འཕགས་པ་བད་སའ་རྒྱལ་པ་འཆར་བྱད་ཀྱས་ཞས་པ་ཞས་བྱ་བའ་ལའ intro.9

intro.9

King Udayana of Vatsa’s Questions ¹ is a cautionary discourse on the dangers of sense desires and the consequences of acting on them. In this work, King Udayana is driven into a murderous rage when his jealous wife, Queen Anupamā, deceives him with lies about Queen Śyāmāvatī engaging in infidelities with the Buddha and his monastic community. Queen Śyāmāvatī is a female lay disciple of the Buddha, however, and when the king attempts to kill her, she pays homage to the Buddha and cultivates loving kindness, and the king’s arrows are miraculously repelled. This miraculous display, along with Queen Śyāmāvatī’s own words of faith in the Buddha, convinces the king to seek him out and ask for his guidance. King Udayana asks the Buddha to explain the faults of women, such that they could lead him to commit murder, but the Buddha responds that he must first understand his own faults. The rest of the work consists of the Buddha explaining the four faults of men who indulge in sense pleasures, causing them to fall under the sway of women, and the hellish fates that await them as a result.