gift of dharma" (dharmadana) is of canonical origin, appearing, for example, in Anguttara Nikdya, I, 91, and Itivut- taka, 98 (all references to Pali canonical texts are to the standard Pali Text Society editions). Material gifts are further divided up into "external gifts" (bahira-dana), which are gifts of external objects, and "internal gifts" (ddhydtmika-ddna), which are generally gifts of the body. This distinction appears, for example, in the Sivi Jataka (Pali no. 499) and in many later Buddhist texts as well, such as the Bodhisattvabhaumi (see Nalinaksha Dutt, Bodhisatt- vabhumih [Patna: K. P. Jayaswal Research Institute, 1978], p. 80, lines 15-20).

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"good group of five," and through a process that I call the "literalization of metaphor." What I mean by each of these will become clear in the ensuing discussion.

Taking the argument one step further, in the second half of this article I will suggest that it is not merely the case that the bodhisattva's body is a symbol for the Buddha's dharma, but also that this dharma itself is implicitly conceptualized as a body of dharma analogous to the bodhisattva's physical body. Thus, while the bodhisattva gives away a physical body, the Buddha gives away a "spiritual" body, the body of dharma. Making use of Buddhist terminology, we might say that the bodhisattva's gift of ripa-kaya (the body of physical form) is made parallel to the Bud- dha's gift of dharma-kdya (the body of dharma, or collection of the Bud- dha's teachings). I will also suggest that because the Buddha's dharma may be seen as a body of dharma, the gift of dharma may thereby be classified as a form of self-sacrifice (atma-parityaga) or gift of the body (dehadana) on the part of the Buddha.

Finally, at the end of the article, I will address the issue of the meaning and significance of these parallels. For now, let me summarize my argu- ments in the form of a simple table. Within a particular subset of gift-of- the-body stories, I contend, the following parallels are either implicitly or explicitly invoked:

bodhisattva buddha past present physical rescue spiritual salvation gift of the body (dehadana) gift of dharma (dharmadina) gift of rupa-kaya gift of dharma-kaya literal deeds metaphorical deeds

It now remains for me to demonstrate the various ways in which such parallels are drawn.

IDENTIFICATION OF PAST AND PRESENT CHARACTERS It is a well-known feature of the jdtaka genre that any particular jdtaka story will often consist of two parts: a "story of the present" (in Pali, paccuppannavatthu), in which some incident occurs, causing the Buddha to tell the story of one of his previous lives; and a "story of the past" (in Pali, atltavatthu), which is the past-life story itself. At the conclusion of the story of the past, there is usually a return to the story of the present, with the Buddha making the requisite "identifications" (in Pali, samo- dhanani) between past and the present characters. That is, characters in the story of the past are identified as the former births of characters in the story of the present or other well-known figures of the Buddha's lifetime, always including the Buddha himself. The story of the present thus con-

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stitutes a framing narrative that surrounds and contextualizes the story of the past. The types of relationship that obtain between the story of the present and the story of the past are many and varied: sometimes there is no discernible relationship; sometimes the suggestion is made that people follow the same habitual karmic tendencies in life after life; while in other instances, the past/present framework is used to suggest interesting parallels between different types of categories.6

This third option, in fact, constitutes one major way in which parallels are drawn between the bodhisattva's gift of his body in the past and the Buddha's gift of dharma in the present. In some gift-of-the-body stories that exhibit a past/present framework, a particular pattern is established in which those who are physically saved by the bodhisattva's gift of his body within the story of the past are identified as former births of those who are spiritually saved by the Buddha's gift of dharma within the story of the present. The bodhisattva's gift of his body and the Buddha's gift of dharma are thus made parallel by both being directed toward the "same" recipient, and this is possible because of the karmic links that connect a single individual's successive lives.

6 On the past/present framework and structure of the jataka (particularly in regard to the Pali collection), see, e.g., T. W. Rhys Davids, Buddhist India (1903; reprint, Delhi: Indolog- ical Book House, 1970), pp. 85-95; Maurice Winternitz, "Jataka," in Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, ed. James Hastings (New York: Scribner's, 1908), 7:491-94, and A History of Indian Literature, vol. 2, Buddhist Literature and Jaina Literature, trans. S. Ket- kar and H. Kohn (Calcutta: University of Calcutta, 1933), pp. 113-56; and K. R. Norman, Pali Literature, Including the Canonical Literature in Prakrit and Sanskrit of All the Hinayana Schools of Buddhism, A History of Indian Literature, ed. Jan Gonda, vol. 17, fasc. 2 (Weisbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1983), pp. 77-84. In general, the types of relationship that obtain between the "story of the present" and the "story of the past" and the literary uses made of the past/present framework have not been adequately explored in the scholarship on Buddhist literature. Most scholars writing on the jataka genre have treated the past/present framework in historical terms, addressing themselves primarily to the rel- ative age of the "past" and "present" stories, and seeing the past/present framework itself largely as a practical means of "assimilating" and "incorporating" non-Buddhist material into the Buddhist fold. Within such a perspective, the story of the past tends to be depicted as authentic, ancient Indian folklore, while the story of the present is often treated as a re- cent, superfluous, and nonessential addition to the whole; Winternitz's description of the Pali stories of the present as "silly inventions of the commentator" that are of "little value" is all too typical (Winternitz, "Jataka," p. 492). Virtually no one has made use of existing scholarship on the literary features and functions of framing and framed narrative in reex- amining the structure of the jatakas. (For theoretical discussions of framing and framed narrative, see Barbara A. Babcock, "The Story in the Story: Metanarration in Folk Narra- tive," in Verbal Art as Performance, ed. Richard Bauman [Prospect Heights, Ill.: Waveland, 1977], pp. 61-79; Mieke Bal, "Notes on Narrative Embedding," Poetics Today 2 [1981]: 41-59, and Narratology: Introduction to the Theory of Narrative, trans. Christine van Bo- heemen [Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1985], pp. 134-49; and the many citations listed in Gerald Prince, A Dictionary of Narratology [Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1987], s.v. "embedding.") Nevertheless, in my own research on dehadana stories, I have found that the story of the present and the story of the past are often juxtaposed in a very conscious way in order to draw parallels between different religious notions. See Ohnuma.

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Let me offer two brief examples. Avaddnasataka no. 37 (called the Sasavadana)7 opens with a story of the present in which a young man becomes a monk but continues to live with his relatives and associate freely with householders. The Buddha then prohibits him from any association with householders and installs him in the forest. This measure fails repeatedly, and the Buddha must admonish the monk and return him to the forest again and again. Finally, the Buddha delivers a sermon to the wayward monk concerning the faults of association with householders and the virtues of life in the forest. As a direct result of this sermon, the monk begins to apply himself and soon attains arhatship.

When the other monks express amazement at the fact that such a "re- peat offender" could finally attain the highest goal, the Buddha replies, "Why is it any wonder, monks, that I... have now banished this son of good family from the village borders up to three times, installed him in the forest, and finally established him in arhatship? For in the past, too... by the sacrifice of my own life, I prevented this son of good family from [descending to] the village borders, and installed him in a dwelling in the forest. Listen to this, and reflect on it well and duly; I will tell you all about it."8

The Buddha then launches into a story of the past in which an ascetic and a hare live together in the forest. When a severe drought occurs and food is difficult to come by, the ascetic decides to leave the forest and go down to the village borders. The hare, being worried about the harmful influences of the village, beseeches the ascetic not to go. After persuad- ing him to remain in the forest for one day, the hare, on the following morning, throws himself into a fire in order to provide food for the hungry ascetic and prevent him from descending into the village. Although the ascetic pulls the hare out of the fire and thus prevents his death, the hare's mere willingness to give his body away so moves the ascetic that he resolves to stay put in the forest. As a further consequence of the hare's virtuous gift, the god Sakra relieves the drought by sending down a great shower of rain, which saves the ascetic from starvation. Thus, even though the hare's gift of his body is not technically completed, it is nevertheless treated as if it were, and celebrated as the deed that ulti-

7 J. S. Speyer, ed., Avadanafataka: A Century of Edifying Tales Belonging to the Hina- ydna, 2 vols., Bibliotheca Buddhica, no. 3 (1902-9; reprint, Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1992), 1:206-12. Translated into French in L6on Feer, Avaddna-(ataka: Cent legendes (Bouddhiques), Annales du Mus6e Guimet, vol. 18 (Paris: Ernest Leroux, 1891), pp. 138-42.

