Naga, Yaksini, Buddha

·期刊原文
Naga, Yaksini, Buddha: local deities and local Buddhism at Ajanta

by Richard S. Cohen
History of Religions

Vol.37 No.4

May 1998

Pp.360-400

Copyright by University of Chicago

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INTRODUCTION: AN ELECTRONIC DISCUSSION ON SPIRIT CULTS AND BUDDHISM
Several years ago, Dr. William Bodiford sent a message to the
electronic discussion group Buddha-l posing the following questions:
"Is the worship of local spirit cults an essential part of Buddhist
traditions in Asia?--Or, in other words--Are there any Buddhist
traditions in which local spirit cults do NOT play a major role?"(1)
Bodiford's post generated a particularly stimulating thread of
discussion. Indeed, the fact that this thread continued vigorously
for the next month and one-half--through Christmas and the New Year,
as well as the start of a new semester--testifies to the salient
importance of Bodiford's query. The parameters of discussion were
quickly set; every term came under scrutiny. Did Bodiford pose one
question or two? Did Bodiford really intend to suggest that local
spirit cults are essential to Buddhist traditions? Might such cults
be simply normal, but contingent, parts of Buddhist traditions? What
did Bodiford mean by "tradition"? What defines a spirit cult? What
are the criteria for determining whether a spirit cult does or does
not play a "major role"?
When participants ceased problematizing the terms of Bodiford's post
and attempted to respond to it, they showed a striking reluctance to
answer him in the affirmative. A significant proportion were
unwilling even to entertain the notion that local spirit cults may
be as integral to Buddhist traditions in Asia as, for instance, the
four noble truths. This response surprised me, though it should not
have. After all, Bodiford posted his query to Buddha-l precisely
because, in his words, "most scholarly accounts of Buddhist life
seem to either ignore Buddhist worship of local deities, dismissing
it as `folk religion,' or treat it as an example of syncretism."
Presumably, they do so because they do not find such deities or
their cults essential. Although nearly all respondents acknowledged
that cults for local spirits are normal parts of Buddhist traditions
in Asia, there was nevertheless broad agreement that such cults are
contingent, cultural accretions to the religion, not necessarily
identifiable with "Buddhism" as such.
Bodiford's inquiry inspired so vibrant and sustained a discussion
because its ramifications spiral beyond the lack of scholarship on
spirit cults, folk religion, or syncretism--though these are lacunae
that must be filled--to issues of central import for any scholarly
study of Buddhism. Where do we locate Buddhism? What is normatively
Buddhist? Almost no participant in the discussion was comfortable
with Bodiford's use of the word "essential"; yet, almost every post
attempted to pinpoint criteria for delimiting normative Buddhism.
Typically, these criteria described a two-tier model, distinguishing
a "true" Buddhism, founded in pure philosophy, the Buddha's exact
attitude, or the confronting of essentialisms, from a "lesser"
Buddhism that involves supernatural powers, the worship of spirits
or deities, ordinary folk, and indigenous beliefs. Scholars who
divided Buddhism thus tended to represent the upper tier as
normative, sociologically as well as ideologically, by associating
it with the community of monks.
There also were a few discussants who problematized Bodiford's
suggestion that local spirit cults may be conceived as essential to
Buddhist traditions in Asia, while refraining from positing
universalized criteria for normativity. This is the position I take
myself. In my reading, "local," not "essential," is the most
important term in Bodiford's post. In seeking a universally
generalizable Buddhism, scholars have ignored "place." One aspiring
to escape from normative definitions may find, however, that place,
locality, provides a powerful category for analytic reconstructions
of Buddhism. Place sets the idiosyncratic and indigenous on par with
the translocal and universal, the here and there with the
everywhere.
This article will explore how a scholar of Indian Buddhism might
take place seriously as a ground for interpretation. How does
Buddhism come to be of a place? The answer that follows may be
understood as a play on Peter Brown's dictum that "the supernatural
becomes the depository of the objectified values of the group."(2)
That is, the "supernatural" is always emplaced for no better reason
than that people live, work, study, meditate, and worship in places;
if the term "Buddhism" is to be meaningful, it must be connected to
people, to Buddhists, who lived their lives as Buddhists in places.
In this case, the category place will be treated in terms of locale.
In particular, my subject is Buddhism as located at the Ajanta,
caves, a fifth-century C.E. rock-cut monastic "village" in western
India renowned for its paintings, sculptures, and inscriptions. What
deities lived at this locale? How were the deities emplaced within
Ajanta's monastic architectures? What do these deities' locations
tell us about the constitution of Ajanta's Buddhist community and
its values? How might cultic activities for the deities located at
Ajanta be viewed as contributing to a local Buddhism, Buddhism as a
religion of place? My analysis will weave together four discursive
threads. The first of these threads is the explication of the
theoretical assumptions that lead me to treat Buddhism in its local
formation at Ajanta. The second thread is the actual material
evidence from the Ajanta caves themselves, which includes paintings,
sculptures, architectural forms, and epigraphs. This Ajanta material
will be set in broader contexts through my final two threads. The
third is a consideration of models of patronage that had an impact
on local community formation; the fourth, a consideration of the
political pressures that fostered the development of Ajanta as a
site for patronage as well as for the establishment of a local
community.
The local deities to be considered below will include a naga king,
the yaksini Hariti, and the Buddha himself. The inclusion of the
Buddha on this list, as a deity of place, may be surprising.
However, it is a problematic conceit that the Buddha was a purely
translocal religious figure, whose significance may be recovered
exclusively through literary and doctrinal sources. For this site's
patrons, visitors, and community, the Buddha at Ajanta was a
translocal divinity with a specifically local identity, just as the
Great Goddess is Vaisno Devi at her temple on Mount Trikut(3) or
Siva is Acalesvara in his temple at Tiuvarur.(4) As I shall show, at
Ajanta the Buddha became of this place through his association with
and resolution of indigenous and uniquely local problems. Though in
nirvana, this Buddha was nevertheless present and active in the
world. As the sangha's head, this localized Buddha, in turn,
grounded the Buddhist sangha's participation in local social
relations. Social relations necessarily involve interactions among
human beings. Within the context of Asian Buddhism, social relations
almost invariably involve nagas, yaksinis, and the Buddha as well.
At Ajanta this was certainly the case.
THE DOMESTICATION OF AN "ANTISOCIAL RELIGION"
As I noted above, scholars who responded negatively to Bodiford's
queries often did so through recourse to a two-tier model,
distinguishing indigenous religious cultures from a translocal
Buddhist norm. Edward Conze, remembered as much for the strength of
his opinions as that of his scholarship, elucidated this model with
characteristic aplomb. First, Conze divided Buddhism into two
opposing forms: "Much of what has been handed down as `Buddhism' is
not due to the exercise of wisdom, but to the social conditions in
which the Buddhist community existed.... One must throughout
distinguish the exotic curiosities from the essentials of holy
life."(5) Second, Conze associated these two forms of "Buddhism"
with sociological and historical realities: "The monks are the
Buddhist elite. They are the only Buddhists in the proper sense of
the word."(6) Here, proper Buddhists are individuals who reject
indigenous acculturation. This transition occurs ritually when, as
the stock description reads, these individuals "cut off their beards
and hair, put on red robes, and with proper faith follow in
renunciation the Blessed One, who himself went forth from the home
to the homeless life."(7) Such Buddhists concern themselves little
with social relations. Separated from the pressures of family and
work, they devote themselves to gaining spiritual power and
spiritual insight leading, ultimately, to absolute social
transcendence, nirvana. Conversely, to the degree that an individual
does not segregate himself from the world, and becomes physically or
mentally caught up in mundane, conditional, social interests, he
falls away from this norm. Sherry Ortner explains the logic
underlying this model: "It seems fairly safe to say that orthodox,
canonical Buddhism was ... a religion of antisocial
individualism.... There is, then, an a priori logic to the argument
that Buddhism, given its premises, will be antagonistic to social
life."(8)
If one holds that Buddhism is a priori antisocial, it then follows
that social involvements are always somehow extrinsic to Buddhism
proper. Buddhism is not a social construction but a discursive
construction of and about the truth. That which is properly Buddhist
is universal, never local; it is preserved in texts, not
archaeological sites (except insofar as they reproduce textual
paradigms); it is realized in mental cultivation, not bodily
gesture. Yet, as Conze admits, "wherever the Dharma has been a
living, social reality, Buddhist theory has combined lofty
metaphysics with a willing acceptance of magical and mythological
beliefs."(9) Similarly, Ortner freely acknowledges that for
Southeast Asian Buddhism "the a priori argument, predicting conflict
between Buddhism and society from the antisocial premises of the
doctrine, simply does not hold";(10) she attributes this failure to
follow "logic" to "historical facts" and "social structure."(11)
Given Ortner's usual acumen, it is surprising that she did not see
the tautologous nature of this argument, which measures a
religion--a social and cultural formation--against the yardstick of
an a priori argument and then attributes a mismatch to sociocultural
factors. It is not Southeast Asian Buddhism that is "illogical" but
the model that would valorize a single strand of Buddhist doctrine,
normalize it, and seek a determinate logic therein. Both Ortner and
Conze make a "stock anthropological error," in the words of C. J.
Fuller, when they "convert an indigenous, ideological distinction
into an analytic concept, and then apply it to the empirical
evidence to try to divide what is actually united by common
underlying themes and principles."(12)
This, in short, is the matter at stake in Bodiford's question: How
ought scholars to conceive of Buddhism as a social and cultural
formation, a religion? Ivan Strenski offers a solution with his
thesis that the "domestication" of the Buddhist sangha was "a
fundamental internal factor propelling Theravada along the path to a
fully social religious status."(13) Domestication occurs, Strenski
writes, "whenever the sangha participates with the laity in
institutions" through the mechanism of gift exchange. "Above all,
the sangha is a ritual receiver of gifts."(14) The history of the
sangha's dynamic interaction with the laity suggests that these two
groups naturally came together to realize social goals; Buddhist
cultures, societies, and civilizations emerge out of this union. In
short, by unpacking "domestication of the sangha one can account for
why Ortner's a priori argument does not hold for Southeast Asian
Buddhism and why it makes little sense to delimit the participation
of Buddhist monks in society as an illegitimate violation of
Buddhist "premises."
Here is a premise or logic to counter that promoted by Ortner and
Conze. The logic of domestication begins with the empirical
observation that one always finds distinct links uniting the sangha
with the laity, and that this relationship is almost invariably
expressed through gestures of ritual giving. By subordinating
doctrinal apologies for gift giving to the "bare" social fact of its
occurrence, one is freed from Ortner's overdetermined premises; the
full spectrum of Buddhist history and the fluidity of its local
forms become available for consideration within a normalizing
discourse. One can take account of place. Indeed, whereas social
structures cannot credibly be read through the lens of doctrine, by
starting with this empirical social data, we can read Buddhist
ideologies, even those valorizing the monk as an antisocial
individual, through patterns of exchange.
