釋迦譜 5.8

5.8

After King Aśoka had buried his royal father in accordance with ritual propriety, he immediately appointed Anuruddha as his chief minister. At that time, Prince Suśīma heard of his father's demise and that Aśoka had been set up as king behind his back; feeling unable to bear this, he assembled an army and came to attack Aśoka. Minister Anuruddha then fashioned a mechanical wooden elephant and also made a statue of King Aśoka, placing the statue mounted on the elephant outside the eastern gate. He also made a smokeless fire-pit and covered it with a cloth. Minister Anuruddha said to Prince Suśīma, "If you wish to be king, Aśoka is at the eastern gate; you may go and attack him. If you can capture him, you will naturally become king." The prince immediately hastened to the eastern gate and fell into the fire-pit, dying instantly. King Aśoka governed by the true Dharma. At that time, the ministers thought, "We collectively enthroned Aśoka as king," and therefore held the king in contempt and slighted him, not observing the etiquette between sovereign and subject. The king was also aware of the ministers' contempt. He then said to the ministers, "You should cut down the flowering and fruiting trees and plant thorn bushes instead." The ministers replied, "We have never heard of cutting down flowering and fruiting [trees] to plant thorn trees." Even after the king commanded them thrice to cut them down, they still refused to obey. The king then took a sharp sword and killed five hundred ministers. When the king took his palace maidens out to stroll in the park, he saw an aśoka tree whose flowers were in full, luxuriant bloom. Having seen it, [he thought,] "This flowering tree shares my name," and felt joyful in his heart. The king's body was ugly and his skin rough and harsh. Because the palace maidens hated the king, they used their hands to break and ruin the aśoka flower tree. When the king awoke from sleep and saw the flowers of the aśoka tree scattered in disarray on the ground, he was enraged. He had all the palace maidens bound and burned to death with fire. Because the king acted with violent cruelty, he was called Aśoka the Fierce. At that time, Minister Anuruddha addressed the king, "Why should the king kill ministers and palace maidens with his own hands? The king should now appoint an executioner." A decree was then issued to appoint an executioner. In that land was a mountain named Giri, and in it was a weaver's son also named Giri. He was ferocious and cruel, flogging and binding men and women, catching living creatures of water and land, and even rebelling against his parents. For this reason the people of the world said of him, "the ferocious Giri-putra." The king's envoy said to him, "Can you behead wicked people for the king?" He replied, "I could wipe out all the guilty people in the entire Jambudvīpa, let alone this single region!" The king then built for him a building that was extremely stately and magnificent, with only one gate opened. Inside it, he instituted punishments resembling the hells. Then the ferocious man requested of the king, "I now beg a boon from the king: if anyone enters here, he must never be allowed to leave." [The king] replied, "It shall be as you wish." At that time, the son of a merchant chief, weary of worldly suffering, went forth to practice the Path and traveled through various realms. As he went about begging for food in turn, he mistakenly entered the executioner's house. The bhikṣu saw from afar inside the house that there were fire-carts, furnace embers, and the like used to torture living beings. Terrified, with hair standing on end, he tried to leave through the gate. The ferocious man came forward, seized the bhikṣu, and said, "He who enters here never leaves, but dies in this place." Grief and regret arose in the bhikṣu's heart; with tears filling his eyes, [he said,] "Grant me life for a short while, say for one month." The ferocious man refused. As the number of days was gradually reduced, [the killer] stopped at seven days and granted permission. The bhikṣu, knowing that he would soon die, was brave and vigorous, sitting in dhyāna to quiet his mind, yet by the seventh day he had still not attained the Path. At that time, a woman of the king's inner palace who had committed an offense was sent and delivered to the executioner. Taking this woman, he placed her in a mortar and pounded her with a pestle, grinding her into powder. When the bhikṣu saw this, he felt extreme disgust toward this body: "Alas, what suffering! My body before long will also be like this!" He severed all fetters and became an arhat. Then the ferocious man said to the bhikṣu, "Your time has expired." The bhikṣu replied with a verse: "My mind has attained liberation; / all forms of existence are completely cut off. / Now for this skeleton and frame, / I have no lingering regret or attachment." At