8 kim atra bhiksava ascaryam maya... ayam kulaputro yavat trir api gramant8n nivar- yaranye niyojito yavad arhattve pratisthapito yat tu may8tite 'dhvani ... ayam kulaputrah svajivitaparityagena gramantan nivaryaranyevase niyuktas tac chrnuta sadhu ca susthu ca manasi kuruta bhasisye // (Speyer, ed., 1:208, lines 1-7). All translations in this article are my own, unless otherwise stated.

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mately saves the ascetic from starving.9 When the hare affirms that he performed this magnificent deed in the hope of one day becoming a Bud- dha, the ascetic says, "When you become a Buddha, pay heed to me as well!" The hare replies, "It will be so."l1

At the end of the story, of course, we learn the full import of these prophetic words. Returning to the story of the present, the Buddha reveals that the hare was a former birth of himself, while the ascetic was a former birth of the wayward monk. Thus, we can say that just as the hare saved the ascetic in the past, so, too, has the Buddha saved the wayward monk in the present. Moreover, we can also say that while the hare physically saved the ascetic through undertaking a gift of his body, the Bud- dha has spiritually saved the wayward monk through undertaking a gift of dharma-for it is, after all, as a direct result of the Buddha's sermon that the monk overcomes his wayward behavior and soon attains arhatship. I would argue, then, that the past/present framework of the jataka is here used to draw a parallel between the bodhisattva's gift of his body and the Buddha's gift of dharma by having the "same" individual (the ascetic/wayward monk) receive both gifts. Although the parallel is not explicitly stated in these terms, it is nevertheless implicit in the identifications made between past and present.

A second example of the same pattern may be found in the second story of the Tibetan collection mdo mdzangs blun (commonly known as the Sutra of the Wise and the Foolish).11 Here, the story of the present involves the Buddha saving two young thieves from execution (at the

9 The fact that the hare's gift of his body is never actually completed is nothing un- usual. In my research on gift-of-the-body stories, I have found this to be a relatively fre- quent feature of such tales. In some cases, the gift is not completed because its intended recipient is so moved by the donor's mere willingness to give that he puts a stop to the gift before it is made, while in other cases, the gift is not completed because of some kind of magical intervention that interrupts the gift while proving the donor's sincerity. In either case, the donor's mere willingness to give functions like the gift itself, and the need for an actual gift is thus obviated (see Ohnuma, pp. 46-53). Perhaps this avoidance of depicting an actual gift is one more instance of the ambivalence often displayed by the Buddhist tradition toward the ideal of dehadana. There are many passages in Buddhist texts, in fact, that suggest that the idea of giving one's body away made many Buddhist thinkers uncomfortable; on this ambivalent attitude, see Ohnuma, pp. 106-13.

10 yada tvam buddho bhavethasmakam api samanvaharetha iti /I saa uvacaivam astv iti / (Speyer, ed., 1:211, lines 1-2). 11 The mdo mdzangs blun is a collection of jatakas and avadanas whose provenance is

uncertain. It exists in Chinese, Tibetan, Mongolian, and Oirat versions, but no Sanskrit or Prakrit original has been found. It is clear, however, that the tales are based on Indian tradition, as most of them have parallels in otherjataka and avadana collections. Accord- ing to legend, the tales were heard in Khotan (although what language they were heard in remains uncertain), and collected and translated into Chinese by eight Chinese monks, with all other versions ultimately descending from the Chinese. For the many historical uncer- tainties surrounding this text, see J. Takakusu, "Tales of the Wise Man and the Fool, in Ti- betan and Chinese," Journal of the Royal Asiatique Society (1901), pp. 447-60; Sylvain

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prodding of their distraught mother), accepting them into the monastic community, and establishing them in arhatship through his preaching of the dharma. When Ananda expresses amazement at their good fortune in encountering the Buddha, the Buddha replies, "Not only have I benefited these three, the mother and her sons, at this time alone; I also benefited them at a previous time as well."'2 He then launches into a story of the past, which is a version of the well-known tigress story. Here, a prince named Mahasattva encounters a starving tigress who is ready to devour her own newly born cubs. Prince Mahasattva slits his throat with a piece of wood and allows the tigress to drink his blood and then devour him completely, thus saving both the mother and her cubs. At the end of the story, as expected, the Buddha reveals that he himself was none other than Prince Mahasattva in a previous birth, while the two men saved from execution and established in arhatship were none other than the two young tiger cubs (their mother, of course, being identified as the starving tigress herself). "Formerly," he concludes, "a long time ago, I freed them from difficulty, saved their lives, and made them happy. And now, having attained complete Buddhahood, I have again freed them from difficulty and completely liberated them from the great suffering of samsara."13

Once again, then, implicit in the identification between past and present characters is the suggestion that just as the bodhisattva physically saved the two tiger cubs through a gift of his body, so the Buddha has spiritually saved the two young men through a gift of dharma. The bodhisattva's gift of his body is made parallel to the Buddha's gift of dharma by having both gifts be directed toward the "same" recipients. Moreover, it is not merely the case that the Buddha "helped" the same individuals in two different lives but, more specifically, that a gift of his body in the past has become a gift of dharma in the present. Again, although the term "gift of dharma" (dharmadina) is not explicitly invoked, the wording of

Levi, "Le sitra du sage et du fou dans la litt6rature de 1'Asie Centrale," Journal Asia- tique, ser. 12, 6, 207 (1925): 305-32; and, more recently, Victor Mair, The Linguistic and Textual Antecedents of the Sutra of the Wise and the Foolish, Sino-Platonic Papers, no. 38 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, Department of Asian and Middle East- ern Studies, 1993). The Mongolian version has been translated into English in Stanley Frye, The Sitra of the Wise and the Foolish (mdo bdzans blun) or the Ocean of Narra- tives (iiliger-iin dalai) (Dharamsala: Library of Tibetan Works and Archives, 1981). The Tibetan version I am relying on is from the Derge recension of the canon (hereafter cited as Derge, followed by section, Tibetan volume number, and Tibetan folio numbers). It appears at Derge, mdo sde, a, 129al-298a7. The tigress story is found at 138a5-140b7.

12 ma smad gsum po 'di ni ngas da ltar 'di 'ba' zhig gi dus su bsos par ma zad kyi / sngon 'das pa'i dus na yang 'di bka' drin gyis gsos so // (Derge, mdo sde, a, 138b7-139al).

13 ngas sngon yang yun ring po nas bgegs las thar bar byas te srog skyabs nas bde bar byas so I da mngon par sangs rgyas nas kyang bgegs las thar bar mdzad nas/ 'khor ba'i sdug bsngal chen po las yongs su grol lo // (ibid., 140b5-140b6).

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both stories makes it clear that the characters in the story of the present attain arhatship as a direct result of a sermon preached to them by the Buddha, just as in the past, their physical lives were saved as a direct result of the bodhisattva's gift of his body.

Thus, while the identifications posited between past and present characters in many jatakas appear to be completely arbitrary, here are two cases, I would contend, in which the past and present stories have been paired in a conscious way, and the identifications used to suggest specific parallels. I will address the issue of the meaning and significance of these parallels at the end of this article, but here, let me begin the discussion by suggesting that such stories might be interpreted as functioning somewhat on the level of metaphor. The events taking place in the story of the past serve as extended metaphors for the concepts expressed in the story of the present, lending to them a concreteness and physicality that they would otherwise lack. The abstract notion of the suffering of samsara is translated into the concrete situations of starvation during a drought (in the hare story) or the possibility of being devoured by one's own mother (in the tigress story). Likewise, the Buddha's serene preaching of the dharma is transformed into the gruesome deeds of throwing oneself into a fire (in the hare story) or being devoured by a ferocious animal (in the tigress story). And in both cases, the abstract notion of the dharma is translated into the concrete physicality of somebody's bloody, burned, or mutilated body. The Buddha's dispassionate and unknowable task of saving living beings comes to life in the heroic and swashbuckling labors of the bodhisattva, while at the same time, the Buddha's higher status is yet maintained. For while the story of the past is the focus of greater atten- tion and appeal, the story of the present retains a kind of status quo au- thority. Ostensibly, at least, the spiritual salvation offered by the Buddha is far superior to the physical salvation enacted by the bodhisattva.

I will revisit the issue of metaphor and what I call the "literalization of metaphor" below. For now, let me further my argument by focusing on one particular group of characters that is continually invoked in gift- of-the-body stories, and that I contend serves to emphasize further the parallels drawn between the bodhisattva's gift of his body and the Bud- dha's gift of dharma.