How does domestication work? Following the lead of Levi-Strauss's
analysis of kinship, Strenski proposes that society is synthesized
out of exchange relationships. There are two basic patterns by which
individuals become bound to one another and to a society through
exchange: restricted exchange and generalized exchange. "Restricted
exchange" involves what may be called a commercial element: two
parties contract an equitable exchange of goods or services on a
reciprocal basis. We shall see such a mechanism clearly at work at
Ajanta in the cult of a naga with whom the monks share their
residence: the humans attend to his shrine/ home, and in turn he
does not strike them dead. Each party fulfills its part of the
bargain, and social harmony prevails. For Strenski, relationships of
reciprocity between monks and the laity (or nagas) are problematic
and play only a secondary role in the sangha's domestication. This
is because, although Strenski rejects the premise that Buddhism is
fundamentally antisocial, he nevertheless tentatively accepts the
ideological construction of the Buddhist monk as "a paradigm of
non-reciprocity."(15) In light of this "ideal," Strenski proposes
that domestication "both avoids the appearance and substance of
reciprocity and expresses more durable and inclusive patterns of
relationship."(16) Strenski's analysis went astray here, for, as I
shall discuss below, restricted, reciprocal relationships are
fundamental to Buddhism as a religion of place.
The second modality of exchange, "generalized exchange," is
domestication proper; it is not linear but complex in its
configuration. In Strenski's words, generalized exchange "seeks an
unbalanced condition between exchange partners, which requires
repayment at some unspecified time, typically by another group or
person than the original receiver of the first gift: A gives to B
who gives to C ... until A finally receives his due.... [Generalized
exchange] thus links its members in a theoretically open system of
indebtedness, the momentum of which tends to build up social
solidarity."(17) Again by reference to Ajanta, so long as the monks
attend to the local naga king's needs, he provides steady and
plentiful rains, benefiting lay society, which in turn supports the
monks. Accordingly, Strenski unpacks the term "domestication" as
"the condition of the sangha within a system of generalized
exchange. `Domestication' simply names a process of the sangha's
participation in a certain social solidarity."(18)
Here I lay a foundation for recovering Ajanta's local Buddhism. If,
as Strenski claims, "the problem of how domestication came about is
... the problem of how Buddhist society was formed in the process of
ritual giving"(19) then "domestication" provides an analytic concept
of exceptional utility. The very nature of the archaeological
evidence from Ajanta compels this evaluation. What we know of
Buddhist life at Ajanta derives principally from physical remains
that index past acts of giving. Excavatory and decorative work at
the site occurred in two phases, the first of which lasted from
approximately 100 B.C.E. to 100 C.E., the second from circa 462 and
480.(20) Our knowledge of Ajanta's Buddhism is tied to gifts of
monasteries, the wellsprings of Buddhist culture, society, and
civilization. The institutionalization of a Buddhist community at
Ajanta through the establishment of a monastic "village" sets this
sangha in a network of relationships that circulated obligation as a
currency in the local sociopolitical economy. The monks' ritual
interaction with local divinities was one means by which they met
the obligations attached, like a hen, to their local residence in
magnificent caves as well to their more general residence in a
social system. As the mechanism of social solidarity, domestication
provides a basic model for reconstructing the social processes
involved in the foundation of a Buddhist community at Ajanta.
Moreover, it is possible to link this
generalized-versus-restricted-exchange distinction to another
opposition I play with in this article: translocal versus local.
This point can be clarified by way of an example. In the
Milindapanha, the first dilemma King Milinda poses to the monk
Nagasena bears on the matter of gifts to the Buddha after his
parinirvana: If the Buddha accepts gifts he cannot have passed
entirely away. He must still be in union with the world, having his
being somewhere in it, in the world, a shareholder in the things of
the world; and therefore any honour paid to him becomes empty and
vain. On the other hand if he be entirely passed away (from life),
unattached to the world, escaped from all existence, then honours
would not be offered to him. For he who is entirely set free accepts
no honour, and any act done to him who accepts it not becomes empty
and vain.(21)
In other words, if the Buddha is not transcendental and translocal,
then he lacks value as an object of worship, so why attempt to
engage the Buddha in an exchange relationship? Yet, if the Buddha is
not present and local, then he cannot enjoy offerings, so why
participate with the Buddha in an exchange relationship? Nagasena's
response takes the same normative stance as that embraced by Conze
and Ortner. The Buddha is in nirvana; his is the ultimate in
antisocial behavior; "the Blessed One accepts no gift."(22)
Nevertheless, Nagasena holds that offerings to the Buddha are
efficacious because in this case exchange does not require
reciprocity. The Buddha (or his commemorative caitya) provides an
occasion, a context, for giving.(23) In this way, the Buddha's
translocality does not preclude his location within a network of
generalized exchange, for such a network works through the
displacement of presence and the postponement of profits. The Buddha
is like Johnny Appleseed of US. folklore: both broadcast seeds over
fertile public land and then departed for points unknown. Even
though these individuals are no longer present, the community can
still enjoy the fruit of their labors. In fact, if Johnny Appleseed
or the Buddha did not travel to the beyond (obviously their actions
have vastly different cosmological scopes), they would not have
become the stuff of legends; their fruits would not be as sweet.
Here we see a linkage between generalized processes of exchange, the
foundation of generalized community and social structures, and a
valorization of translocality. Such a set of equations may partially
explain the apparent disjunction in the field of Buddhist studies
between a scholarly interest in Buddhist nomos and one in local
spirit cults.
As networks of generalized exchange find expression in metaphors of
translocality, so restricted, reciprocal relationships find
expression in those of place, locality, and presence. Thus, whereas
the Milindapanha set the Buddha's translocality as the basis for his
absent involvement in acts of ritual exchange, fostering
domestication through generalized exchange, this same text sets the
monks' localization as the basis for their involvement in exchange
relations, fostering domestication through restricted exchange.
Nagasena explains: although it may seem contradictory for monks to
accept fixed dwellings from the laity, this practice is acceptable
because it makes the monks accessible to the laity.(24) Whether or
not monks willfully intend to enter a restricted exchange
relationship, their presence functions as the direct reciprocation
for the gift of a dwelling. Similarly, the following story from the
Mulasarvastivada vinaya (MSV) illustrates the import of place and
presence for restricted exchange relationships between monks and
donors: "The faithful erected many monasteries, [but] few monks
spent the rains retreat in Sravasti. The [monasteries] stood empty.
The benefactors did not receive the spiritual merit that comes from
[the monks'] use [of their donations]. Instead, scoundrels took over
[the monasteries]. The Blessed One said, `Count all [the
monasteries]. Depending upon the calculation, every [monastery]
should be used personally by one, two, three, or four [monks]. [A
monk] should pass the morning in one [monastery], [and] should dwell
in a different [monastery] at mid-day, in another during the
afternoon, and in [still] another at night.'"(25) Certain fruits of
giving can only be had through monks' living presence. In order to
reciprocate the faithful laity for their donations, and to satisfy
their desire for spiritual merit, the Buddha disrupt the monks' own
fives, enjoining them to play "musical monasteries." Strenski
suggests that such a ploy had no role within orthodox Buddhist
giving founded in generalized exchange, which "liberates gift-giving
from petty calculation ... by appearing to be sacrifice."(26)
Sacrifice, giving without a discernible guarantee of return, is
precisely what the Buddha's order precludes. According to this tale,
donors must unequivocally know that they will receive their
spiritual due; monks must do what is necessary to satisfy the laity.
Reciprocation is a normal and proper part of the monastic life, even
at the monks' inconvenience.
In addition, despite Strenski's devaluation of spiritual merit as a
direct reciprocation for gifts received, one often finds that merit
bears a "tangible" fruit and a this-worldly benefit. The donor of a
set of Buddha images in Ajanta's Cave 22 expresses the immediate
results of giving in a verse included with this painting: "Those who
have an image of the Conqueror made, in this [very life] become
possessed of beauty, fortune, and good qualities; blazing like the
sun in their faculties and sense, they become a delight to the
eye."(27) Similarly, the Pali commentary on the Dhammapada tells
that when King Bimbisara made an offering of robes to the Buddha and
community of monks, dedicating the merit from that transaction to a
group of ghosts haunting him, those ghosts instantaneously and
visibly "were clothed in divine raiments."(28) Again, in the MSV,
Sariputra deliberately increases Anathapindada's joy at building the
Jetavana monastery by telling Anathapindada that at the same time
that he holds a cord to measure the monastery's foundation a golden
palace comes into being in Tusita heaven: the larger the monastery,
the larger the palace.(29) Restricted exchange, in short, works when
the individuals involved are mutually present and when the fruits of
the exchange are evident to the parties involved. At the most basic
level, presence--for example, the localization of a sangha in a
specific place--is itself the desired fruit.
As a social phenomenon, Buddhism cannot be understood apart from its
local manifestations, nor solely through its local manifestations.
Domestication, the creation of a Buddhist society, works through
both modes of exchange relationship; both are normal. Nor is this
the case solely for monks. If one is to avoid Fuller's "stock
anthropological error," one must entertain the notion that the
Buddha, too, might participate in restricted exchange relationships,
even though he is sometimes represented in doctrinal texts as
utterly beyond samsara. In mythological terms, to recover a local
Buddhism at Ajanta one has to problematize the Milindapanha's
pronouncement that the Buddha is absolutely translocal and does not
enjoy worship himself. How did Ajanta's patrons, community of monks,
and artisans make the Buddha present and use that presence to
address mundane and local concerns? How did the Buddha and his
community of monks gain institutional momentum in a particular
place--Ajanta--through restricted exchange relationships, and how
did they diffuse that momentum throughout the broader society (and
indeed the cosmos) to become domesticated through generalized
exchange?
A BRIEF DIVERSION: INTRODUCING AJANTA
Before I localize the Buddha at Ajanta or explore the mechanisms of
domestication as they pertain to patronage at the site, I will set
forth, very cursorily, the geophysical and historicocultural
environments that had an impact on Ajanta's establishment. Even
today the Ajanta caves are difficult to access. In 1992 a helipad
was cleared to expedite the visit of a Japanese prince; the rest of
us ride the bus from the nearest rail link, Jalgaon, ninety minutes
to the north, or from Aurangabad, three hours to the south. In the
late fifth century C.E., when the caves were excavated into a sheer
scarp overhanging the Waghora River (fig. 1), they were equally
isolated. Archaeological investigations of the district have
uncovered no evidence of villages or towns located in the immediate
vicinity of Ajanta's thirty-six monasteries, caitya halls, and
shrinelets. The nearest population centers to receive sustained
attention from Indian archaeologists would have been a strenuous
day's journey from Ajanta: Buldana, approximately thirty miles to
the east, and Bhokardan, the same distance to the south.(30) In any
event, no evidence links any of Ajanta's rock-cut buildings, or the
paintings and sculptures for which they are renowned, to either
Buldana or Bhokardan. Rather, epigraphs found on site associate
Ajanta's various patrons with an emperor of the Vakataka dynasty
named Harisena, who ruled from the city of Vatsagulma (now known as
Washim), one hundred linear miles to the east-southeast of Ajanta
(fig. 2).
