142260 SE The Bodhisattva’s Lives in Aryasura’s Jatakamala (2024S)

Arguably the most widely known body of Buddhist literature across Asian Buddhist cultures is nothing overtly philosophical or heavy with doctrine – it is the stories about the past lives of “the bodhisattva/bodhisatta”, the sentient being who would eventually become the Buddha Śākyamuni. In Jātaka stories the bodhisattva is only sometimes human, and not always (at least by modern standards) morally perfect, but his deeds in these stories are the subject of our very oldest artistic record of Buddhism in India, and continue to be re-told across Buddhist cultures today. One collection of Jātakas, surviving in Sanskrit, is by the poet Āryaśūra, who wrote sometime between the second and fourth centuries CE, perhaps with a royal audience in mind. In this course, we will read Sanskrit versions of several famous Jātakas as they survive in Āryaśūra’s “Garland of Birth-Stories” (Jātakamāla): including the story of the lioness (Vyāghrījātaka), of the hare (Śaśajātaka), and – perhaps the most influential Jātaka of all – the story of the generous prince Viśvantara (Viśvantarajātaka). Our interest will be literary as well as doctrinal features of these texts, and what they tell us about how Indian Buddhists understood the bodhisattva and his long, arduous journey towards the status of a Buddha. This course will complement an exploration of the (Mahāyāna) bodhisattva in the course “The Bodhisattva’s Mind in the Vimalakīrtinirdeśa”.