THE "GOOD GROUP OF FIVE" I have outlined above, and given two examples of, a pattern found fairly frequently in gift-of-the-body stories, in which those who are physically saved by the bodhisattva's gift of his body in the story of the past are identified as former births of those who are spiritually saved by the Bud- dha's gift of dharma in the story of the present. Within the corpus of stories that follow this pattern, it is striking to note just how frequently the

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number of beings saved by the bodhisattva's gift of his body is purpose- fully set at five (five yaksas, five tiger cubs, etc.), who are then revealed to have been reborn as the "good group of five" (pancaka bhadravargiya)-that is, the five monks headed by Kaundinya who were the first five disciples to hear the teaching of the Buddha and attain arhatship.14

Let me briefly offer a list of examples in order to demonstrate the prevalence of this pattern. In the Sanskrit Suvarabhasottama Sutra's version of the tigress story, the five tiger cubs who are saved by Prince Mahasattva's gift of his body to the tigress are identified as former births of the good group of five.15 Similarly, in the Pancakdnam Bhadravargi- kdndm Jdtaka of the Mahavastu-which, of course, derives its name from the good group of five-the Buddha explains his spiritual rescue of this group by means of the connections forged in a former birth, when the good group of five were five shipwrecked merchants who were saved by the bodily sacrifice of their leader-a former birth of the Buddha himself.16 The same is true of another, later version of the same story, Sam- bhadravaddnamald no. 4, except that in this instance, Upagupta relates the story to King Asoka.17 Again, in Jdtakamald no. 8, five yaksas are saved from starvation by King Maitribala's gift of his flesh and blood.18 Since the stories of the Jdtakamald lack a past/present framework, these five yaksas are never explicitly identified as past births of the good group of five. However, such an identification is clearly implied when King

14 The Sanskrit term is bhadravargiya, -vargiya, -vargika, or -vargika, regularly preceded by paicaka or panca; the Pali equivalent is pancavaggiyd or -vaggika, with or without bhikkhu. The standard Sanskrit names of the five monks are Ajiatakaundinya, ASvajit, Vaspa, Mahanaman, and Bhadrika. For citations and variations, see Franklin Edgerton, Bud- dhist Hybrid Sanskrit Grammar and Dictionary, 2 vols. (1953; reprint, New Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1985), vol. 2, s.v. bhadravargiya; and T. W. Rhys Davids and William Stede, Pali Text Society Pali-English Dictionary (1921-23; reprint, New Deli: Munshiram Mano- harlal, 1989), s.v. paica-vaggiya. 15 The Sanskrit Suvarnabhasottama Sutra is in Johannes Nobel, ed., Suvarnabhdsotta- masutra: Das Goldglanz-sutra, Ein Sanskrittext des Mahayana-Buddhismus (Leipzig: Otto Harassowitz, 1937), where the tigress story constitutes chap. 18 and appears on pp. 201- 40. The text has been translated into English in R. E. Emmerick, The Sutra of Golden Light, Being a Translation of the Suvarnabhasottamasutra, Sacred Books of the Buddhists, vol. 37 (London: Luzac, 1970), where the tigress story appears on pp. 85-97.

16 Radhagovinda Basak, ed., Mahavastu Avadana, 3 vols., Calcutta Sanskrit College Re- search Series, nos. 20, 31, and 63 (Calcutta: Sanskrit College, 1963-68), 3:470-75. Trans- lated into English in J. J. Jones, The Mahavastu, 3 vols., Sacred Books of the Buddhists, nos. 16, 18, and 19 (London: Pali Text Society, 1949-56), 3:350-54.

17 This story can be found in Ratna Handurukande, ed., Five Buddhist Legends in the Campu Style from a Collection Named Avaddnasdrasamuccaya, Indica et Tibetica, no. 4 (Boon: Indica et Tibetica Verlag, 1984), app. 2, pp. 187-95. 18 P. L. Vaidya, ed., Jatakamala, Buddhist Sanskrit Texts, no. 21 (Darbhanga: Mithila Institute, 1959), pp. 43-54. Translated into English in J. S. Speyer, The Gatakamala or Garland of Birth Stories by Arya Sura, Sacred Books of the Buddhists, vol. 1 (London: Ox- ford University Press, 1895), pp. 55-71; and in Peter Khoroche, Once the Buddha Was a Monkey: Arya Sura's Jatakamlad (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), pp. 47-57.

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Maitribala tells them that in the distant future, when he finally attains enlightenment, "I will give the first share of the nectar of the dharma of liberation to you alone."19 This is further confirmed by a Tibetan version of the same story (mdo mdzangs blun no. 12), in which the five yaksas are explicitly referred to as former births of the "five monks headed by Kaundinya."20 Finally, in mdo mdzangs blun no. 26, a king named Sudo- lagarne saves his subjects from starvation during a drought by transforming himself into a giant fish and allowing the people to feed on his flesh for twelve years.21 The first five woodcutters to cut and eat his flesh are again identified as former births of the good group of five, while those who subsequently ate his flesh are identified as eighty thousand devas and the rest of the Buddha's liberated disciples.

In these stories, again, we can say that those who are physically saved by the bodhisattva's gift of his body within the story of the past are identified as former births of those who are spiritually saved by the Bud- dha's gift of dharma within the story of the present. But why is there such a prevalent concern with identifying these recipients as the good group of five? I would suggest that the good group of five represent the quint- essential recipients of the Buddha's gift of dharma-since they were the very first to receive it-and thus serve to further highlight the suggested parallel between the bodhisattva's gift of his body and the Buddha's gift of dharma. Thus, although these stories, too, never explicitly invoke the specific term "gift of dharma" (dharmadana or some other equivalent), this idea is at least more strongly suggested when the recipients are the good group of five. Rather than depicting the Buddha delivering a sermon to an anonymous monk (or monks), these stories of the present instead invoke the good group of five, thus reminding us of that crucial moment in the Buddha's biography when he turned back toward the world after attaining enlightenment and decided to bestow the dharma as a gift upon living beings.22 The good group of five were the first, and thus paradigmatic, recipients of that gift.

19 yusmakam eva prathamam karisye vimoksadharmamrtasamvibhagam / (Vaidya, ed., Jatakamala, p. 53, lines 1-2). 20 kau ndi nya la sogs pa'i dge slong Inga (Derge, mdo sde, a, 155b4-156b3). 21 Ibid., 218a4-219a5.

22 In a scene found in all of the traditional Buddha biographies, the newly enlightened Buddha hesitates to preach the dharma and must be persuaded to do so by the god Brahma. This scene is always immediately followed by the Buddha's decision to make the "good group of five" the very first recipients of his dharma. For English renderings of this scene, see, e.g., I. B. Horner, The Book of the Discipline, 6 vols., Sacred Books of the Buddhists, nos. 10, 11, 13, 14, 20, and 25 (London: Luzac, 1938-66), 4:7-10 (for the Pali Vinaya); T. W. Rhys Davids, Buddhist Birth Stories (London: Trubner's Oriental Series, 1880), pp. 206-7 (for the Nidanakatha); E. H. Johnston, The Buddhacarita or Acts of the Buddha, by ASvaghosa, new enlarged ed., 3 parts (1936; Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1984), pt. 2, pp. 215-17 (for the Buddhacarita); and Jones, 2:302-9 (for the Mahavastu).