[Figure 1-2 ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
Ajanta's architecture, paintings, sculptures, and epigraphs are
representative of a complex and vibrant form of local Buddhism and
provide a witness to Buddhism as a constituent of Indian society in
the late fifth century. In actuality, Ajanta was created in two
phases of patronage, the first stretching from approximately 100
B.C.E. to 100 C.E., the second from circa 462 to 480; my sole
interest here ties in donors and donations belonging to the second
phase. All evidence points to these fifth-century patrons as being
closely affiliated with the Harisena. Walter Spink's chronology and
history of Ajanta binds the caves explicitly to the fortunes and
social program of the Vakataka polity. According to Spink, a
Vakataka ruler named Harisena inherited his father's throne in
approximately 460 C.E. Almost immediately thereafter "a consortium
of the emperor's richest and most powerful courtiers" hired
architects and artisans to realize this great project.(31) These
courtiers included Varahadeva, a minister of Harisena's, responsible
for Cave 16; Buddhabhadra, a noble-become-monk, who tells us that he
was "bound in friendship with a minister of the mighty King of
Asmaka over the course of many lifetimes" (elsewhere I have shown
this Asmakan king was likely Harisena), patronized Cave 26; and an
unnamed feudatory raja subordinate to Harisena was responsible for
Caves 17, 18, and 19.(32) Further, Spink has argued that Ajanta's
Cave 1 was the dedication of Harisena himself,(33) and that the
neighboring Cave 2 may have been patronized by a close relative,
perhaps one of Harisena's wives.(34) Approximately twenty years
after the site's efflorescence, circa 480, programmatic work at
Ajanta patronized by Vatsagulma's luminaries crashed to a halt with
the destruction of the Vakataka family. Due to the loss of
sustained, certain patronage, the monks soon left this narrow chasm
at the head of the Waghora River for points unknown.(35)
The following study of localization and domestication of Buddhism at
Ajanta will proceed through a number of case studies. First, I will
treat a "local" deity, by investigating the incorporation of a
shrine to a naga king, keeper of this Waghora chasm in Cave 16; here
I will set forth a general pattern for localization. The second
study will treat a "translocal local" deity. Moving into a more
"normative" Buddhist space, both physically and mythologically, I
will discuss a pillared chapel dedicated to Hariti--a yaksini whose
personal story was known to all the Buddhist world--excavated inside
Cave 2, in the rear wall beside the Buddha shrine. I will show how
the displacement of this yaksini from her original home in Rajagrha,
and her relocation within Cave 2, accomplished both the emplacement
of Vakataka society within that cave and the transformation of its
resident monks into priests, mediators between the lay and spirit
worlds. The third study will explore the Buddha as a "local
translocal" deity. At Ajanta, the Buddha was assimilated in body and
role to Harisena; as a king's principal duty is to maintain the
social and cosmic orders, so Ajanta's local Buddhas fulfilled this
task in the place of Harisena, who lived in distant Vatsagulma. In
this way, these Buddhas' local presence played on translocal
valences of Buddha as the Unexcelled King of Dharma to incorporate
Ajanta and its community into the Vakataka social world. For the
reasons explained above, these three studies will not be "completed"
by a fourth that treats the Buddha as a purely translocal deity:
such studies are plentiful.
Although Ajanta is the richest of India's Buddhist archaeological
sites for reconstructing a temporally and spatially localized
Buddhism, the data found therein do not speak for themselves. The
studies that follow are worked out through a reading of the evidence
local to Ajanta through broader patterns of mythology, folklore, and
doctrine. My principal literary source for this contextualizing
material will be the MSV, a patchwork of monastic regulations,
jataka tales, sutras, and retellings of the Buddha's life well known
to Ajanta's community.(36) I will supplement the MSV with other
literature associated with Ajanta, as well as with the eyewitness
accounts of Chinese pilgrims who visited India between the fifth and
seventh centuries.
NAGA: LOCALIZING BUDDHISM IN CAVE 16
Cave 16 at Ajanta was a monastic residence dominated by a huge,
monolithic representation of Buddha cut in a shrine room in the
back. Varahadeva's dedicatory inscription describes this cave as "a
splendid dwelling for the ascetic Indra (i.e., the Buddha) excavated
on the finest mountain, home to a naga king."(37) Here Varahadeva
elucidates two facts of great import: this place became the Buddha's
home after formerly having been the abode of a naga king.
Varahadeva's claims have two important ramifications for
interpreting the site. First, by designating Cave 16 as the Buddha's
dwelling, Varahadeva suggests that in some as yet unspecified way
the Buddha was "alive" there. Second, this mountain scarp's original
inhabitant, its naga king, was rendered homeless when the Vakatakas
began to institute a Buddhist community at the site. The naga needed
a new place to live. And so, in addition to creating a home for
Buddha, Varahadeva's dedicatory inscription tells that he also
excavated a new dwelling for the naga king located immediately
inside the cave's entrance, near river level (figs. 3. 4).(38) The
entryway in front of this shrine had no provision for a door: Cave
16's naga king sat as an unblinking guardian over the entrance to
this monastery and the Waghora River before it.
[Figure 3-4 ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
Nagas play an ambiguous role in Buddhist mythology. Powerful
creatures who dwell in a glorious but debased existence underground
or in rivers, nagas control patterns of fertility and destruction
through their power over rains, which may be sweetly life-giving or
torrential and deadly. Nagas' power is distinctly localized, and in
Buddhist stories they protect their turf fiercely. Indeed, nagas
were among the Buddha's staunchest adversaries: soon after the
awakening, Sakyamuni proved his power to a group of ascetics by
spending the night in the lair of a fire-breathing naga and taming
the beast without causing it harm.(39) Similarly, among the tales
the MSV tells of the Buddha's visit to India's northwest, two
involve the subduing of the nagas Apalala and Gopala;(40) in both
cases, fierce and stormy battles precede the Buddha's inevitable
triumph. Once pacified, however, nagas become the staunchest
guardians of the Buddha and his doctrine. Naga king Mucalinda
provided a refuge to the Buddha, when a storm threatened his
blissful meditation soon after awakening.(41) The nagas in Ramagrama
are remembered as preserving and revering one portion of the
Buddha's relics.(42) In addition, the MSV tells us that the Buddha
established his sutras among the nagas. (43) This latter belief
possibly underlies the well-known story of Nagarjuna's retrieval of
the Perfection of Wisdom Sutras from the nagas, as well as the
lesser-known example of a naga who, having taken the guise of an old
monk, preached a "corrupt version" of the Ekottara agama, a version
preserved in his watery world.(44)
The following tale from the MSV allows a more detailed look at the
subduing of nagas. Here we meet Asvaka and Punarvasuka, two nagas
who had been Sakyamuni's disciples in their former birth. When
human, these two were members of the "gang of six" (sadvargika),
disciples who caused trouble in the sangha by violating all rules of
propriety. As one might expect of such students, they blame their
benevolent teacher for their own failings and vow revenge.
[The Blessed One] went to Nandivardhana. In Nandivardhana, King
Bhavadeva, along with his courtiers, the candali's seven sons, and
the earth-dwelling yaksas were well established in the Holy Truths.
There was a great lake in that place in which Asvaka and Punarvasuka
had both been reborn as nagas. Twelve years passed and [Asvaka and
Punarvasuka] rose to the [lake's] surface. Angrily, they said:
"Because the Blessed One didn't teach us the Dharma, we're now
debased, born as nagas. So, let's destroy his religion." The Blessed
One then deliberated: "Because these nagas, Asvaka and Punarvasuka,
are very mighty and have extraordinary powers, they certainly could
grind my teachings to dust after my parinirvana." After considering
this [point], the Blessed One went to Asvaka and Punarvasuka. Having
approached, he addressed them: "Asvaka and Punarvasuka, there is a
teaching known as `The Dharma-discourse in four lines.' Learn it
well!" "A reverend [monk] teaches us the Holy Dharma. Who is he?"
Wondering this, they sank [back into the lake]. Those two realized,
"The Blessed One himself taught us the Dharma, but we didn't
recognize him." The Blessed One then fixed his reflection on the
surface [of the water]. Again and again, Asvaka and Punarvasuka
[rise up toward the surface], gaze at the [reflection,] believe that
the Blessed One remains present, and sink back down.(45)
The Buddha subdues Asvaka and Punarvasuka in stages. First, he gives
them a Dharma-discourse: a waste of words considering that these two
failed to comprehend his teachings even when human. Second.
Sakyamuni establishes his definitive presence in these naga's
territory by fixing his image at the entrance to their lair.
In the end, this is not a story about the syncretic appropriation of
a local naga cult into Buddhism. Rather, it tells how Buddhists make
use of local deities in order to emplace themselves within a local
society. The MSV does not represent Nandivardhana's king or populace
as particularly concerned with Asvaka and Punarvasuka. It is the
Buddha who worries about them and Buddhism that needs them. The
Buddha enters into a restricted-exchange relationship with Asvaka
and Punarvasuka, a relationship based on presence. The Buddha makes
two offerings to these powerful creatures of dim intellect: first,
his teachings; second, his body. The Buddha gives the nagas these
things so that, as the MSV tells us, they will not destroy his
religion out of anger that he passed them by. Under the guise of
making restitution to these nagas for whatever slight they felt, the
Buddha fixed his presence in that very place, corporeally as well as
dharmically.
Although tantalizing, this text is incomplete: it does not tell us
"what happened next" to Asvaka and Punarvasuka. We do not know
whether, in Nandivardhana, a shrine to these nagas coexisted with
that of the Buddha and, if so, how Asvaka and Punarvasuka would have
been integrated into monastic life. At Ajanta, a shrine for the naga
king was placed within the precincts of Cave 16. What did the
institutionalized presence of that naga mean for Ajanta's community?
The following account from the fifth-century Chinese pilgrim Fa Hien
shows one pattern for a sangha's ritual interaction with a local
naga. Here Fa Hien describes a naga cult as it was instituted in a
Buddhist monastery within the town of Samkasya. This local naga, Fa
Men writes, "is the patron of this body of priests. He causes
fertilising and seasonable showers of rain to fall within their
country, and Preserves it from plagues and calamities, and so causes
the priesthood to dwell in tranquility."(46) In return for the
naga's good graces, Samkasya's monks provide Samkasya's naga with a
chapel and a seat. Every day three monks bring the naga a religious
offering, and once a year they "place in the midst of [the naga's]
lair a copper vessel full of cream; and then, from the highest to
the lowest, they walk past him in procession as if to pay him
greeting all around."(47) This may be what Conze meant by an "exotic
curiosity."
Just as the Buddha gave his presence to Asvaka and Punarvasuka,
similarly, in Fa Men's story about the goings-on in Samkasya, local
monks provide the naga a place to live and offer it worship in that
place. First, the naga reciprocates in two ways. The naga supports
them. Fa Hien uses a language of direct presence: this snake deity
is a patron who enables the monks to dwell in peace. Second, the
naga favors the monks by not harming them. The following story from
the MSV--in which a local monastic community shares its home with
several nagas, mistreats those nagas, and is terrorized by those
nagas--helps to clarify this dimension of the restricted, proximate,
nature of the relationship between monks and their coresident nagas:
"in this case, there is a monastery established in a place inhabited
by nagas. In an inappropriate spot, or dwelling, or path to a
dwelling, a certain foolish, stupid, undeveloped, and clumsy old
[monk] either shits, coughs phlegm, blows out snot, farts, or
scatters befouled bedding about. Enraged, the nagas stand at the
dwelling and at the path to the dwelling, as well as on the
promenade, in the courtyard, and at the doorway, and strike down the
monks."(48) Insofar as this relationship works at the level of
restricted exchange, it is primarily a matter of promoting local
harmony. The monks and naga are both present; the fruits of their
interactions are immediate and apparent.
