The Forest of Thieves and the Magic Garden: An Anthology of Medieval Jain Stories (Penguin Classics) Read online

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  THE FOREST OF THIEVES

  Phyllis Granoff received a Ph.D from Harvard University in Sanskrit and Indian Studies and Fine Arts in 1973. She teaches Sanskrit and Indian Religions at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. Her first book, Philosophy and Argument in Late Vedanta: Sri Harsa’s Khandanakhandakhadya, was first published by D. Reidel in 1978. She has written extensively on Jain literature, particularly Jain religious biographies. In 1992 she published Speaking of Monks: Religious Biography in India and China, co-authored with her husband Koichi Shinohara (Mosaic Press). She has also translated a collection of short stories by Bibhutibhushan Bandhopadhyaya (A Strange Attachment, Mosaic Press, 1982) from Bengali to English. She currently edits the Journal of Indian Philosophy and continues to work on traditional and modern Indian literature.

  THE FOREST OF THIEVES

  AND THE MAGIC GARDEN

  An Anthology of Medieval

  Jain Stories

  Selected, translated and with an introduction by

  Phyllis Granoff

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  Penguin Books India (P) Ltd., 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi 110017, India

  Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, UK

  Penguin Putnam Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014, USA

  Penguin Books Australia Ltd., 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia

  Penguin Books Canada Ltd., 10 Alcorn Avenue, Suite 300, Toronto, Ontario M4V 3B2, Canada

  Penguin Books (NZ) Ltd., Cnr Rosedale and Airborne Roads, Albany, Auckland, New Zealand

  First published by Penguin Books India 1998

  Copyright © Phyllis Granoff 1998

  All rights reserved

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  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior written consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser and without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above mentioned publisher of this book.

  EISBN: 978–0–141–90793–2

  In honour of my mother Dorothy Granoff

  and

  in memory of my mother-in-law Masako Shinohara

  CONTENTS

  Translator’s Note

  INTRODUCTION

  1. ĀRDRAKUMĀRA

  2. THE CHILDHOOD OF VAJRASVĀMIN

  3. THE MONK SUKOŚALA

  4. CELANĀ

  5. BHADRABĀHU AND VARĀHA

  6. THE GLORIOUS JĪVADEVA

  7. AMARASĪHA

  8. ABHAYASĪHA

  9. DURGILĀ

  10. SUNDARĪ

  11. THE DEATH OF LAKSMANA AND THE AWAKENING OF RĀMA

  12. MAHEŚVARADATTA

  13. KUBERADATTA AND KUBERADATTĀ

  14. SIDDHI AND BUDDHI

  15. LOBHADEVA

  16. DECEIVING THE DECEIVER

  17. MOHADATTA

  18. SANATKUMĀRA

  19. THE PRINCE WHO LOVED SWEETMEATS

  20. NALA AND DAMAYAMTĪ

  21. SIMHIKĀ

  22. ĀRYANANDILA

  23. THE GODDESS AMBIKĀ

  24. RUDRADATTA’S BELOVED

  25. PADMALATĀ

  26. MADANAKĪRTI

  27. REVATI

  28. ĀRĀMASOHĀ

  29. DEVADHARA

  30. DEVADINNA

  31. VICE AND VIRTUE

  TRANSLATOR’S NOTE

  My chief purpose in translating selections from this rich literature was to bring it to the attention of a new audience, those who knew little or nothing of it before. This led me to several choices in the translations. Firstly, I wanted the result to read as naturally as possible and therefore did not aim for a literal translation. At the same time, I hoped that I might preserve something of the flavor of the original, where those two aims were not entirely incompatible. I occasionally, supplied information in the story that an educated reader of the time might well have been expected to know. For example, when the story said that someone accepted the vows of a householder, I listed the vows individually although they were not listed in the story itself. Occasionally I even supplied a line of context, where a story formed part of a larger unit and the translation began in the middle, so to speak. In other stories I tried to help the reader by providing background information about characters in the story and their relationship to each other. Thus in the section about Rāma and Lakṣmaṇa, which contains a summary of the Rāmāyana plot, I added some identifying marks for the various characters mentioned, explaining who they were and in some cases what they had done. In some instances I did not translate technical terms as technical terms, fearing that the subtleties would be lost on a general reader. For example, I simply glossed the type of knowledge that a demi-god has as ‘supernatural knowledge’, rather than supplying a technical term. In other cases, in an effort not to encumber my translations with too many foreign terms, I omitted the names of heavens and different realms of gods and simply translated the basic fact that so-and-so was reborn as a god. I also did not try to standardize terms, but relied more on the flow of the prose.