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This use of the good group of five in order to highlight the notion of the Buddha's gift of dharma will become clearer, perhaps, if we look more closely at what kinds of imagery are invoked within such stories. In mdo mdzangs blun no. 26, the story of the present opens with Ananda re- questing of the Buddha, "I ask you to explain this. Why is it that as soon as the Lord first turned the wheel of the dharma in the world, the five monks headed by Kaundinya were the very first to taste the nectar of the dharma?"23 The Buddha then replies, "Previously, these five monks were the first to eat my flesh and be satisfied. Therefore, in this life as well, they were the first to taste the flavor of the dharma and be liberated."24 He then relates the story of King Sudolagarne, who saved his subjects from starving to death during a drought by transforming himself into a gigantic fish and allowing them to feed on his body. The first five people to partake of his body and be satiated were five woodcutters who encoun- tered him in a river. When the fish saw the woodcutters, he told them: "You will be the first to eat my flesh and be satiated; therefore, later on as well, when I have attained complete enlightenment, you will be the first to taste the food of the dharma."25

Notice the way in which the good group of five are here consistently invoked. They are not celebrated as the first members of the Samgha, or even as the first arhats. Instead, they are celebrated as "the first to taste the nectar of the dharma," "the first to taste the flavor of the dharma," and "the first to taste the food of the dharma." A direct parallel is thus drawn between the five woodcutters' ingestion of the fish's flesh and blood and the five monks' ingestion of the nectar of the dharma, between the bodhisattva's gift of his body as lifesaving food and the Buddha's gift of dharma as soul-saving nectar, between physical satiety and spiritual sat- isfaction. The same is true, to a lesser extent, in other stories involving the good group of five, as well. In Jatakamald no. 8, as previously mentioned, King Maitribala, after feeding his flesh and blood to the yaksas tells them that in the distant future, when he attains enlightenment, "I will give the first share of the nectar of the dharma of liberation to you alone."26 Likewise, at the very beginning of mdo mdzangs blun no. 12, another version of the Maitribala story, Ananda exclaims in amazement, "[What a great wonder it is that] the group of five monks headed by

23 kau ndi nya la sogs pa dge slong Inga po 'di ci'i rgyu / ci'i rkyen gyis bcom idan 'das kyis 'jig rten du chos kyi 'khor lo bskor ma thag tu chos kyi bdud rtsi sngar myong ba bstan du gsol / (Derge, mdo sde, a, 218a5-218a6).

24 dge slong Inga po 'di dag sngon yang nga'i sha sngar zos te bde bar gyur bas 'dir yang chos kyi ro thog mar myong ste / rnam par grol bar gyur to // (ibid., 218a6-218a7).

25 khyed kyis sngar nga'i sha zos te 'grangs pas na / phyis mngon par sangs rgyas nas kyang / thog mar khyod chos kyi zas myang bar bya'o / (ibid., 218b7-219al). 26 See n. 19 above.

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Kaundinya accumulated so many roots of virtue that as soon as the door of the dharma was opened, they entered; as soon as the drum of the dharma was beaten, they were the first to hear; and they were also the first to be satisfied by the nectar of the dharma."27 In all three stories, I would argue, the dharma is likened to nectar in order to emphasize the parallel between ingestion of flesh and blood and ingestion of the dharma, between receiving the gift of the body and receiving the gift of dharma. Once again, however, the Buddha's gift is depicted as a higher, more perfect, and more "spiritual" form of "food" than the gift of the bodhisattva; while the bodhisattva's recipients munch on flesh and blood, the Buddha's recipients imbibe an ethereal "nectar," "taste," or "flavor."

In summary, I would contend that gift-of-the-body stories following the pattern I have outlined above have a tendency to favor the good group of five as those who have been saved by the bodhisattva's gift of his body because of the natural way in which the good group of five highlights the notion of the Buddha's gift of dharma and thus helps to suggest both a parallel and a hierarchy between the two gifts. For whatever reason, these stories, as far as I am aware, never come out and tell us explicitly that a parallel is being drawn between the bodhisattva's gift of his body and the Buddha's gift of dharma. But as I have tried to demonstrate above, such is at least suggested by the events of the stories themselves and the identifications posited between past and present characters. This suggestion only becomes stronger when the good group of five-the paradigmatic recipients of the Buddha's gift of dharma-are invoked.

THE "LITERALIZATION OF METAPHOR" The identifications posited between past and present characters and the conscious invocation of the good group of five are two closely related means by which the parallel between the bodhisattva's gift of his body and the Buddha's gift of dharma is suggested. Let me move on now to look in more detail at a few particular stories that exhibit the same parallel in an especially interesting way, sometimes in combination with one of the two methods described above and sometimes independently of either one. More specifically, in these stories the parallel is suggested through a process that I call (for lack of a better term) the "literalization of metaphor." What I mean by this term will become clear in the ensuing discussion.

27 kau ndi nya la sogs pa'i dge slong Inga sde dge ba'i rtsa ba ci bsags na / chos kyi sgo rnam par phye ma thag tu 'jug par gyur / chos kyi rga brdungs ma thag tu thog mar thos par gyur / chos kyi bdud rtsis thog mar ngoms par gyur / (Derge, mdo sde, a, 155b5- 155b6).

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The Pahcakanam Bhadravargikdnam Jataka of the Mahavastu (already mentioned briefly above) purports to explain why the Buddha was so easily able to convert the paicaka bhadravargiya monks to his teaching, even though they were initially opposed to him. The story begins with the monks remarking to the Buddha: "The good group of five once belonged to another sect and were being carried off by the violent flood of false views. But then the Blessed One made them turn away from the paths of false view, lifted them out of the fearful and terrible ocean of samsara, and established them on secure ground, in auspicious, tranquil, fearless nirvana."28 The Buddha then replies, "Monks, this is not the only time I conveyed the good group of five across the ocean of samsara. On another occasion also, by sacrificing myself, I rescued them from the great ocean, when their ship had been wrecked, when they were without refuge, protection, shelter, or last resort, when they had met with ca- lamity and come to misfortune, and I established them safely [on dry land]."29

In the following story, the Buddha explains that a large group of merchants were once crossing the ocean, when their ship was wrecked by a monster fish. Only five of the merchants, along with their leader, were able to swim. Realizing that they would never be able to cross the ocean by swimming, the merchant-leader thought to himself: "I have heard it said that the great ocean will not live with a dead body for a single night. What if I were to sacrifice my body and allow these five merchants to escape from the great ocean and reach dry land safely?"30 So he in- structed the five merchants to hang onto his body and then killed himself by slitting his throat. The sea quickly cast his corpse onto dry land, and the merchants were thus saved.

At the end of the story, as expected, the Buddha identifies the merchant-leader as himself in a former birth, and the five merchants saved by the gift of his body as the five bhadravargiya monks. Following the line of argument I have advanced above, the implication, of course, is that just as the bodhisattva physically rescues the five merchants through the gift of his body, so the Buddha spiritually rescues the five bhadravargiya monks through the gift of dharma. The bodhisattva's gift of his

28 pamca bhadravargiya anyatirthikasamgrita darunena drstioghena vuhyamana tato drstigatisu vinivartayitva bhayabhairavato samrsarasagarato uddharitva ksemasthale give same abhaye nirvane pratisth8pitah / (Basak, ed. [n. 16 above], 3:470, lines 6-8).

29 na bhiksavah etarahim eva pamcaka bhadravargika maya samsarasagarato tarita anya- dapi maya ete mahasamudrato bhagnayanapatra alena atran. asarana aparayan.ah krcchra- prapta vyasanam agata atma-parityagam krtva mahasamudrato svastina pratisth8pitah / (ibid., line 9, to p. 471, line 1).

30 srutam ca me mahasamudro mrtakunapena sardham ratrim na prativasati / yam nuna- ham dehaparityagam krtva imam pamca vanijam ito mahasamudrato svastina sthalam pra- peyam / (ibid., p. 471, lines 9-10).

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body is made parallel to the Buddha's gift of dharma by having both gifts be directed toward the same recipients.

In this case, however, the story derives an additional significance from the way in which it manipulates a traditional Buddhist metaphor. For anyone who is at all familiar with the conventions of Buddhist literature, it should be clear that the entire literal story of merchants stuck in an ocean and being delivered to dry land by the bodhisattva derives from a common Buddhist metaphor comparing samsara to an ocean, deluded beings to those who are drowning, nirvana to the other shore, and the Bud- dha to one who ferries beings across. The samsara-as-ocean metaphor is pervasive throughout Buddhist literature and has wide currency within Indian religious thought in general.31 Here, the resonance of that metaphor is taken full advantage of within the plot of our story, which involves a real ocean, real beings who are drowning, and a real "further shore" to which they are ultimately delivered. I noted above that all of the stories I am dealing with here function somewhat on the level of metaphor, with the concrete events of the story of the past serving as an extended metaphor for the abstract notions expressed in the story of the present. What is unique in this case is that the metaphor is by no means a novel one but, rather, one that carries the full weight of the Buddhist tradition behind it. This gives the story an added significance that other, less resonant stories might lack.