In the above examples, one sees that the presence of a local naga
presents the Buddha and his monks with an opportunity to fix their
own presence in the same spot. This is what David Shulman has called
the "phenomenon of localization" within his study of Tamil temple
myths. The Buddhists enter into a restricted-exchange relationship
with a local naga, who is identified with the earth and with all
that is indigenous and unique in the site of the shrine or
monastery.(49) Through this relationship based on shared presence,
the Buddhists establish their local legitimacy. The relationship has
discernible local effects: nagas, who might otherwise cause harm,
are pacified; Buddhists, who might otherwise be strangers, are
neighbors.
At the same time, Fa Hien's characterization of the local monastic
cult for the naga in Samkasya reveals it to be a paradigmatic
example of generalized exchange. The monks propitiate the naga, who
in turn causes a good monsoon, enriching the local laity, which in
turn enriches the monks. This is a decentralized and dynamic network
of exchange; the circulation of benefits and obligations from agent
to agent constructs a working society and a domesticated sangha.
This is a neat, idealized example of a generalized exchange
relationship. Such a system would, in fact, have been open ended and
inclusive of, as Strenski observes, "an indefinite number of
members."(50)
If, in Strenski's words, "domestication" is "the condition of the
[Buddha or] sangha within a system of [generalized exchange]," then
"localization" is the condition of the Buddha or sangha, within a
system of restricted exchange.(51) And just as generalized patterns
of exchange do not occur apart from dyadic restricted interactions,
so the domestication of a sangha cannot take place unless that
sangha is emplaced within local society. The interaction of the
Buddha or his monks with local spirits is a primary means by which
such localization occurs. To reprise my broader programmatic agenda:
insofar as actual social interactions on the part of the Buddha or
sangha take the form of restricted as well as of generalized
exchange, local data is as essential (to recall Bodiford) as
translocal to the nuanced reconstruction of Buddhist life. An
interpretation of Buddhist life at Ajanta's Cave 16 necessitates
consideration of the naga shrine excavated at this monastery's
public entrance as certainly as it does consideration of the Buddha
deep within the cave's recess. For the Buddhism local to this spot,
neither can be valorized as more essential or normal.
We do not actually know what anybody did at Cave 16's naga shrine.
We do not know how the local monks may have treated this snake king.
And we do not know whether local rains were timely and sufficient or
whether floods and epidemics touched the monks' and Vakatakas's
lives. Yet, from these various accounts found in the MSV and Fa
Hien, examples that could be multiplied, we see a distinct pattern
of interaction that is crucial for reconstructing Buddhist life at
Ajanta. Nagas are ambivalent and dangerous beings, each of whom
haunts a specific locale. When pacified--through the continuing
presence of the Buddha in the form of an image, through the
performance of propitiatory rites by the sangha, or through some
other means not specified in the stories I cite--these local deities
become benefactors for the humans who share their locale. For the
Buddha or sangha to have an effective role in the control of local
deities, they must themselves become local as well. The same holds
true for Varahadeva's Buddha in Cave 16, where a dwelling for the
ascetic Indra was incorporated with the home of a naga king.
YAKSINI: DISPLACING HARITI AND EMPLACING THE LAITY IN CAVE 2
Nagas were not the only local deities whose pacification by the
Buddha and his sangha, enabled localization and domestication. The
following story from the MSV shows that this pattern also worked for
yaksas, chthonic deities typically associated with terrestrial and
human fertility. In this tale, Sakyamuni Buddha visits the northern
Indian city of Mathura at a time when a yaksa named Gardabha lives
as "an enemy to friends, an adversary to allies, an antagonist to
well-wishers, who steals children as soon as they are born."(52)
Mathura's faithful Brahmanas and householders implore the Buddha to
assist them. Sakyamuni adjudicates their grievance: if these local
devotees will construct a monastery for the local community of monks
and dedicate it in Ghardabha's honor, this local yaksa will cause no
more harm.(53) The MSV concludes Gardabha's story by telling that
the faithful of Mathura tamed a full twenty-five hundred yaksas,
through building twenty-five hundred Buddhist monasteries in their
honor.
The people of Mathura do not want to get rid of their yaksas; they
present themselves as the yaksas, friends and well-wishers. The
Mathurans aspire to live in harmony with their chthonic deities. The
Buddha fulfills these lay followers' wishes by mastering the yaksas,
and harnessing their power for social good. In this story, like
those told of nagas above, the Buddha and sangha become localized
insofar as they share their dwellings with the deities who are
indigenous and unique to the sites of the monasteries. These
restricted exchange relationships between Buddha, monks, and yaksas,
serve as the bases for the broader project of domestication, an
institutionalized social solidarity inclusive of, at least, monks,
lay folk, and local deities.
Worship, as performed in India with offerings of food, light, and
water, typically occurs somewhere. In the above story of Gardabha,
the monks live in the monastery, but it was constructed for the
yaksa it was dedicated to his worship. One may imagine that Gardabha
stood somewhere inside the monastic precinct receiving devotion,
like Cave 16's naga king. Indeed, the Milindapanha accepts the fact
that offerings to the Buddha will be made somewhere--at a
caitya--even if the Buddha is not there to receive them. The
creation of a specific place for the worship of local nagas or
yaksas or Buddhas within a Buddhist monastery is the physical means
through which localization occurs. The establishment of a shrine (or
monastery) is the precondition for a stable and predictable
restricted exchange relationship in which offerings are reciprocated
through, at the very least, the proximity and presence of the
worshiped. Localization contributes to domestication: the Buddha and
monks are meaningfully placed within a society when whatever is most
particular to that society is placed within their monastic space.
As a sangha becomes geographically localized through the
incorporation of a local divinity within its domicile, so a
divinity's actual emplacement within the monastic plan might suggest
its role or function in the mechanisms of domestication.
Varahadeva's shrine for the naga king, for instance, was excavated
within the precincts of his monastery, but it was placed outside the
living quarters, outside the veranda, and outside the courtyard,
down a flight of stairs, near the river, at the furthest reach from
the Buddha who fives inside. The placement of this naga king
transforms him into a guardian deity for the cave. He falls within
the Buddha's sphere, but his continuing significance has little to
do with that specific relationship. This is not to say that this
naga does not assist in the localization of Cave 16's Buddha or
sangha. Rather, this spatial dynamic suggests that additional
factors may have been at work in the establishment of this
monastery. I will explore these factors in the next section.
A shrine to the yaksini Hariti found inside Ajanta's Cave 2 presents
a very different model. Cave 2's Hariti shrine is one of two
subsidiary chapels cut into the back wall of the monastery, located
on either side of the entrance to the central Buddha shrine (fig.
5). To the right of the Buddha, the Hariti shrine holds monolithic
carved images of Hariti and her consort Pancika (fig. 6); murals
depicting devotees performing puja were painted on the side walls
(figs. 7, 8). Balancing Hariti's shrine, to the antechamber's left,
is a chapel holding monolithic images of Padmanidhi and Sankhanidhi,
embodiments of the wealth and power controlled by Pancika These are
the only two chapels dedicated to deities other than Buddha that
were excavated within an Ajanta monastery. Hariti is an insider.
[Figures 5-8 ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
Indeed, one difference between Hariti and Cave 16's naga is
attributable to the fact that Hariti functioned within several
semantic contexts simultaneously. Hariti fits the model of an
ambivalent local spirit. Like Asvaka Punarvasuka, or Gardabha, her
conversion story ties her to a locale, Rajagrha, which she first
terrorizes and then protects. Yet, unlike these other figures,
Hariti also became a translocal deity for the Buddhists. Shrines to
this yaksini were not to be found in Rajagrha alone but wherever
Buddhist monks traveled. Hariti was an upasika, a lay devotee, who
according to some accounts attained the stage of srotapatti, thereby
entering the direct path to liberation; an early Mahayana treatise
even calls Hariti a "great bodhisattva."(54) Iconographically,
Hariti looks like any other yaksini iconologically, her identity was
in the eye of the beholder. The possibility that Hariti could be
taken prima facie for a local yaksini, a translocal Buddhist
protector, or even a great bodhisattva, coupled with her widespread
inclusion within monastic architectures, suggests that at some level
Mad may have served to limit local impact on Buddhist life. The
apologetic was always available: she looks like a local yaksini, but
"really" is not. Yet, at the same time that Hariti may have
insulated monks from local religious pressures, she also aided in
localizing a sangha. In a sense, Hariti was a portable local deity,
a ready-made, institutionalized, translocal basis for localization.
Cave 16's naga was truly of the place; he deserved worship even
though he had no direct spatial relationship with the Buddha inside
the cave. By contrast, Hariti was neither specifically local nor
specifically translocal; her presence in Buddhist monasteries was
required by the direct order of the Buddha, and her placement in
Cave 2's architecture reflects this relationship. Yet, as I shall
show below, Hariti's presence inside Cave 2 also brought the local
lay society right into this monastic home as a permanent resident.
The story of Hariti's taming has been recorded throughout the
Buddhist world.(55) Here I reproduce the version told by the
seventh-century Chinese pilgrim I Tsing. Although I Tsing never
visited Ajanta, depictions of Hariti's conversion sculpted in Cave 2
correspond to the story as he tells it (figs. 9, 10).
[Figures 9, 10 ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
At the former birth of this mother, she from some cause or other,
made a vow to devour all babes at Rajagrha. In consequence of this
wicked vow, she forfeited her life, and was reborn as a Yakshi; and
gave birth to five hundred children. Every day she ate some babes at
Rajagrha, and the people informed Buddha of this fact. He took and
concealed one of her own children, which she called Her Beloved
Child. She sought it from place to place, and at last happened to
find it near the Buddha. "Art thou so sorry," said the
World-honoured One to her, "for thy lost child, thy beloved? Thou
lamentest for only one lost out of five hundred; how much more
grieved are those who have lost their only one or two children on
account of thy cruel vow?" Soon converted by the Buddha, she
received the five precepts and became an Upasika. "How shall my five
hundred children subsist hereafter?" the new convert asked the
Buddha. "In every monastery," replied the Buddha, "where Bhikshus
dwell, thy family shall partake of sufficient food, offered by them
every day." For this reason, the image of Hariti, is found either in
the porch or in a corner of the dining-hall of all Indian
monasteries depicting her as holding a babe in her arms, and round
her knees three or five children. Every day an abundant offering of
food is made before this image. Hariti is one of the subjects of the
four heavenly kings. She has a power of giving wealth. If those who
are childless on account of their bodily weakness (pray to her for
children), making offerings of food, their wish is always
fulfilled.(56)
According to the MSV, after Hariti converted she gave her demon
children to Rajagrha's sangha for safekeeping because the other
yaksas mocked them for their new religion.(57)
I Tsing traveled to India in order to observe and record the ritual
life of Indian monks so that he might reform the Chinese sangha.
