The forest effortlessly produced flowers and fruits in every season and its spotless pools of water were adorned by lotuses and lilies. Through his residence there the Bodhi·sattva furnished the area with the auspiciousness of an ascetic grove. (28.9)
This association between animals and ascetics is a common motif in the “Garland of the Buddha’s Past Lives,” with various passages comparing the Bodhi·sattva in his animal rebirths to a renunciate yogi.15 The affinity between ascetics and animals is further accentuated by the fact that they possess a common antagonist: the human being living in ordinary society and, in particular, the king. Clashes between the forest and human society frequently occur in the narratives and are brought about in various ways, depending on how individual stories play on the dialectic between these two opposing, yet interacting, spheres. In “The Birth·Story of the Great Monkey’ (24), a man accidentally enters a remote area of the forest inhabited by the Bodhi·sattva after losing his way because of chasing a stray cow. Whereas in ‘The Birth-Story of the Goose’ (22), a king intentionally lures a flock of geese closer to the human realm in order to capture them. In the latter story, the motif of idyllic natural beauty takes on an added degree of complexity, as an artificial lake, said to rival the birds’ home in both appearance and resources, is built by humans as bait.16 Here human art, pregnant with connotations of deception and aggression, acts as a dangerous imitation of the natural world.
In other stories, kings come into contact with animals and ascetics through the beauty of the forest itself and the apt setting that this provides for kings to indulge in royal pleasures.17 Described as “playgrounds of Desire” (21.19 [7]), the same forest scenes that provide an idyllic environment for virtuous animals or ascetics in one context also provide sensual stimulation for licentious kings in another, an affinity particularly expressed by the resemblance be- ________
tween forests and royal gardens.18 In ‘The Birth-Story of Kshanti·vadin’ (28), a king thus enjoys wine, women and song among garden-like (28.9, 28.12) forests of exquisite beauty that also happen to be inhabited by an ascetic. The tension inherent in the joint use of the forest by both ascetic and king becomes strained when the king’s women, “smitten by the loveliness of the groves” (28.25), accidentally encounter the ascetic and listen to his sermons, the mere sight of him making them “feel overcome by his radiant ascetic power” (ibid.). While the ascetic’s intentions are of course entirely virtuous, the story seems keen to probe the conflict between the ascetic and royal spheres (and intensify the contrasting significance placed on the shared motif of forest beauty) by depicting the ascetic’s sermons as a form of pious seduction that threatens the king’s desire-based outlook. Indeed, it is precisely the king’s jealousy that leads him to treat “the ascetic like a foe” (28.55) and assault him.
A similar conflict is expressed in “The Birth-Story of the Great Monkey’ (27), in which a fig-tree, depicted as the centerpiece of an idyllic forest scene, serves as the home of a harmonious community of monkeys in an “area seldom accessed by humans” (27.19). Here again the refined pleasures of a forest inhabited by virtuous animals act as a seduction for human beings driven by the negative emotions of desire, when a fruit from the fig-tree accidentally floats down a river to a royal party and intoxicates a king with its fragrant taste. The contrast between the (superior) pleasures of the forest and the (inferior) pleasures of human society is explored by the story in terms of differing levels of aesthetic and sensual quality:
The combined scent of the bathing ointments,
garlands, liquor and perfume of the women
was dispelled by the fragrance of the fruit,
delightful to smell and swelling with virtues. (27.9 [2])
The king develops such a strong greed for the fruit that he searches for the tree and attacks the monkeys living in it.19 This conflict between animals and humans (and between forest and society) is only resolved when the Bodhi·sattva saves his herd of monkeys by sacrificing his life to bring about their escape. The king is so impressed that he ceases his attack and the story concludes with the dying monkey instructing him on virtue. A similar resolution occurs in nearly all the stories in which animals or ascetics come into contact with ordinary human society:20 after an initial conflict, the virtuous conduct of the animal or ascetic wins through and the king (or another human character) is instructed on moral conduct or on the benefits of the renunciate path.
In the previous volume, we already had cause to mention the importance of the theme of kingship in the “Garland of the Buddha’s Past Lives.” A similar emphasis is shown in the present volume, in which twelve of the fourteen stories either depict some form of instruction of kings or explore the notion of ideal kingship.21 As is highlighted by “The Birth-Story of Suta·soma’ (31), a central duty of the ideal king (or in this story prince) is to dedicate himself to virtue and to convert the wicked to become good. Taking the Bodhi·sattva’s self-sacrificial actions as a paradigm, as portrayed for example in ‘The Birth-Story of the Great Monkey’ (27), the righteous king should be a model of moral conduct for his _____________
people and practice a virtue based on compassion and non-violence, protecting his society and sacrificing himself for his subjects.
Although narratives such as “The Birth-Story of Ayo·griha’ (32) extol asceticism over the householder life, the ascetic life is not viewed as a necessary path for all. The king acts as a moral exemplar for society and is urged, as a layman, to support ascetics and brahmins with gifts (25.50 [29], 28.83 [49]). Nevertheless, the values that form the basis of proper kingship are essentially renunciate virtues based on non-desire and non-violence. As such, they fundamentally grate against conventional notions of kingship which focus on the pursuit of profit (artha) and on the acquisition and consolidation of power through violence.22 In contrast to the Machiavellian type of king who follows the pragmatic teachings of the Arthasastra, the ideal Buddhist king should eschew politics and military power in favor of virtue:23
Neither power, treasury nor good policy
can bring a king to the same position
as he can reach through the path of virtue,
however great his effort or expenses. (22.151 [94])
The reader may well ask whether such an ideal is really possible. Can a king really give up violence and be a paradigm of compassion if he is to maintain power? One way of tackling this matter is to take an alternative approach from simply reading the text in terms of providing straight-forward didactic messages. As Steven Collins has argued (1998: 414ff), the tension between the ideal and the actual is inherent in the very nature of a renunciate ideology, ________
particularly an ideology expressed through the normative medium of texts. Seeking both to transcend and inform the ordinary world, Buddhist renunciate values are, by necessity, engaged in a constantly oscillating dialectic with human society and kingship, involving both conflict and resolution. Given the inherent complexity of this relationship, while various Buddhist texts do espouse the notion of a non-violent, compassionate king, one need not necessarily take such statements solely at face value. Rather than treating such passages simply as offering genuine alternatives to kingship, one can, as Collins suggests, also view them as (often ironical) comments on actual kingship made from