It is interesting to note, in fact, that in Avadinasdrasamuccaya no. 2, which is a later and more elaborate versified version of the same story,32

31 Because of its generality, this type of statement is inherently difficult to substantiate. I might briefly note, however, the plethora of Sanskrit compounds denoting "the ocean of samsara" (samsara-samudra, -sdgara, -abdhi, -arnava, -udadhi, etc.); the constant use of verbal forms deriving from the root tF-whose primary meaning is to cross over a body of water-to denote the attainment of liberation (as well as the use of its causative forms to denote the granting of liberation to others); and the constant use of the Sanskrit term para-whose primary meaning is the further bank or shore-in expressions denoting the state of being liberated. Whole parables comparing the attainment of liberation to the crossing of a river or ocean are also common in Buddhist literature; see, for one example, the Culagopalaka Sutta of the Majjhima Nikaya (English translation in Bhikkhu Nanamoli and Bhikkhu Bodhi, The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha: A New Translation of the Majjhima Nikaya [Boston: Wisdom, 1995], pp. 319-21), in which people's varying abilities in attaining liberation are compared to different types of cows crossing over a river.

32 The story is here called the Sdrthvdhajdtaka, and is the second story in the avadana collection known as the Avadanasdrasamuccaya. The first five stories of this collection have been edited and translated into English in Handurukande, ed. (n. 17 above), where the Sdrthavdhajataka appears on pp. 34-57. This version of the story of the shipwrecked merchants is similar in outline to the Mahavastu version but is much longer and more elaborate. Another major difference between the two tales is that the Avadanasirasamuccaya version has no story of the present, and thus, no mention of all of the good group of five. It is interesting to note, however, that there is a third version of the same story-the Sar- thavdhajanmavaddna, no. 4 of the Sambhadravadanamald (Handurukande, ed., app. 2, pp. 187-95)-that bears an interesting relationship to the other two. While it is heavily reliant on the Avaddnasdrasamuccaya version (repeating fifty-eight of its sixty-one verses

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the characters themselves seem to be aware of the role they are playing within this extended samsara-as-ocean metaphor. The first indication of this awareness occurs at verse 34, when the drowning merchants are try- ing to dissuade the bodhisattva from sacrificing his life for their sake. "Even if we were rescued from this impassable flood of water," they argue, "who would rescue us from the whirlpool of evil deeds in which we are sunk?"33 The merchants thus exhibit an understanding that the physical whirlpool in which they are now drowning is nothing compared to the spiritual whirlpool in which they have been drowning since begin- ningless time. The ultimately metaphorical nature of the raging ocean becomes even more explicit in verse 44, where the bodhisattva retorts, "If I do not lift you out of this [ocean] so difficult to cross, how will I rescue the world from the ocean of samsara?"34 Finally, in verse 52, the samsara-as-ocean metaphor is considerably extended, for the bodhisattva vows that in the future he will "rescue this entire helpless world of beings who are sunk in the ocean of existence, which has delusion as its whirlpools, death as its sea monsters, pride as its stones, desire as its water, passion as its mud, and anger as its creeping serpents."35 In these three verses, then, we clearly see the idea that the bodhisattva enacts a physical rescue of beings that corresponds to the Buddha's spiritual rescue of beings, or, from another perspective, that the bodhisattva enacts a literal rescue, while the Buddha enacts a metaphorical one. The story of the drowning merchants itself might be seen as a "literalization of metaphor" (again, for lack of a better term), in which a traditional Buddhist metaphor has been "literalized" and turned into an actual, literal story involving the bodhisattva, who performs in a concrete and literal manner those deeds enacted metaphorically by the Buddha.

But how does this relate to my argument concerning the parallel drawn between the bodhisattva's gift of his body and the Buddha's gift of dharma? If we now look at the story again from this "metaphorical" perspective, it is especially interesting to consider the exact position inhabited by the bodhisattva's body. Within the common Buddhist metaphor

verbatim), like the Mahavastu version, it, too, contains a story of the present invoking the good group of five, although the dialogue here takes place between Upagupta and King Asoka, rather than between the Buddha and his disciples. Thus, the Sambhadravadana- mald version, while heavily reliant on the Avadanasarasamuccaya version, also seems to be drawing on the older tradition represented by the Mahdvastu version. See Handuru- kande, ed., pp. 16-20, for a fuller comparison of these three tales.

33 uttirnan api toyaughad asman asmad duruttarat / magnan duscaritavarte kah samutta- rayisyati // (ibid., p. 44, verse 34).

34 yadi nabhyuddharisyami yusman asmad duruttarat / katham uttfrayisyami lokam sam- sarasagarat H/ (ibid., p. 46, verse 44).

35 The whole verse reads: mohavarte maranamakare manapas.anagarbhe trsnatoye mada- nakaluse krodhasamsarpisarpe / magnam lokam bhavajalanidhau sokavatavadhute punyad asmad aham asaranam krtsnam uttarayeyam / (ibid., p. 52, verse 52).

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or trope comparing samsara to an ocean and nirvana to the further shore, the dharma, of course, is always the raft that one hangs onto in order to get to the other side. The image of the dharma as a raft is pervasive throughout Buddhist literature, its locus classicus being the long Maj- jhima Nikaya passage in which the Buddha compares the dharma to a raft that allows one to cross the ocean of suffering but that is no longer needed once one arrives at the further shore.36

In any case, keeping in mind this traditional equation between the dharma and a raft, it seems to me to be significant that the particular way in which the merchant-leader saves the five merchants is by having them hang on to his body as if it were a raft. In the Mahavastu version of the story, he tells the merchants, "All of you must hang on to me," and the text then tells us that "all five merchants hung on to the merchant leader."37 Here, the image of the raft is not explicitly invoked. In the Avadanasdrasamuccaya version, however, the raft metaphor becomes explicit. Here, the bodhisattva tells the merchants to "hang on to my lifeless body as if it were a raft,"38 and the text later informs us that the merchants indeed "hung on to his body as if it were a raft."39 Further evidence for the body/raft equation may be found in a verse from the Sanskrit Jatakastava, a text that celebrates and praises fourteen previous births of the Buddha in one verse each.40 Verse 13, which celebrates this very birth as the merchant-leader, reads as follows. "The ocean was being struck by blows from the hoods of angry serpents; it was garlanded by dreadful waves, and shaken up by hosts of sea monsters. Yet you, out of love, rescued the shipwrecked men [from this ocean] and brought them to shore with the great raft of your body [kayamahdplavena]. Be- cause of this preeminent deed, all worlds have become subservient [to

36 Majjhima Nikaya, I, 134-35 (Alagaddupama Sutta). English translation in Nanamoli and Bodhi, pp. 228-29. See also Majjhima Nikaya, I, 260: "O Bhikkhus, even this view, which is so pure and so clear, if you cling to it, if you fondle it, if you treasure it, if you are attached to it, then you do not understand that the teaching is similar to a raft, which is for crossing over, and not for getting hold of" (translation borrowed from Walpola Rahula, What the Buddha Taught, rev. and expanded ed. [1959; New York: Grove, 1974], p. 11).

37 mama sarve lagnatha; sarve pamcaka vanijakiah sarthavahasya lagna (Basak, ed., 3:471, lines 12-13).

38 madiyam udgatapranam Sariram plavam ivalambya (Handurukande, ed., p. 48, line 5). 39 alambya plavam iva te 'tha tacchariram (ibid., p. 54, line 17). 40 The Sanskrit text is written in Tibetan characters and accompanied by an interlinear

Tibetan gloss. It is kept in the library of the Tohoku Imperial University, Sendai. The text was first edited in H. W. Bailey, "The Jatakastava of Jfianayasas," Bulletin of the School of Oriental Studies 9, no. 4 (1937-39): 851-59. Subsequently, the Sanskrit text was again printed (with corrections to Bailey's edition), along with an English translation, in D. R. Shackleton Bailey, "The Jatakastava of Jfnanayasas," in Asiatica: Festschrift Friedrich Weller, ed. Johannes Schubert and Ulrich Schneider (Leipzig: Otto Harrassowitz, 1954), pp. 22-30.