This pilgrim's discussion of Hariti comes in the midst of a
description of the posadha, a biweekly ceremony in which a patron
worships the Buddha (sometimes with dancing girls), listens to the
Dharma, and feasts the sangha. Though scholars often have viewed the
posadha as a preeminently monastic occasion, a time for the sangha's
ritual declaration of moral purity, I Tsing presents the posadha as
the principal occasion at which exchange relationships were realized
between monks and the laity, coalescing Buddhist communities into a
social whole. Indeed, in I Tsing's telling, the very constitution of
sacred space for the posadha observance constructed a complete
cosmos, everyone in his or her place. At the room's front was placed
an offering for the arhats, and perhaps the Buddha and bodhisattvas;
following that, the monks were seated in a row in order of
seniority; and finally, in the hall's recess, at the lowest end of
the row, was placed an offering for the yaksini Hariti.(58)
One may see the posadha as a performative event that created a
hierarchy of the sacred, analogically expressed by the spatial
dynamics instituted for the rite. During the posadha ceremony,
Hariti was mapped as the sacred opposite of the Buddha,
bodhisattvas, or arhats, who were placed at the posadha, hall's
front. Together with these epitomes of Dharma, she functioned to
bracket the ritual space. Placed between these antipodes, the monks
were defined spatially as mediators between transcendental and
chthonic powers, between the Buddhist ideal and the all too socially
real. Like the ideal figures--arhat, bodhisattva, Buddha--who
received offerings at a posadha, hall's other end, Hariti's presence
served as the condition of possibility for the sangha's
domestication: one chaos that made acts of ordering, such as the
posadha, meal, not only possible, but also necessary. The
incorporation of a yaksini in the posadha, ceremony served to
localize the sangha. being feted; the incorporation of a yaksini
specifically in the guise of Hariti ensured that this chthonic
presence fit within a translocal Buddhist cosmos as well. In this
way, Hariti fulfilled the structural role played by local deities in
the localization of Buddhist sanghas without herself necessarily
being of the place at which the posadha, was held.
The geography of ritual in Ajanta's Cave 2 is not isomorphic with
that of the posadha hall. In the latter, sacrality was constructed
through the binary opposition of potential harm and potential
perfection, a space mediated by the sangha. In Cave 2, a binary
opposition does not obtain, but a complementarity between the
figures in the side chapels and the central Buddha does. Treating
this cave's space as a programmatic whole, one finds that no matter
what the order or direction of approach a devotee may have taken to
the various icons, the spatially central Buddha never lost its
ritual centrality. Here the yaksas and yaksini, in the side chapels
do not bracket the space so as to delimit a dualist cosmology.
Instead, this configuration suggests a continuous, perhaps
functional, hierarchy of sacrality. Granted, Hariti's occasional
demonic nature was recollected for the worshiper in the little
carvings behind her monolithic image (figs. 9, 10). Nevertheless, as
a presence she is regal, maternal, and eminently approachable. She
is in the Buddha's sphere and portrayed as if the monks living at
this site have maintained the diurnal duties to her and her sons set
on them by the Buddha: her icon is the ever-present and unchanging
sign of the Buddha's power and the sangha's performative success. Of
course, this incongruity between the certain knowledge that Hariti
is potentially deadly and the portrayal of her as benign is the very
basis of her ritual feeding. Even though Hariti's iconography
represents her as a sweetly maternal figure, the surmise that Cave
2's inhabitants would nevertheless have fed her bespeaks a concern
for her ever-present demonic appetites, which would return in the
absence of the Buddhist control mechanisms.
In point of fact, although Cave 2's space is configured differently
than that of the posadha hall, this shrine emplaces the local
monastic community into the role of mediator between Buddha and
deity, as well as between deity and laity, identical to the posadha
ritual described by I Tsing. Here, too, the laity is brought into
the picture, quite literally, through murals painted on the shrine's
walls. On the right (fig. 7), one finds a scene in which laywomen
and their children bear offerings to Hariti, place them in a pile
before her, and then proceed to pay homage at her feet. Although
there is a feeling of narrative continuity between the sculptured
figures and those painted next to them on the wall, there is an
artistic discrepancy. The sculpted figures are hard, not in
substance alone, but also in spirit: they maintain a
quasi-iconographic stoniness absent from the painted figures, which
are mannered, yet naturally individual. This dynamic interplay of
formal and informal figures within a continuing narrative sequence
is particularly evoked by the nonchalance with which a languid
painted fly-whisk bearer seems about to step into the sculpture and
take the place of the stolid stone attendant at Pancika's side.
The left wall of this chapel (fig. 8) differs from the right in that
there is no sense of a direct interplay between it and the sculpted
figures. Rather, breaking the flow of action toward the chapel's
rear is one disrespectful woman facing away from the sculpted image
of Hariti looking out from the shrine just as Hariti does. Unlike
the other figures in these murals, this woman's hands appear to be
held in positions characteristic of a divinity rather than a
devotee. Her right hand suggests the varadamudra, the gesture of
gift giving; the fact that it is also holding a child suggests the
giving of children. Her left hand is in the sri-mudra, signifying
good fortune, wealth, and royalty, formed by the joining of the ring
finger and thumb. The frieze's composition also sets this woman
apart. By placing her to the extreme right of the group of four
votaries--all of whom appear to be in attendance on her, though in
informal poses--the artist highlights her position as the focus of
the scene. The sense that she is the center of attention is
augmented by the placement of a stylized mountain scarp directly to
her right: she becomes impassable, the action of this scene having
no other direction than toward herself. Finally, she has two
children with her, also heading away from the sculptural group. I
would suggest that figure is Hariti herself, slimmed and beautified
in accord with the mannered naturalism of these friezes, come to
speak with her constant devotees.
If this figure is Hariti, then there is not a spatial but a temporal
continuity between the scenes on the right and left walls of this
chapel. The right wall depicts the performance of a puja; thus, the
painted figures proceed toward those in stone. The left wall
portrays the desired outcome of that puja, in which the great
yaksini Hariti grants her devotees darsan and satisfies their hopes
and desires in accord with their petitions.
The fact that these images of lay folk performing a ritual to Hariti
were painted in a place where monks would have been expected to feed
her encapsulates in living color the ideological tensions involved
in monastic localization and domestication. The sangha and the
yaksini have a relationship based on restricted exchange. The monks
live with Hariti and care for her physical needs; she not only
agrees to peaceably coexist with them, but even gives her children
to the monks for safekeeping according to the MSV. By appeasing this
demoness and accepting her children, the monks create a world in
which security, health, babies, and ample crops are the norm for
every member of a local society, regardless of any individual's
personal relationship with the sangha The sangha become domesticated
in a network of generalized exchange.
Cave 2's Hariti, shrine is a unique text in that its murals confirm
and problematize these exchange processes. According to the
paintings, it is not the monks who are in a restricted exchange
relationship with Hariti but the laity. Such is precisely the ideal
outcome of the monastic ritual. The restricted exchange relationship
between the monks and Hariti, should bring lay society "into the
picture"; the generalized exchange ramifications of this monastic
cult should work as if the local laity performed a successful puja
for Hariti, Indeed, in a sense the emplacement of this sangha within
local society could not have been complete were the laity not
explicitly implicated in the worship. Hariti, is a translocal
Buddhist yaksini. By placing lay society inside Hariti's chapel,
through the paintings of local laity performing her puja, she was
transformed into a particular local deity. The Buddhist monks become
meaningfully placed within the local society as the society becomes
visibly emplaced as a presence within the monastic space. Merely by
living in the presence of Hariti, who lived in the presence of
Buddha, Cave 2's monks were performatively transformed into priests,
intermediaries between the human and spirit worlds.
BUDDHA: AJANTA IN THE SOCIAL LANDSCAPE OF VAKATAKA INDIA
Localization is one moment in the domestication of a sangha. A
Buddha or community of monks becomes localized by entering into a
restricted exchange relationship with a divinity intimately
associated with a place; this relationship can be read, in part,
through its expression within a monastery's architectural plan. The
relationship works in both directions: an indigenous deity, such as
a naga, is pacified by the Buddha's continuing presence; for the
local community, the Buddha himself is bound with the identity and
characteristics of the naga as well. Buddhists do bring certain
translocal, generalizable values into a local economy of belief, but
those values become coin only insofar as they are converted into a
currency whose exchange is accepted in that locale. This process of
conversion, in turn, symbolically emplaces society at large within
the monastic precincts: this is domestication. As we have seen, Cave
2's Hariti chapel is a remarkable text through which to illustrate
the processes of localization and domestication at Ajanta. In the
present section, I will treat the Buddha at Ajanta. How did this
figure enter into a restricted exchange relationship with Ajanta's
patrons? What roles did Buddha play within the generalized
structures of Vakataka society? What was it about Ajanta's Buddhas'
locations and presence that induced members of the Vakataka court to
create magnificent homes for them, monasteries "almost measureless
and inconceivable to the mean-spirited," in the words of Cave 17's
donor?(59)
The model presented above suggests that the localization of Cave 2's
Buddha within the ideological and ritual structures of Vakataka
India would have been intimately associated with Hariti's specific
place within those same structures. Accordingly, I will return to
Hariti. As a translocal Buddhist divinity, Hariti performed many of
the roles and took on many of the symbolic values associated with
indigenous deities. As a typical "tooth mother," Hariti was given
local legitimacy at Ajanta through her spatial relationship with
Cave 2's Buddha and her ritual relationship with the sangha; this in
turn visibly brought the laity into the recesses of that Buddha's
home. In Vakataka India, however, Hariti had associations beyond
that of Buddhist divinity or chthonic divinity. Hariti had special
meaning for the luminaries in Vatsagulma responsible for major
patronage at Ajanta. Considered an ancestor of the Vakataka emperor
Harisena. Hariti was significant in the Vatsagulma Vakatakas'
conception of themselves as a royal family.
Harisena was the last known monarch from the Vakatakas, a lineage of
kings who ruled large swaths of central India following the
dissolution of the Satavahana empire in the mid-third century.
Epigraphic and puranic sources alike name Vindhyasakti as the family
progenitor;(60) his son, Pravarasena I, was deemed the greatest of
the Vakatakas. Following Pravarasena I, the Vakataka family split
into two collateral lines: one based in Nandivardhana;(61) the other
in Vatsagulma. Six generations and about two hundred years after
Pravarasena I, Harisena took on the Vatsagulma Vakataka mantle. As a
token of Pravarasena I's glory, his descendants in Vatsagulma
bestowed the epithet Haritiputra on him;(62) their cousins in
Nandivardhana did not. The association of Pravarasena I with Hariti
was an important symbolic means by which the Vatsagulma Vakatakas
distinguished themselves from the Nandivardhana Vakatakas.
Haritiputra translates literally as "the son of Hariti." There is no
certainty whether Haritiputra was intended as a matronymic, a
literal genealogical claim, or even an evocative epithet for
military prowess, since Hariti's five hundred sons form the bulwark
of the yaksa army. No medieval Indian king ever called himself a
Haritiputra. Rather, this epithet was typically given to the founder
of a royal dynasty or used to characterize the lineage as a whole.
Nevertheless, beyond being a Buddhist divinity and a local yaksini.