  Where stories contained both verse and prose, I initially tried to retain some of the distinctiveness of the style by indenting what was verse in the original, hoping to indicate in that way that the original combined both poetry and prose. In the final editing, much of this was edited out. In all cases, I gave prose translations of the verses. I laboured to unpack the puns and plays on words that are so important to the traditional Indian poet and writer of prose. Translators over the years have done many different things with these plays on words, which are so easily made in Sanskrit and its closely related vernacular languages and so utterly impossible in English. Some translators choose to render one meaning in the translated text and put the second in footnotes, explaining how the original yields both meanings. I did not want to burden these stories with footnotes, and so I tried to put both meanings into the translation. What is lost, of course, is the playfulness and challenge that these puns bring to a text. These are only some of the choices I eventually made; I hope that the gains in readability will make up for any loss in exactitude.

  INTRODUCTION

  Blessed One, how can I make my way safely through the forest that is the cycle of rebirths? And once I cross the forest, where will I be?’ The monk replied, ‘Listen. There are two forests; one is the forest that exists outside us, in nature, and the other is the forest that is within us, the tangle of our thoughts and desires. Let me use the forest that exists in nature as a parable to teach you of that other, equally treacherous forest. Imagine there was a merchant, who wanted to go from one city to another. He announces to all and sundry, “I seek someone to accompany me to the city such and such; I will make sure that no harm befalls him on the journey, as long as he follows my advice.” When they hear this announcment many merchants hasten to join him. Before they depart, the merchant describes to them the conditions of the road that they must travel. “My friends, my travelling companions!” he begins. “There are two paths to choose from;
one is straight, but the other is somewhat tortuous. Believe it or not, it is easier to follow the crooked path; eventually it leads one onto the straight way and to the city we seek. The straight path is harder to travel. Although it leads to the goal more quickly, it is dangerous and arduous. For as soon as one enters the straight path there lie in wait for him terrifying creatures, lions and tigers, that obstruct his way to the city he seeks. They pursue him until he reaches the city that is the object of his desires. They kill the person who steps off the path even for a moment, but they cannot harm the one who keeps to the right road….”

  ‘Here is the explanation for the parable. The merchant is the Noble Jina, honored by gods and anti-gods, the crest jewel of the universe. His proclamation is his teaching of the Jain doctrine, through various techniques, telling stories that attract the listener to the Jain doctrine and turn the listener away from false doctrines; telling stories that cause the listener to feel disgust for worldly existence and delight in the religious life. The travellers are the souls who set out for the city of Liberation, making their way across the forest of transmigratory existence. The forest is the entire cycle of rebirths, which includes births in hell, as animals, humans and gods. The straight path is the way of the renunciate; the path that is slightly crooked is the way of the lay practitioner. In the end it leads onto the path of renunciation… The city that is the object of the traveller’s desires is the city of peace, of final release, which is devoid of the torments of birth, old age, death, disease, grief and the like. The tigers and lions are the destructive passions such as lust, pride, greed, delusion, and anger, all of which are obstructions to the attainment of Liberation.’

  (From the Samarāiccakahā of Haribhadra, pp. 391-4)

  The stories and their themes

  The stories in this collection will take you deep into a tangled forest, the haunt of wild beasts, savage tribes and merciless robbers. As we see in the quote, the forest is one of the Jain metaphors for the life we all lead. The dangers of the forest, here described as wild animals and in other accounts as violent thieves, are the passions that lie in wait for the unsuspecting traveller. They attack the traveller and rob him of the power to know things as they truly are and to lead a virtuous life. We all wander in this forest of transmigratory existence without direction, lost in the thick growth, unable to find our way out. For each of us, the forest is the sum total of all of our existences, for as the parable makes clear the Jains, like the Buddhists and Hindus, believe that we go from birth to birth in a beginningless cycle. The parable also teaches us that there is a way out of the terrifying forest that can lead us to a city of peace and bliss. To find that way we must heed the call of the Jina’s words. The way out of the forest is in fact twofold; the most direct way is to renounce the world, leaving behind all relationships, attachments and possessions, to become monks and nuns. For those who are unable to take this path, there is the way of the householder, who is taught how to live in accordance with the basic principles of Jain ethics, to guard against doing violence to living beings, to be honest and never to steal, and to be moderate in the accumulation of material possessions and faithful in marriage. As the parable teaches us, the ideal is that the lay life properly lived should ultimately lead to a life of renunciation.

  The correct way of renunciation and the correct rules for behavior were said to have been taught by a series of Jinas or ‘Conquerors’, most recently by Mahāvīra, who was an older contemporary of the Buddha. Although Jainism is a renunciatory religion, we see in the parable, and we shall see even more vividly in the stories translated in this collection, that there is much that lay men and women can do to further their own religious quest, strengthen the Jain community and ensure the preservation of Jainism.