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you]."41 Although the reading kayamahaplavena ("with the great raft of your body") is a conjectural reading only (suggested by Shackleton Bailey),42 it seems to me to be the most likely possibility, and captures within one compound the metaphorical linking of the bodhisattva's body to a raft. Finally, it is somewhat surprising to note that even in stories that have nothing at all to do with people drowning in oceans, the body given away by the bodhisattva is fairly frequently described as a raft. In the Sanskrit Suvarmabhasottama Sitra's version of the tigress story, for example, Prince Mahasattva says of his body that "it will serve for me as a raft for crossing the ocean of birth and death,"43 while in Jatakamala no. 30, an elephant who sacrifices his body to provide food for weary travelers says that he will "turn this body, a receptacle for hundreds of diseases, into a raft for crossing [the ocean of] misfortune for these men who are seized by suffering."44

In all of these instances, then, the bodhisattva's body is compared to a raft, and because of the salience of the traditional dharma-as-raft metaphor, this highlights its symbolic equivalence with the Buddha's dharma. Thus, just as the ocean is a concrete image of samsara, the further shore is a concrete image of nirvana, and the drowning merchants are a concrete image of deluded beings, so also the bodhisattva's body, as a raft, is a concrete image of the Buddha's dharma. The bodhisattva's gift of his body is thus made parallel to the Buddha's gift of dharma, and this parallel is suggested through a literalization of the dharma-as-raft metaphor.

Let me demonstrate now that the same general strategy of having the narrative of the bodhisattva enact on a literal level what doctrine claims of the Buddha on the level of metaphor is apparent in another traditional Buddhist tale as well, about a king who transforms himself into a gigantic fish. I have already had occasion to discuss one version of this story,

41 samrambhat phaninam phanaihaticalad bhimormimalad apam patyur yan maka(ra)c- chatavilulitat paryastanauka narah / premna kayamahaplavena bhavata tirantam apaditas tatkarmatisayena tena nikhila lokah kalatrikrtaih / (Shackleton Bailey, p. 25, verse 13; emphasis added). The literal meaning of nikhila kalatrikrtah would be "all worlds have become [your] wife" or "all worlds have been married [to you]." I believe that the image of the Indian wife is here being used as an image of subservience, and have translated the passage loosely in this sense.

42 The phrase kayamahaplavena appears in the manuscript as -mahapmabena, for which Bailey suggested -mahabhavena (Bailey, p. 857, verse 13 and n. 2). Shackleton Bailey, however, emends it to -mahdplavena, and in a note (p. 28), he says, "The correction appears to me practically certain though the origin of Tib. rgyal chen pos (= mahajayena) remains obscure. mahabhavena (Prof. Bailey) is dubious Sanskrit and palaeographically unconvincing."

43 tan me janmamaranasamudrottaranapotabhuto bhavisyati (Nobel, ed. [n. 15 above], p. 211, lines 2-3).

44 The story is the Hastijitaka, and the verse reads as follows: karomi tad idam deham bahurogagatalayam / esam duhkhaparitanam apaduttaranaplavam // (Vaidya, ed., Jataka- mala [n. 18 above], p. 211, verse 14).

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mdo mdzangs blun no. 26, the story of King Sudolagarne, who uses his fish-body to save his subjects from starving during a drought. Now, however, I would like to focus on a different version of the story, one that emphasizes slightly different themes.

In Avadinasataka no. 31 (called the Padmakdvaddna),45 the Buddha is asked by his monks why he alone remains free of disease during an epidemic that has stricken them all. In answer to this question, he tells the story of his own previous life as King Padmaka. In this tale, an epidemic breaks out in the kingdom of King Padmaka, and many people fall prey to the dreaded disease and die. Although King Padmaka gathers together the best doctors and medicines the country has to offer, and himself tends to many of the victims, the disease continues to take lives. When the king asks the best medical minds of the kingdom why the epidemic is so difficult to eradicate, they inform him that the only cure for the disease is the flesh and blood of a rohita fish. King Padmaka then sends out innumerable spies to hunt down and capture such a fish, but none of them are able to find one. With more and more of his subjects falling prey to the disease, King Padmaka makes a momentous decision. He gives away his wealth, establishes his son in the kingship, climbs up to the roof of his palace, and makes a solemn vow: "Seeing beings who have fallen into great misfortune and are tormented by disease, I will sacrifice my own cherished life. By these true words of truth, may I appear as a great rohita fish in this sandy river!"46 Throwing himself off the palace, he dies and is immediately reborn as a gigantic rohita fish, whereupon the people commence to cut up the flesh and devour it for a period of twelve years, until the epidemic is completely eradicated.

Although both mdo mdzangs blun no. 26 and Avaddnasataka no. 31 involve kings who transform themselves into gigantic, self-sacrificing fishes, there is a crucial difference between the two tales: whereas Sudolagarne's kingdom suffers from drought and starvation, Padmaka's kingdom suffers from an epidemic disease. Thus, whereas Sudolagarne's fish-body serves as food, Padamaka's fish-body serves as medicine.

This difference is important, for it means that only Avadinasataka no. 31 plays upon a pervasive Buddhist metaphor involving the states of illness and health. Within this metaphor, samsara is compared to a per- nicious disease, whereas nirvana represents a state of permanent health. Deluded beings are those who are sick (their bodies being likened to wounds), while the Buddha is the wise physician who knows how to ef- fect a cure. Heretical teachers are incompetent doctors, while the Samgha

45 Speyer, ed. (n. 7 above), 1:168-72. 46 yena satyena satyavacanena mahavyasanagatan sattvan vyadhiparipiditan drstva sva-

jivitam istam parityajamy anena satyena satyavakyenasyam valukayam nadyam mahan rohitamatsyah pradurbhaveyam / (ibid., p. 171, lines 1-3).

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constitutes the Buddha's faithful corps of nurses. The Four Noble Truths of suffering, the origin of suffering, the cessation of suffering, and the path leading to the cessation of suffering correspond, in medical terms, to diagnosis, etiology, therapeutics, and medicaments. This extended medical analogy is pervasive throughout both canonical and noncanonical Buddhist literature.47 As Demieville points out in his masterful article on the subject, Buddhist writers "lose no opportunity to glory in [the medical parallel] in order to impress upon the multitudes, with a thousand patient analogies easily accessible to all, the ideal they offer to them. Medicine then appears as a sort of reduced image of religious therapeutics, applicable to the physical domain alone."48

Now notice that within our story, we have a literal state of disease, a literal state of health, and the bodhisattva King Padmaka, who acts as the wise physician.49 King Padmaka himself, in fact, seems to be aware of the role he plays within this extended metaphor, for after curing the epidemic, he announces to his gathered subjects: "When I have awak- ened to unsurpassed perfect enlightenment, I will liberate you from the supreme illness [of samsara] and establish you in the supreme end of nirvana!"50 Implicit in this statement is King Padmaka's understanding that even the worst physical illness is nothing more than a metaphor for the true disease that is samsara. While the bodhisattva can cure the former,

47 Many examples have been collected and discussed in Paul Demi6ville's article on byo (illness) from the Hobogirin encyclopedia. See Paul Demieville, Hobogirin: Dictionnaire encyclopedique du Bouddhisme d'apres les sources chinoises etjaponaises, 4 vols. (Paris: Librarie d'Am6rique et d'Orient, Adrien Maissonneuve, 1929-67), vol. 3, s.v. byo; for an En- glish translation of this article, see Mark Tatz, Buddhism and Healing: Demieville's Article "Byo" from Hobogirin (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1985). See also Raoul Birnbaum, The Healing Buddha, rev. ed. (1979; Boston: Shambhala, 1989), pp. 15-19.

48 Tatz, p. 2. 49 It is clear that King Padmaka is depicted as a sort of master physician. "The king gath-

ered together all of the doctors residing within his territories," the text states, "observed the motives, dispositions, and inclinations of the beings [afflicted by illness]; and himself be- gan to assemble all kinds of medicines and care for the sick" (. . . sa raja sarvavisayaniva- sino vaidyan samnikpatya tesam sattvanam nidanam asayanusayam copalaksya svayam arabdhas cikitsam sarvausadhasamudanayan ca kartum /; Speyer, ed., 1:169, lines 13- 15). It is interesting to note that the compound adaydnusaya ("dispositions and inclinations") is usually used in Buddhist literature when the Buddha is examining the mental condition of someone to see whether or not they are ripe for conversion (see Edgerton [n. 14 above], vol. 2, s.v. anusaya, as well as s.v. nidana, for a discussion of this specific passage). Thus, we might say that the Buddha examines dsaydnusaya to determine whether someone is worthy of spiritual healing, whereas the bodhisattva King Padmaka examines adaydnugaya to determine whether someone is worthy of physical healing.