Hariti seems to have functioned for the Vatsagulma Vakatakas in
particular as a clan deity. Writing on village goddesses, Fuller
observes that a significant proportion of such figures "are tutelary
deities of specific social units ... whose boundaries define the
spatial extent of their powers."(63) Hariti's specific social unit
would have been the Vatsagulma Vakataka ruling family; her domain,
coextensive with Harisena's own.
Monastic rituals for Hariti at Ajanta would have introduced the
sangha into a generalized, structural system of exchange. Within the
localized context of Vakataka concerns, however, this ritual also
would have served as a basis for political legitimation, reinforcing
whatever claims Harisena's family made based on its
association--genealogical or metaphoric--with this yaksini. Such
legitimation is a matter of both restricted and generalized
exchange. Through the ritual appeasement of Hariti, Ajanta's sangha,
located near the Vakataka kingdom's geographical periphery, ritually
straddled the one-hundred-mile distance, in direct service to King
Harisena's political center; the establishment of a monastic
"village" at Ajanta served to legitimate and strengthen Harisena's
reign throughout his kingdom.
Given this expanded understanding of Hariti's significance at
Ajanta--site intimately tied to the fortunes and social plan of the
Vatsagulma Vakatakas--one can better grasp the Buddha's local
significance. Certainly as the guru of this Vakataka ancestor,
Buddha earned the utmost reverence. But Ajanta's Buddhas were not
merely figures from the past. In a remarkable study, Gregory Schopen
has demonstrated that stone Buddhas, such as those found in the
recesses of Ajanta's Caves 2 and 16, "were actually thought to live
in these establishments."(64) Indeed, "the Buddha was considered to
be the legal head of the group, and ... both the Buddha and the
monastic community were thought to reside in the same
monastery."(65) As the leader of a monastic community whose rituals
to Hariti legitimated Harisena's reign, the Buddha localized at
Ajanta can be likened to a raja whose "troops-were mustered in the
service of Harisena.
This may be more than mere metaphor. Eighty percent of the monks who
left literary records of their presence at Ajanta refer to
themselves by the epithet Sakyabhiksu.(66) I have shown elsewhere
that this term, in its most fundamental meaning, identifies an
individual as a member of Sakyamuni's own family: Sakyabhiksus are
bhiksus who are Sakyas.(67) And one finds within the MSV that
Sakyamuni's relationship with his clan members was conceptualized
through royal ideologies and martial metaphors. Had Siddhartha
become a universal emperor, it was argued, the Sakyas would have
been his army and followed him into war. The Sakyas' obligations to
and relationship with Siddhartha did not alter when he instead
became the Unsurpassed King of Dharma. The Sakyas were still bound
to follow Sakyamuni, but now as monks.(68) Indeed, the MSV's
ordination formula highlights the Buddha's kingship over the Sakyas:
"I follow in renunciation the Blessed One, Tathagata, Arhat,
Complete and Perfect Buddha Sakyamuni, the Lion of the Sakyas, the
Overlord of the Sakyas."(69) In turn, by reason of blood alone,
Sakyas were entitled to be ordained as monks immediately, without
the customary four-month probationary period.(70) Eighty percent of
the Ajanta monks whose identity we know represented themselves as
Sakyabhiksus: members of Sakyamuni's family and by extension the
"army" of this Dharmaking. Buddha became localized in Cave 2 through
his relationships with Hariti. As the head of a family association,
a clan, which maintained a righteous order through its interactions
with the Vatsagulma Vakatakas' own clan deity, this Buddha performed
as vital a service to Harisena as any military ally.
In Cave 16, as well, the Buddhas local significance was intimately
bound up with an attempt to legitimate Vakataka control over Ajanta
through a local play on Buddhahood's translocal royal valences. Here
the Buddha was not emplaced in the role of Harisena's family member
or ally. Rather, Cave 16's Buddha was a double of Harisena himself.
To grasp the role Cave 16's Buddha played as lord over Ajanta, one
must consider the historicopolitical context surrounding patronage
at the site.
Epigraphic records show that Harisena's family colonized an empire
that centered on Vatsagulma, but also stretched to the south, to
Nanded(71) and later Bidar.(72) Harisena seems to have set his
ambitions even wider: he created an empire stretching from the
Arabian Sea to the Bay of Bengal, according to one reading of
Varahadeva's Cave 16 inscription.(73) This hyperbole is certainly
suspect-Nevertheless, though the precise extent of Harisena's empire
cannot be certified, we do know that Harisena began to colonize new
lands early in his reign. A copperplate inscription found in
Thalner, on the north bank of the Tapti River, records that in the
third year of Harisena's reign he donated five villages to a number
of Brahmanas with the permission of Gomikaraja.(74) There are a
number of interesting and puzzling details to the Thalner grant,
none more so than the question of Gomikaraja's identity and role in
the Thalner region. But whoever Gomikaraja may have been, it is
clear that Harisena was concerned to consolidate this outlying area
into his, Harisena's, not Gomikaraja's, political center at
Vatsagulma. The granting of land and villages to Brahmana settlers
is a well-attested means for the cultural, ritualistic, and
bureaucratic incorporation of newly acquired territory into a
polity. Vakataka grants to Brahmanas typically fostered the
colonization of farmlands necessary for an agricultural surplus to
support the Vakataka court.(75) The names of two of the villages
Harisena donated, Kamsakarakagrama (village of bronze workers) and
Suvarnakaragrama (village of goldsmiths) suggest that artisanship
and trade were also crucial to Vatsagulma's prosperity. Located in
an area with ready access to the sea, this western colony's settlers
could receive and process raw materials, sending their profits back
to Vatsagulma in the form of taxes.(76)
Struck in the third year of Harisena's reign, the Thalner grant
dates to approximately the same year that, according to Spink's
chronology, members of the Vakataka court initiated patronage of the
caves at Ajanta, Ghatotkaca, and Banoti. In Vakataka times, Ajanta
lay on a route that led from Vatsagulma to Harisena's Tapti River
communities and out to the sea at the ancient port cities of Surat
and Bharuch. Ajanta was a crucial stage on this route. In Vakataka
times, as now, Ajanta was the pass in the Sahyadri range favored by
caravans, merchants, armies, and monks for crossing down from the
Deccan plateau to the Tapti River valley (or vice versa). In short,
although Ajanta was (and still is) geographically remote from major
population centers and seats of power, its spatial location did not
translate into a similarly isolated social location. Located at a
pass along the road from Vatsagulma to the east, Ajanta was a site
of crucial strategic value for Harisena's expanded realm.(77)
I have characterized Ajanta as a monastic "village" several times
because the Vakataka court's patronage of Buddhists at this site
served many of the same social functions for the Vatsagulma polity
as Harisena's granting of five Brahmana villages near Thalner. The
renaissance of work at Ajanta in the early years of Harisena's reign
fits within a broader strategic program to secure cultural,
economic, and administrative control over territories distant from
Vatsagulma. Hermann Kulke has identified three means--in addition to
a strong military-by which a "victorious conqueror succeeded in
unifying the newly conquered areas permanently with his own
homeland": royal patronage of important places of pilgrim-age; the
granting of lands to Brahmanas; and the construction of new
"imperial temples" within the core of region of the kingdoms.(78)
Ajanta can be loosely viewed as satisfying all three means. Intended
as a one-quarter-mile series of cave monasteries, Ajanta would have
been a village of sorts, albeit nonagrarian; the many shrines that
were excavated into the scarp outside of the monasteries and
accessible to the public reveal a marked concern with satisfying
transient pilgrims; and though not in the Vatsagulma Vakatakas' core
region, Varahadeva unreservedly attempted to make Cave 16 an
"imperial temple."
Vakataka support for Ajanta can be understood to fall within the
first of Kulke's three ritual means for a polity to establish
hegemony over peripheral territories: the establishing of pilgrimage
sites (tirtha). Indeed, Varahadeva--"intent upon his duty" as a
minister to Harisena--likens Ajanta to Mount Mandara, by whose foot
runs the Ganges, the most revered tirtha of all.(79) Varahadeva
thereby transmutes the Waghora River into the Ganga and the Vakataka
kingdom into Aryavarta, the "middle kingdom" in Brahmanic sacred
geography.(80) This explicit equation of Ajanta with Mount Mandara
fits within a larger set of rhetorical strategies for reinforcing
the legitimation of Harisena's royal power. Varahadeva's personal
endeavor to unmistakably associate Ajanta with its Vatsagulma
Vakataka overlord also is seen in his dedicatory inscription.
Although Varahadeva transferred the spiritual merit accruing from
his cave to his parents, Varahadeva's inscription details and
celebrates Harisena's imperial lineage; it all but ignores
Varahadeva's own family background.(81)
However, the piece de resistance of Varahadeva's legitimatory
enterprise is seen in the iconology of the Cave 16 Buddha. In Cave
16, the Buddha was sculpted in an iconographic form known as
bhadrasana, that is, seated on a royal throne, his legs pendant
"European style" (also called pralambapadasana). Cave 16's massive
central image was the very first fully plastic, sculptural rendering
of this iconographic form in western India. In fact, according to
Spink's analysis, Varahadeva originally intended to place a Buddha
seated in the cross-legged lotus position, not bhadrasana, in the
central shrine but changed his plan midway through the site's brief
history, in the wake of a regional war that may have placed
Harisena's control over Ajanta in jeopardy.(82) Stronger ritual
medicine was needed! Introduced to India through the tradition of
Kusana royal portraiture, the bhadrasana has been interpreted as
iconologically "imbuing sacred images with a majesty and presence
lacking in the rather compressed outline of the regular ascetic
seated pose."(83) This majestic presentation of the body is
bolstered by accompanying details, which also bespeak royalty: a
lion throne with a wheel of law at its base, attendants bearing fly
whisks, and so on. Moreover, this Buddha's unique placement within
the cave complemented the iconography. All other central Buddha
figures within Ajanta's viharas were carved in shrines set apart
from their monasteries' principal space. In some caves, the Buddha
was placed within a separate chamber attached to the main pavilion;
more typically, the Buddha was twice removed, his chapel set behind
a shrine antechamber. By contrast, Cave 16s' Buddha was separated
from this vihara's main space by only a pair of pillars. Thus, Spink
describes Cave 16's as "a revolutionary new Buddha, authoritatively
posed, and looming directly above the devotee, rather than set back
within a conventional shrine."(84) In Cave 16, one experiences the
Buddha's social presence as an awesome fact, in a way not matched
anywhere else at Ajanta. "Compared with the other shrine images at
Ajanta," Sheila Weiner observes, "there is a prepossessing and
overbearing majesty to this figure that sets it apart
conceptually."(85)
Cave 16's massive central Buddha image is uniquely large and
uniquely regal at Ajanta; seated with legs pendant, a position
associated with royalty and worldly action, this is a Buddha who is
not only operative in the world but acts therein as a king. Given
Varahadeva's project of glorifying Harisena through this cave, this
image may have functioned as something of a "portrait sculpture"; it
may have allegorized Harisena as Buddha, whom Varahadeva likens
epigraphically to an ideal king who "extinguishes the flames of
wickedness" and enables the world to "enter that peaceful and noble
state free from sorrow and disease, [attained] by eradicating the
many faults."(86) If so, the Cave 16 Buddha would fit into a pattern
observed by Kulke. As he notes, "one of the characteristic features
of the cults at these centers of pilgrimage [which functioned to
legitimize a ruler's hegemony] was an increasing process of a ritual
`royalization' of these deities.(87) Making such a homology
complete, Varahadeva's inscription likens Harisena to Indra, Lord of
the Gods, and also calls the Buddha the "ascetic Indra,"(88) Indeed,
Varahadeva carries the identification to its logical conclusion:
Cave 16 is characterized as the "home" of "ascetic Indra" and is
given the name "Vaijayanta," eponymous with Indra's divine palace in
the Heaven of Thirty-Three Gods.(89)
Above I argued that Cave 16's shrine for the naga king assisted the
Buddha's localization at Ajanta, and that the spatial disconnection
between the naga and the Buddha indexed the nature of their
relationship. Just as Ajanta is at a far remove from the center of
Vakataka power, so the naga, the chthonic embodiment of this place,
is at a remove from the double for Harisena inside Cave 16.