  Early in their history the Jains split into two main groups, the Digambaras or ‘sky clad’, whose monks go naked, and the Śvetāmbaras or ‘white robed’, whose monks wear robes of simple white cloth. While there are many points of difference between the sects, Śvetāmbaras and Digambaras shared their love of stories, which they often used to teach ethical concepts and even to illustrate abstruse points of doctrine. Much of the richness of medieval Indian storytelling has come down to us because Jains so carefully preserved these stories. An account is told of a Jain monk who so loved to hear stories that he would go out in disguise to hear a Brahmin storyteller recite his tales. A pious Jain layman took pity on the monk and hired the Brahmin to come and recite his stories for him, so that he would no longer have to go to the trouble of donning a disguise.

  Many of the stories Jains told are clearly recognizable as simple folk tales, while others are complicated and sophisticated narratives containing numerous characters who go through rebirth after rebirth in an intricate set of relationships. Some of these rebirth narratives seem uniquely Jain, while others have parallels elsewhere, often in Buddhist story literature. The Jains also told their own versions of the great Hindu epics, the Mahābhārata and the Rāmāyana. They made changes, some subtle and some not so subtle, to the familiar stories to make them conform more strictly to the standards of Jain morality and to make them more suitable as didactic tools with which they might teach Jain doctrine.

  The Jains also wrote about the lives of the Jinas and the famous monks in the different monastic lineages. They recounted the glorious deeds of wealthy lay patrons, whose donations sustained the monks and nuns and built the magnificent temples, many of which are still in worship today. Medieval history writing in some parts of India, as it has come down to us, is virtually synonymous with the chronicles kept by Jain monks. Jain monks also collected stories told of important pilgrimage sites. Indeed there is almost no subject or theme about which the Jains did not tell stories. They told their stories in Sanskrit, the language of the elite and learned in ancient and medieval India, as well as in various vernaculars. They told them in poetry, in ornate prose and in simple colloquial language.

  The sheer abundance and variety of medieval Jain story literature made the choice of stories my first challenge. I soon realized the futility of trying to make my selection ‘representative’; even a ‘representative’ sample of Jain stories, I suspect, would fill a good-sized bookshelf. This left me with the inviting possibility of choosing my favorites. I soon abandoned that strategy, since some of my favorite stories turned out to be too long, too complicated or too allusive and therefore, I feared, too elusive for the general reader. I decided at last to translate stories that reflected a general theme or set of themes: monks and the women and children, the friends and relatives, whom they leave behind. I eventually indulged myself by adding a few stories here and there that pushed the boundaries I had set just a little farther than might be expected. These additional stories, I hoped, would enrich the reader’s experience by providing a slightly different perspective on a given theme, often with a measure of humor.

  There are some excellent accounts in English of Jain religious beliefs; Padmanabh Jaini (The Jaina Path of Purification, University of California Press, 1979) and Paul Dundas (The Jains, Routledge, 1992) have written lucid and engaging discussions of Jain belief and practice. Instead of providing here a short summary of Jain doctrine, which could not possibly do justice to its complex subject, I would like to let the stories I have selected speak for themselves. The Jainism they describe is richly textured. While the stories acknowledge that renunciation of all family and social ties is important for religious development, we see that they also make room for a wide range of meritorious activities that have little to do with monastic asceticism. Tending a temple garden, indeed financing the building of a temple and going on a pilgrimage, are also significant religious acts in the world of these stories. In keeping with the general principle that all acts have appropriate consequences, these good deeds lead to abundant rewards. And so we see that in addition to the goal of Ultimate Release from transmigratory existence, which monks in the prescriptive texts are enjoined to seek, these stories make room for religious goals such as re
birth in heaven or even simply a life of wealth and status, goals that are also open to lay men and women. In addition, in these medieval stories even the career of a monk is more nuanced and potentially varied than what we might expect if we read only the prescriptive texts of the tradition. In these stories monks who renounce the world may still have an important role to play in society, settling disputes, consecrating religious images and temples, curing disease and even advising kings. The women that monks are told scrupulously to avoid in the texts that list rules for the behavior of monks, may here turn out to be more knowledgeable in Jain doctrine than the monks themselves. In addition, the very act of renunciation itself is often not so clear-cut in these stories; in the cycle of rebirths the ties that bind mother and son, husband and wife may prove to be very tenacious indeed, as abandoned wives and mothers return in new births to torment the men who left them. In this and other ways the stories make us see some of the painful emotional consequences of the decision to renounce, particularly for those who are left behind.