50 yadaham anuttaram samyaksambodhim abhisambhotsye 'ham tada yusman atyantav- yadheh parimocyatyantanisthe nirvane pratisthapayisyamiti / (Speyer, ed., 1:171, line 15, to p. 172, line 2; emphasis added). Feer's translation of the second line garbles the clear order of events established by yada ... tadd, and misses the contrast being drawn between the bodhisattva's rescue of beings from bodily illness and the Buddha's rescue of beings from spiritual illness: "lorsque je me serai assimile la Bodhi parfaite au dessus de laquelle il n'y en a pas, moi qui vous ai delivres de la supreme maladie, je vous 6tablirai dans la fin supreme, le Nirvana" (Feer [n. 7 above], p. 116).

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only the Buddha will be able to cure the latter. The same sentiment is expressed in another version of the same story, Avadanakalpalata no. 99,51 in which the Buddha himself is described as "a physician for the illness of samsara."52 Once again, then, a traditional Buddhist metaphor for samsara, nirvana, and the role of the Buddha has here been "literalized" and turned into an actual, literal story of disease and its cure.

Now again, let us look more closely at the exact position inhabited by the bodhisattva's body. Within the common metaphor or trope comparing samsara to a disease and nirvana to a state of health, the dharma, of course, is the medicine that cures the disease and restores one to health. In other words, the Buddha is a wise physician because he dispenses the proper medicine, which is nothing other than his dharma. This equation between the dharma and medicine is either implied or explicitly stated in many passages making use of the medical analogy. The Buddha is described in one text, for example, as "a king of physicians who discerns the marks of illnesses and knows the nature of medicaments. He gives medicaments suited to the illnesses so that sentient beings take them gladly." "By means of the doctrine," another text states, "he can treat the most grave malady of the body-the three defilements [of passion, hatred, and delusion]."53

Again, then, keeping in mind this traditional equation between the dharma and medicine, it seems to me to be significant that the particular way in which King Padmaka cures his subjects is by having them feed on his body as medicine (once he has turned into a rohita fish). This equation is made explicit early in the story when the physicians of the kingdom tell the king that there is only one effective medicine (bhaisa- jya) for the disease-the flesh and blood of a rohita fish; once the king becomes the fish, the equation between the bodhisattva's body and medicine is obvious. The body/medicine equation is further highlighted in a verse from the Rastrapalapariprccha Sftra that may be referring to this story (or to another story very similar to it). "When I was a being called Saumya," the Buddha recalls, "having seen how the world was afflicted by hundreds of diseases, I changed my body into medicine [bhaisajabhuta samucchraya krtva] and made the beings happy and healthy."54

51 This story is also called the Padmak5vadana, and is very similar to the Avadanasataka version. It is in P. L. Vaidya, ed., Avadana-kalpalata of Ksemendra, 2 vols., Buddhist San- skrit Texts, nos. 22-23 (Darbhanga: Mithila Institute, 1959), 2:544. 52 samsaravyadhivaidyena sugateneti bhaisitam (ibid., verse 13a).

53 The first quote appears at T (Taisho) 276: 384c, cited in Tatz, p. 14. The second quote appears at T 100: 13: 462c-463a (in a version of the Samyuktdgama), cited in Tatz, p. 11. For further passages, see Tatz, pp. 9-20.

54 I have borrowed Ensink's translation of this passage (see Jacob Ensink, The Question of Rastrapala [Zwolle: N. V. Drukkerij En Uitgeverij Van De Erven J. J. Tijl, 1952], pp. 26-27; emphasis added). The Sanskrit text reads: vyadhisatabhihatam jagadiksya bhaisajabhutasamucchraya krtva / satva krtah sukhita nirujasca pranaku saumya tada ca yadasit / (L. Finot, Rastrapalapariprcchd: Sutra du Mahaydna, Bibliotheca Buddhica, vol. 2

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Gift of the Body

Once again, we have the metaphorical linking of the bodhisattva's body and medicine within a single phrase. Finally, let us note that there are many other gift-of-the-body stories, too, in which the bodhisattva's body serves explicitly as a kind of medicine.55

Thus, just as we saw above that the story of the drowning merchants was a literalization of the samsara-as-ocean metaphor, so we see in this instance that the story of King Padmaka is a literalization of the samsara-as-disease metaphor. In the story of the drowning merchants, the bodhisattva's body serves as a raft, whereas in the story of King Pad- maka, the bodhisattva's body serves as medicine. Since both images (raft and medicine) traditionally stand for the Buddha's dharma, the bodhisattva's body is made equivalent to the Buddha's dharma, and, by extension, the bodhisattva's gift of his body becomes parallel to the Buddha's gift of dharma. We should pause to note, however, that the story of King Pad- maka is somewhat more complex than the story of the drowning merchants, since the character of King Padmaka is split into two different forms that serve two different symbolic functions: As King Padmaka, the wise physician, he stands for the Buddha, but as a fish whose body con-

[1901; reprint, Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1992], p. 26, lines 9-10; however, Ensink [pp. 26-27] correctly suggests that bhaisajabhuta and samucchraya should be interpreted as two separate words). I should note here that the pairing of this verse with the king-who-turns-into-a-fish story (i.e., Avadanasataka no. 31, Avadanakalpalata no. 99, and mdo mdzangs blun no. 26) is very uncertain. Both Ensink (p. 26, n. 157) and Finot (p. viii) paired the king-who-turns-into-a-fish story with the verse immediately preceding this one in the Rastrapalapariprccha, which reads: "When, going the way to enlightenment, I was a fish, living in the water, I gave away my body for the benefit of the beings and was eaten by hundreds of thousands of living beings" (Ensink, p. 26). However, En- sink (p. 26, n. 147), noting that this verse never explicitly mentions a king turning into a fish, speculates that it could, in fact, be the following verse (i.e., the one cited above) that properly refers to the king-who-turns-into-a-fish story. In any case, whether or not this verse is referring to the story I am dealing with here, it remains true that there are many stories in which the bodhisattva gives away his body in the form of medicine (see following note), and that this verse makes such a body/medicine equation explicit. 55 Many examples could be cited here, but a few will have to suffice. In the Ratnakiita collection, Prince Sarvarthadargana cures a sick man with his own blood, and Prine Utpala cures a sick man with his own bone marrow, while in the Ta chih tu lun, both deeds are attributed to Prince Candraprabha (see ltienne Lamotte, Le traite de la grande vertu de sagesse de Nagarjuna, 5 vols., Bibliotheque du Museon, no. 18 (Louvain: Bureaux du Mu- seon, 1944-80), 2:715-16 for the story of Prince Candraprabha, and p. 715, n. 1, for citations to the Ratnakuita stories and other parallels). Likewise, in the Rastrapalapariprccha Siitra, two verses refer to the bodhisattva's gift of his blood and bone marrow in the form of medicine (although it is uncertain which specific stories are being referred to). In one verse, Sarvadargin cures a sick man with his blood, and in the following verse, King Kusuma cures a sick man with his bone marrow (Finot, p. 24, lines 7-10; English translation in Ensink, pp. 24-25; neither Finot nor Ensink offers a specific reference for either verse). Finally, in the Sanskrit Jatakastava of JianayaSas, verse 17 refers vaguely to the bodhisattva "accepting bondage to animal reincarnation" in order to use its flesh to cure disease, perhaps a reference to the Padmaka story itself (see Shackleton Bailey [n. 40 above], p. 26, verse 17; in the corresponding notes on p. 29, Shackleton Bailey fails to identify this verse as referring to any particular story).

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stitutes the perfect medicine, he stands for the dharma. Since King Pad- maka and the fish are, in truth, the "same" person, this story neatly suggests the further point that the Buddha is equivalent to his dharma.

In any case, the general strategy used within these stories should, by now, be clear. The actions of a Buddha are so abstract and difficult to appreciate, we might argue, they can only be described in terms of metaphors that bring them down to a level of concrete physicality. It then becomes natural to literalize the metaphor by means of a story, and to attribute the story's concrete physical actions to the Buddha in a previous lifetime as a bodhisattva-when he was not yet fully enlightened, and when his actions therefore must have taken place on a grosser, more material level. Within such "literalizations" of metaphor, whatever stood metaphorically for the Buddha's dharma (such as a raft or medicine) is now equated with the bodhisattva's physical body. In this way, the bodhisattva's body is made parallel to the Buddha's dharma, and the bodhisattva's gift of his body is assimilated to the Buddha's gift of dharma.