Buddha/Indra/ Harisena is present in this cave and this presence is
itself sufficient basis for a restricted exchange relationship
between him and the local naga. In return for its own pacified
presence, the naga has the privilege of having its shrine located
within this sacred domain. Sharing a place, Buddha/Indra/Harisena
and the naga become accessible to the humans of that place. Those
humans' ritual actions, in turn, redound throughout all Vakataka
society.
Above we saw that the murals in Cave 2's Hariti shrine gave Vakataka
society a symbolic presence at Ajanta; this emplacement was crucial,
for the mutual presence of exchange partners is a prerequisite for
the restricted-exchange relationships whose emergent outcome is a
generalized social structure. Were Cave 2's monks truly antisocial
individuals, they would not have entered into institutionalized
relationships with the members of Vakataka society; they would not
have become domesticated. Similarly, the local significance of Cave
16's Buddha is tied to his social function. For Harisena, this
Buddha played the role of a local deity. Varahadeva symbolically
placed Harisena in a restricted exchange relationship with this
Buddha, a relationship of shared presence, thereby legitimating the
Vakataka emperor's local control over the Ajanta pass. Just as the
establishment of Brahmana villages, pilgrimage sites, and imperial
temples are all ritual means for multiplying royal presence, the
Vakatakas' establishment of Ajanta was a means of consolidating
their rightful presence in this territory. Varahadeva, a minister
"intent upon his duty," ensured that Cave 16's Buddha played an
explicit role in this local process.
CONCLUSION
The monk Buddhabhadra, donor of Cave 26, proclaims that the wise
"perform devotion intensively to the Tathagatas," since "even a
single flower" offered to them causes the attainment "heaven and
final emancipation."(90) Applying this logic to his own involvement
at Ajanta, Buddhabhadra holds that "powerful and affluent
bodhisattvas who are desirous of mundane pleasures as well as
liberation," like himself, have an obligation to commission cave
monasteries. Worship and giving are acts of the wise that result in
both worldly and transcendental boons.
Buddhabhadra does not set the mundane and supermundane in a
hierarchy; he does not portray one as a precursor to the other; he
does not characterize one as essentially Buddhist, the other as an
accommodation to laity or indigenous concerns. Indeed, Buddhabhadra
publicly acknowledges that one of the motivations for undertaking
this cave was to enable his recently deceased friend, Bhavviraja, a
minister of the mighty king of Asmaka, to enjoy himself in heaven.
Nor does one have to read too closely between the lines to learn
that Buddhabhadra also used this donation as a means of currying
favor with Bhavviraja's son, Devaraja, who took his father's
position in the Asmaka court. The monk Buddhabhadra intended his
patronage of Cave 26 to meet personal and political concerns; he was
public and unabashed about this; he made no attempt to hide it. Yet
at the same time, Buddhabhadra also intended his donation to meet a
universalized Mahayinist concern: that all living beings might
attain Buddhahood. He dedicates the merit from this act accordingly.
In using the donation of a cave monastery to address local concerns
alongside the translocal, the monk Buddhabhadra does not differ from
Varahadeva or Cave 2's anonymous donor. If Buddhabhadra makes no
apology for this, why should we?
To gain a nuanced and dynamic grasp of Buddhism as a living religion
in ancient India, one must begin by considering the fives and
actions of Buddhists. I have attempted to do so here by exploring
patronage at Ajanta through a dual filter, laying Strenski's
treatment of exchange relationships over Peter Brown's dictum that
"the supernatural becomes depository of the objectified values of
the group." That is, I looked at how local deities' participation in
exchange relationships served to form, legitimate, and give meaning
to a local Buddhist community at Ajanta. This study led to a series
of conclusions. First, in existential terms, Buddhism in India was
as much a means for meeting personal local concerns as it was a
means for meeting generalized, translocal goals. Present happiness
was valued at least as much as ultimate perfection, with no
indication that the latter was deemed normative for Buddhists.
Second, restricted exchange works to build local systems of social
solidarity through a valorization of direct and present
participation by the exchange partners. The reciprocity of
restricted exchanges was a normal dimension of Buddhism as a
religion of place. One takes place seriously as an analytic category
only to the extent that one accepts reciprocity as a factor in
Buddhist life. Third, nagas and yaksinis--superhuman figures whose
principal values are associated with reciprocal relationships,
presence, and the immediate satisfaction of desires--do not come
from outside Buddhism. The reasons for the incorporation of shrines
to the naga king and Hariti in Ajanta's architecture are not
clarified through the rhetorics of syncretism, overlay, or
appropriation any more than such language would clarify shrines to
the Buddha, bodhisattvas, or arhats. Varahadeva's building of a home
for the naga king or Samkasya's monks' worship of a naga must be
viewed as properly, fully, and fundamentally Buddhist practices.
Fourth, worship, like politics, is a local matter, however
wide-ranging the consequences. As the Unexcelled King of Dharma, the
Buddha's reign was cosmologically limitless. One cannot know whether
this mattered much to Harisena or Varahadeva, except insofar as the
Buddha's translocal glory served Vakataka interests in governing the
Ajanta pass. The Buddha was at Ajanta: his presence was indexed by
his restricted exchange relationships with a naga, a yaksini, and a
king. Generalized and displaced, the dharmic harmony resulting from
this localized presence legitimated both the sangha's and Harisena's
presence at Ajanta. As a "local deity," the Buddha brought the
sangha and Vakatakas together in an institutional relationship,
domesticating Ajanta's sangha within Vakataka society. (1) Posted by
William Bodiford, associate professor. University of California, Los
Angeles, to Buddha-l@ulkyvm.louisville.edu on December 16, 1994.
Messages to electronic distribution lists, like Buddha-l, are an
informal medium of exchange between scholars. There is no
expectation on the part of participants in these discussions that
their observations and opinions are, or should be, finely crafted
and suitable for publication. For this reason, the following account
of the discussion inspired by Bodiford's post will be generalized
and impressionistic. I will neither name names nor cite direct
quotations.
(2) Peter Brown, "Society and the Supernatural: A Medieval Change,"
in his Society and the Holy in Late Antiquity (Berkeley and Los
Angeles: University of California Press, 1992), p. 318.
(3) Kathleen M. Erndl, Victory to the Mother. The Hindu Goddess of
Northwest India in Myth, Ritual, and Symbols (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1993).
(4) David Shulman, Tamil Temple Myths: Sacrifice and Divine Marriage
in the South Indian Saiva Tradition (Princeton, NJ.: Princeton
University Press, 1980), p. 50.
(5) Edward Conze, Buddhism: Its Essence and Development (New York:
Harper Torchbooks, 1975), p. 12.
(6) Ibid., p. 53.
(7) Raniero Gnoli, ed., The Gilgit Manuscript of the Sayanasanavastu
and the Adhikaranayavastu, Being the Fifteenth and Sixteenth
Sections of the Vinaya of the Mulasaravastivadin (Rome: Instituto
Italiano per il Medio ed Estremo Oriente, 1978), p. 15. I have read
the manuscript's anagarad as agarad
(8) Sherry B. Ortner, Sherpas through Their Rituals (New York:
Cambridge University Press, 1978), p. 157.
(9) Conze, p. 72.
(10) Ortner, p. 159.
(11) Ibid., pp. 159-60.
(12) C. J. Fuller, The Camphor Flame: Popular Hinduism and Society
in India (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. 1992), p. 27.

(13) Ivan Strenski, "On Generalized Exchange and the Domestication
of the Sangha," Man 18 (September 1983): 464.
(14) Ibid. pp. 464-65.
(15) Ibid., p. 472.
(16) Ibid., p. 473.
(17) Ibid., p. 471.
(18) Ibid.
(19) Ibid., p. 470.
(20) For these dates, see Walter M. Spink, "The Archaeology of
Ajanta," Ars Orientalis 21 (1991): 67-94. I will discuss Ajanta's
history at greater length below. (21) T. W. Rhys-Davids, trans., The
Questions of King Milinda (New York: Dover, 1963). 1:144-45.
(22) Ibid., p. 146.
(23) One finds a similar question raised in Vasubandhu's
Abhidharmakosa: How can a gift to a caitya be meritorious if there
is nobody there to enjoy it? The Kosa explains that a gift may be
meritorious either because it is directly enjoyed by the recipient
or because it is abandoned with no one to receive it and no
expectation of recompense (Dwarika Das Shastri, ed., Abhidharmakosa
and Bhasya of Acarya Vasubandhu with Sphutartha Commentary of Acarya
Yasomitra [Varanasi: Bauddha Bharati, 1987], p. 747, verse 4.121).
Adrian Mayer points out a similar distinction within Vaisnava
devotionalism. Puja is an exchange "made in connection with benefits
for the worshiper," whereas seva is performed "Without thought of
benefit or return" (cited in Fuller [n. 12 above], p. 71).
(24) Strenski (n. 13 above), p. 473.
(25) Gnoli, ed., The Gilgit Manuscript of the Sayanasanavastu (n. 7
above), p. 35.
(26) Strenski, p. 475.
(27) I reedited and retranslated all Ajanta's inscriptions in my
"Setting the Three Jewels: The Complex Culture of Buddhism at the
Ajanta Caves" (doctoral diss., University of Michigan, 1995). At
times my readings coincide with those previously published; at times
I diverge widely from previous scholars. All translations here are
my own and are based on reconstructions of the Sanskrit that can be
found in appendix A to my "Setting the Three Jewels."
(28) John S. Strong, The Experience of Buddhism: Sources and
Interpretations (Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth, 1995), p. 80.
(29) Gnoli, ed., The Gilgit Manuscript of the Sayanasanavastu, P.
24.
(30) For a survey of the few archaeological remains from the Buldana
district dating to Vakataka times, see Ramesh Chandra Agrawal,
Archaeological Remains in Western India (Delhi: Agam Kala Prakashan,
1989). For a survey of the few archaeological remains from Bhokardan
district dating to Vakataka times, see Shantaram Bhalchandra Deo and
Ramesh Shankar Gupte, Excavations at Bhokardan (Bhogavardhana) 1973
(Nagpur and Aurangabad: Nagpur University and Marathwada University,
1974).
(31) Spink, "Archaeology of Ajanta," p. 69.
(32) For Varahadeva's inscription see My "Setting the Three Jewels,"
pp. 357-62. For Buddhabhadra's inscription see my "Setting the Three
Jewels," pp. 378-81. On the identification of Harisena as the mighty
king of Asmaka referred to in Buddhabhadra's inscription, see my
"Setting the Three Jewels," pp. 57-62. For the Cave 17 inscription
see my "Setting the Three Jewels," pp. 367-71.
(33) Walter M. Spink, "Ajanta's Chronology: Politics and Patronage,"
in Kaladarsana, ed. Joanna G. William (New Delhi: Oxford and IBH in
collaboration with the American Institute of Indian Studies, 1981),
pp. 119-21.
(34) Walter M. Spink, personal communication with author, 1989.
(35) Although I have accepted the general outline of Spink's
chronology for Ajanta's Vakataka phase, my own reconstruction of
Vakataka history differs radically from the one Spink proposes. See
my "Problems in the Writing of Ajanta's History: The Epigraphic
Evidence," Indo-Iranian Journal 40, no. 2 (April 1997): 125-48, for
a discussion of where Spink has gone wrong in his historical
reconstruction, and my "Setting the Three Jewels," pp. 63-77, for an
alternative, tentative reconstruction.
(36) On the pros and cons of using the MSV for discussions of
Ajanta, see my "Setting the Three Jewels," pp. 122-27.
(37) Ibid., p. 361.
(38) Ibid., p. 362.
(39) Raniero Gnoli, ed., The Gilgit Manuscript of the
Sanghabhedavastu, Being the Seventeenth and Last Section of the
Vinaya of the Mulasarvastivadin (Rome: Instituto Italiano per il
Medio ed Estremo Oriente, 1977), 1:217-18.
(40) See John S. Strong, The Legend and Cult of Upagupta: Sanskrit
Buddhism in North India and Southeast Asia (Princeton, NJ.:
Princeton University Press, 1992), pp. 26. 28. (41) Gnoli, ed., The
Gilgit Manuscript of the Sanghabhedavastu, p. 126.
(42) John S. Strong, The Legend of King Asoka (Princeton, NJ.:
Princeton University Press, 1983), p. 219.
(43) Gnoli, ed., The Gilgit Manuscript of the Sayanasanavastu (n. 7
above), p. 24.
(44) S. Bagchi, ed., Mulasarvastivadavinayavastu (Darbhanga,
India-Mithila Institute of Post-Graduate Studies and Research in
Sanskrit Learning, 1970). 2:86. The same tale is told in Edward
Byles Cowell and R. A. Neil, eds., The Divyavadana, A Collection of
Early Buddhist Legends (Delhi: Indological Book House, 1987), p.
329.
(45) Derge Kha, 120B4-121A3. I am working with the text as
reproduced by the Asian Classics Input Project (ACIP), catalog
number KD0001B.
(46) Samuel Beal, Si-Yu Ki: Buddhist Records of the Western World.
Translated from the Chinese of Hiuen Tsiang (A.D. 629) (Delhi:
Motilal Banarsidass, 1981), p. xli.
(47) Ibid., p. xlii.
(48) Bagchi, ed., p. 134.
(49) Here I paraphrase Shulman's definition of this phenomenon ([n.
4 above], p. 51).
(50) Strenski (n. 13 above), p. 471.
(51) Ibid.
(52) Bagchi, ed., p. 18.
(53) Ibid.
(54) Noel Peri, "Hariti la Mere-de-Demons," Bulletin de l'Ecole
Francaise d'Extreme Orient 17 (1917): 20, 23, 32. (55) For the most
detailed account of Hariti, see ibid., pp. 1-102. For Further
references, see Strong, The Legend and Cult of Upagupta (n. 40
above), p. 303, n. 66.
(56) I Tsing, A Record of the Buddhist Religion as Practiced in
India and the Malay Archipelago, A.D. 671-695, trans. J. Takakusu
(Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 1982), p. 37.
(57) Peri, pp. 13-14. The MSV story continues, telling that when the
women of Rajagrha saw Hariti give her sons to the Buddhist monks
they did the same. Later, these women paid compensation for the
children's upkeep and still later "redeemed" their children and
brought them home. This is significant for interpreting the shrine
in Ajanta's Cave 2, since this story warrants the incorporation of
youngsters into the monastic community, without requiring that these
children become formally ordained. In other words, this is a myth
that charters Buddhist monasteries to act as schools. One sees
precisely this on the base of Cave 2's sculpted image of Hariti,
(seen at the bottom of fig. 6): a school room in which the good
students sit in the front of the class, paying attention to their
teacher, and the poor students hang to the rear of the class,
playing with toy rams. Indeed, I Tsing notes that in India, the
monks took on many students, whom they instructed in secular
literature, these students had to live at their own or their
parents' expense (p. 106). In the same vein. I Tsing presents the
great Buddhist monastic universities at Nalanda and Valabhi as
institutions that prepare young men to enter courtly life and
advance to a high rank through the skills they learn therein (pp.
177-78).
(58) Ibid., pp. 35-37. (59) Cohen, "Setting the Three Jewels" (n. 27
above), p. 371.
(60) For epigraphic sources, see ibid., p. 361; P. V. Parabrahma
Sastry, "Hyderabad Plates of Vakataka Devasena, Year 5," Journal of
the Epigraphical Society of India 13 (1986): 71-75; Krishna Mohan
Shrimali, Agrarian Structure in Central India and the Northern
Deccan (C. A.D. 300-500): A Study in Vakataka Inscriptions (Delhi:
Munshiram Manoharlal, 1987), pp. 82-83. For puranic sources, see
Frederick Eden Pargiter, The Purana Text of the Dynasties of the
Kali Age (Varanasi: Chowkhamba Sanskrit Series Office, 1962), pp.
48, 50, 72-73.
(61) This is not the Nandivardhana in which Asvaka and Punarvasuka
lived.
(62) Vasudev Vishnu Mirashi, The Inscriptions of the Vakatakas,
Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum, vol. 5 (Oocatamund: Government
Epigraphist for India, 1963), p. 96; Shrimali, p. 82; Sastry, p. 74.

(63) Fuller (n. 12 above), p. 43.
(64) Gregory Schopen, "The Buddha as an Owner of Property and
Permanent Resident in Medieval Indian Monasteries," Journal of
Indian Philosophy 18 (1990): 203.
(65) Ibid., p. 191.
(66) See my "Setting the Three Jewels," pp. 191-269, for a
discussion of the evidence concerning the use of Sakyabhiksu at
Ajanta and a fuller interpretation of this epithets significance.
(67) As is the case with the Vatsagulma Vakatakas' use of
Haritiputra for Pravarasena I, one cannot determine whether the use
of Sakyabhiksu is meant literally or metaphorically.
(68) Gnoli, ed., The Gilgit Manuscript of the Sanghabhedavastu (n.
39 above), p. 200.
(69) Anukul Chandra Banerjee, Buddhist Vinaya Texts in Sanskrit
Pratimoksa Sutra and Bhiksukarmavakya (Calcutta: World Press, 1977),
p. 60.
(70) Derge Ka I, 150B6-50B7 (ACIP catalog number KD001A; n. 45
above). See also I. B. Horner, trans., The Book of Discipline
(Vinaya-Pitaka), vol. 4, Mahavagga (London: Pali Text Society,
1982), pp. 85-89.
(71) Mirashi, The Inscriptions of the Vakatakas, pp. 94-100.
(72) Sastry (n. 60 above).
(73) Varahadeva tells that Harisena had some relationship with the
lands between the Bay of Bengal and the Arabian Sea: Kuntala,
Avanti, Kalinga, Kosala, Trikuta, Lata, and Andhra. Unfortunately,
Varahadeva's inscription is damaged here, and the verb that delimits
this relationship has been lost. Despite this uncertainty, however,
it is probable that Varahadeva's verse is a digvijaya prasasti, a
celebration of territorial conquest. See my "Problems in the Writing
of Ajanta's History" (n. 35 above) for a more detailed discussion of
this problem.
(74) Vasudev Vishnu Mirashi, Indological Research Papers (Nagpur
Vidarbha Samshodhan Mandal, 1982), 1:78-87; Ajay Mitra Shastri,
"Thalner Plates of Vakataka Harishena: A Re-Appraisal," Journal of
the Epigraphical Society of India 11 (1984): 15-20.
(75) Shrimali (n. 60 above), p. 26.
(76) None of the villages named in Harisena's Thalner grant were
given any privileges, such as freedom from harassment by internal
security police, freedom from corvee labor, or freedom from
taxation. This is notable, for the majority of Vakataka land grants
release their grantees from these and other obligations to the
central polity as an inducement for individuals to settle there.
(77) One millennium later the Mughals built forts in precisely the
same locations that the Vakatakas excavated their Buddhist caves:
the Fardapur and Ajanta forts guard the front and back of the Ajanta
pass; the Abhasgash and Vetalwadi Forts protect the pass in which
one finds Varahadeva's Ghatotkaca cave; the same relationship holds
between the Sutanda fort and the Vakataka cave at Banoti. Indeed,
these Sahyadri forts were instrumental in preventing the British
from taking the Deccan plateau. This region, along with the Ajanta
caves, remained under the suzerainty of the Nizam of Hyderabad until
Man independence; Fardapur, at the head of the Ajanta pass, marked
the Nizam's northern border.
(78) Hermann Kulke, "Royal Temple Policy and the Structure of
Medieval Hindu Kingdoms," in his Kings and Cults: State Formation
and Legitimation in India and Southeast Asia (Delhi: Manohar, 1993),
pp. 9-10, quote on p. 9.
(79) My "Setting the Three Jewels" (n. 27 above), p. 362.
(80) For a similar strategy of geographical displacement, as used by
the Rashtrakutas through their construction of the Kailash temple at
Ellora, see Ronald Inden, Imagining India (Cambridge, Mass.:
Blackwell, 1990), pp. 256-62.
(81) Varahadeva's glorification of Vakataka accomplishments in his
Cave 16 dedication is especially notable in light of a second
inscription from Varahadeva, which dedicates a cave temple at
Ghatotkaca. By contrast with the Cave 16 commemoration of Harisena
and the Vakatakas this Ghatotkaca inscription, attached to a single
cave in a lonely pass, details Varahadeva's own genealogical line of
descent. At Ghatotkaca. Harisena receives only a brief mention. This
contrast between Varahadeva's Ajanta and Ghatotkaca inscriptions
highlights that Varahadeva's role as the good minister was central
to his undertaking at Ajanta.
(82) Walter M. Spink, "Ajanta's Chronology: The Crucial Cave," Ars
Orientalis 10 (1975): 143-69, pls. 1-16.
(83) John M. Rosenfield, The Dynastic Arts of the Kushans (Delhi:
Munshiram Manoharlal, 1993), p. 186.
(84) Walter M. Spink, "A Scholar's Guide to the Ajanta Caves"
(University of Michigan. Ann Arbor, typescript).
(85) Sheila Weiner, Ajanta: Its Place in Buddhist Art (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1977), p. 98.
(86) My "Setting the Three Jewels," pp. 361-62.
(87) Kulke, p. 11.
(88) My "Setting the Three Jewel," p. 361.
(89) Ibid., p. 362.
(90) Ibid., p. 380.