Rapa-kdya AND Dharma-kdya Now that I have demonstrated a few different ways in which these stories draw a parallel between the bodhisattva's gift of his body and the Bud- dha's gift of dharma, I would like to take the argument one step further by suggesting that it is not merely the case that the bodhisattva's body is parallel to the Buddha's dharma, but that it is also the case that this dharma itself is implicitly conceptualized as a body of dharma directly analogous to the bodhisattva's physical body. In other words, a suggestion is made, in some stories at least, that the relationship between body and dharma is not merely a metaphorical one, but that in fact, the bodhisattva's body and the Buddha's dharma are really two different types of body. Making use of Buddhist terminology, we might say that the bodhisattva's gift of ripa-kiya (the body of physical form) is made parallel to the Buddha's gift of dharma-kdya (the body of dharma, or collection of the Buddha's teachings).

Let me clarify from the outset the way in which I am employing these two important terms. The subject of the Buddha's various "bodies" is exceedingly complex and has been the focus of a relatively large and contentious body of scholarship.56 In general, however, although scholars disagree about the historical development of the various types of Buddha bodies, and about the exact connotations (within any particular

56 See, e.g., the following: Louis de La Vallee Poussin, "Studies in Buddhist Dogma: The Three Bodies of a Buddha (Trikaya)," Journal of the Royal Asiatique Society (1906), pp. 943-77; D. T Suzuki, Outlines ofMahayana Buddhism (1907; reprint, New York: Schocken, 1963), pp. 217-76; M. Anesaki, "Docetism (Buddhist)," in Hastings, ed. (n. 6 above), 4:835-40; Louis de La Vallee Poussin, "Note sur les Corps du Bouddha," Le museon: Revue d'etudes orientales 32 (1913-14): 258-90; Chizen Akanuma, "The Triple Body of the Bud- dha," Eastern Buddhist 2 (1922): 1-29; Otto Stein, "Notes on the Trikaya-Doctrine," in Jha

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context) of the terms used to denote them, there does seem to be agree- ment on two basic points: (1) The earliest conceptual division between different types of Buddha bodies seems to have been a division between rupa-kaya and dharma-kaya. (2) Rupa-kaya denoted the Buddha's physical body, while dharma-kaya, in its earliest usage (and even in most later contexts, according to Harrison), denoted the Buddha's dharma- body or body of dharma in the specific sense of the collection of his teachings (or, by extension, the collection of truths, realizations, or qual- ities embodied in the teachings). I am using the terms with these general connotations. Let me emphasize especially that I am not using the term dharma-kaya in any metaphysical or Yogacarin sense, nor do I believe that such a sense is intended by the stories I will deal with below. Let me also emphasize that I am borrowing the terms ripa-kaya and dharma- kaya from other contexts and making my own heuristic use of them. The term rupa-kaya, in particular, appears nowhere in any of the stories I am dealing with here, and I am using it only because of the neat symmetry it forms in association with the term dharma-kaya, and because of its clear connotations of physical form.

My main argument here, then, is simply that the parallelism I have posited above between a gift of the body and a gift of dharma can be taken one step further and restated as a parallelism between a gift of the physical body and gift of the dharma-body. Here, the term dharma-kaya (in the sense of the Buddha's "collection of teachings") does indeed come into play, and it is primarily on the basis of two stories that explicitly invoke the term dharma-kaya that I will substantiate my argument.

I have already had occasion above to introduce the story of King Sudo- lagarne (mdo mdzangs blun no. 26), who saves his subjects from starving to death during a drought by throwing himself from a tree and vowing to be reborn as a gigantic fish who will feed the people his flesh and blood for twelve years. As I have already noted, the first five woodcutters to encounter the fish, cut up his flesh, and be satiated are identified as former births of the good group of five, and a direct parallel is thus drawn between the five woodcutters' ingestion of the fish's flesh and blood and

Commemoration Volume, Poona Oriental Series, no. 39 (Poona: Oriental Book Agency, 1937), pp. 389-98; Demi6ville (n. 47 above), vol. 3, s.v. busshin; Gadjin Nagao, "On the Theory of Buddha-Body," Eastern Buddhist 6, no. 1 (1973): 25-53; Frank E. Reynolds, "The Several Bodies of Buddha: Reflections on a Neglected Aspect of Theravada Tradi- tion," History of Religions 16, no. 4 (1977): 374-89; Nalinaksha Dutt, Mahayana Bud- dhism (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1978), pp. 136-70; John J. Makransky, "Controversy over Dharmakaya in India and Tibet: A Reappraisal of Its Basis, Abhisamayalamkdra Chapter 8" Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies 12, no. 2 (1989): 45-78; Paul Williams, Mahdyana Buddhism: The Doctrinal Foundations (London: Rout- ledge, 1989), pp. 167-84; Harrison (n. 2 above); and Paul J. Griffiths, On Being Buddha: The Classical Doctrine of Buddhahood (Albany, N.Y.: SUNY Press, 1994).

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the five monks' ingestion of the "nectar of the dharma," between the woodcutters' salvation from physical hunger and the five monks' salvation from spiritual hunger. By this means, an obvious parallel is suggested between the bodhisattva's gift of his body and the Buddha's gift of dharma.

Let us look now at an interesting statement made by the Buddha at the very end of the story, after identifying King Sudolagarne as a former birth of himself and the five woodcutters as former births of the good group of five: "At that time, I gave [my body] to those five men first and saved their lives. And therefore, at the present time as well, I taught the dharma first to them, and by means of the limbs of my dharma-body, I extinguished the fire of the three poisons."57 Here we clearly have a new element added to the mix: The term dharma-body (chos kyi sku) is explicitly invoked and is directly compared to the bodhisattva's physical body. While the fish gives away his physical body, the Buddha gives away his "dharma-body"; while the woodcutters make use of the physical body's flesh, the five monks make use of the dharma-body's "limbs"; while the fish appeases the fire of hunger, the Buddha appeases the "fire of the three poisons." The parallel drawn between the bodhisattva's gift of his physical body and the Buddha's gift of his dharma-body here seems exceedingly clear. Thus, we can say, for this story at least, that the bodhisattva's body is parallel to the Buddha's dharma because the Bud- dha's dharma itself is metaphorically conceived as a type of body.

A similar mention of dharma-kiya appears also in another story I have mentioned before, the story of King Maitribala, again from the Tibetan collection mdo mdzangs blun (where it constitutes story no. 12). Here, five yaksas, former births of the good group of five, are saved from starvation by King Maitribala's gift of his own flesh and blood. After cutting open his veins and allowing them to drink his blood and eat his flesh until they are satisfied, King Maitribala vows to the yaksas: "Just as I have now taken the blood from my body, satisfied you, and made you happy, so also, in the future, when I have attained complete enlightenment, may I purify you of the three poisons by means of the morality, meditation, and wisdom of my dharma-body. May I free you from the torment caused by desire and establish you in blissful nirvana!"58 Here again, the bodhisattva's physical body is explicitly compared to the Bud- dha's dharma-body (chos kyi sku). Just as the bodhisattva gives away his

57 de'i tshe sngar mi Inga po la byin te / 'tsho ba'i srog skyabs pas 'dir yang sngar chos bstan te / chos kyi sku'i yan lag gis / dug gsum gyi me zhi bar byas so / (Derge, mdo sde, a, 219a4-219a5; emphasis added).

58 da Itar nga'i lus las khrag phyung ste / khyod ngoms shing bde bar byas pa Itar / phyis mngon par rdzogs par sangs rgyas nas / chos kyi shu'i tshul khrims dang ting nge 'dzin dang / shes rab kyis khyod kyi dug gsum bsal te / 'dod pas gdungs pa las shin tu bde pa'i mya ngan las 'das pa la 'god par shog ces smras so // (ibid., 156a7-156bl; emphasis added).

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physical body, so the Buddha will give away his dharma-body. This comparison between the two bodies extends even further, in fact, to a comparison between the parts and pieces of these bodies. Not only is the bodhisattva's rupa-kaya made parallel to the Buddha's dharma-kdya, but in addition, the blood of the former is made parallel to the morality, meditation, and wisdom of the latter. Just as the bodhisattva feeds beings the various pieces of his rupa-kapa, so the Buddha feeds beings the various "pieces" of his dharma-kaya. The pieces of riipa-kaya are the various parts and limbs of a physical body, whereas the pieces of dharma- kaya are the various parts or aspects of the dharma, such as morality, meditation, and wisdom.

This passage, in fact, might be useful in helping us to interpret the previous passage cited (from mdo mdzangs blun no. 26), in which the Buddha states that he has

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