that time, the executioner seized the bhikṣu and placed him in an iron cauldron of oil, piling on firewood; yet the fire would not catch at all, or else it did not become hot. Seeing that the fire would not burn, the executioner beat the attendant, and of itself the fire flared. The fire became fierce and raging. After a long while, he opened the cauldron's lid and saw the bhikṣu sitting upon a lotus blossom inside the iron cauldron. Filled with a sense of wonder, he reported this to the king. The king immediately mounted his carriage and led an immeasurable multitude to come and see the bhikṣu. The bhikṣu, realizing that the time to tame [the king] had arrived, ascended into the sky like the king of geese, displayed various wondrous transformations, and spoke a verse to the king: "I am a disciple of the Buddha; / I have attained the exhaustion of all outflows. / From the great terror of birth and death, / I am now entirely liberated." When King Aśoka heard what the bhikṣu said, he gave rise to great reverent faith toward the Buddha's Dharma. A tradition says: The king inquired among all his ministers and subjects whether there was anyone who had seen the Buddha, and there was only King Prasenajit's younger sister, who had become a bhikṣuṇī, over one hundred and thirty years old, who had seen the Buddha in the world. The king went to ask her, "What were the Buddha's meritorious qualities?" The nun replied, "The majestic power of the World-Honoured One is fully set forth in the sūtras. When I was ten years old, the Buddha entered the palace halls; the ground turned entirely golden. I bowed in homage, and my golden hairpin fell to the ground, its color blending indistinguishably with the light; only after he left and the light ceased could I search for and find it." She also said, "The Buddha possessed eight kinds of voice. Nowadays there is a bird by the seashore named kalaviṅka, whose plaintive and resonant sound is somewhat similar to one ten-thousandth of it." The king sought and obtained this bird, but for ten days it did not sing. At that time, a maidservant was dressing before a mirror; seeing its reflection, the bird fluttered in surprise and was about to sing, but when the maidservant turned the mirror away, it ceased its sound. The king said, "Whoever can make the bird sing shall be made queen." The maidservant then took various mirrors and hung them on the four walls. The bird, seeing the reflections, looked about, turned round in confusion, and sang plaintively, shaking its feathers swiftly, its voice pure, melodious, and harmonious. When the king heard it, he was awakened to the aspiration for the true Path and appointed the maidservant as his second queen; the seven thousand palace maidens were all delighted. [The king] also addressed the bhikṣu, saying, "What prophecy did the Buddha give before his parinirvāṇa?" The bhikṣu replied, "The Buddha prophesied concerning the Great King: 'More than one hundred years after my demise, in the city of Pāṭaliputra there will be three hundred million households. In that realm there will be a king named Aśoka, who will rule this Jambudvīpa as a wheel-turning king, governing by the true Dharma. He will also broadly distribute my relics across Jambudvīpa and erect eighty-four thousand stupas.' Such was the Buddha's prophecy. Yet now the Great King has built this great hell and slaughtered countless beings. The king ought now to be compassionate and mindful of all sentient beings. Concerning what the Buddha prophesied of the Great King, you should practice in accordance with the Dharma." Then King Aśoka gave rise to extreme reverent faith toward the Buddha. He pressed his palms together, bowed in homage to the bhikṣu, and said: "I have incurred great guilt; I now repent before the bhikṣu. What I have done is exceedingly unwholesome. I only pray that the Son of the Buddha will accept my repentance with an attitude of equanimity, and no longer reprove me, a foolish person." The Avadāna Sūtra states: At that time, the king's palace regularly provided the four requisites to twenty thousand śramaṇas. There were non-Buddhist brahmans whose followers were very numerous, who envied and resented the śramaṇas and wished to humiliate and destroy them. They selected from among their assembly one who was skilled in illusory transformations to manifest as an exotic divinity whose revered deity was named Yamarāja, having one head, four faces, eight eyes, and eight arms, fierce and ferocious, followed mostly by hideous beings. He first patrolled the hamlets and neighborhoods, and then arrived at the city gate. The men and women in the realm fled in terror, losing their wits. The king descended from his carriage, put away his parasol, and received him at the city gate, asking what he desired. The spirit said, "I wish to devour humans. If you begrudge your subjects, all the śramaṇas do not plow yet eat, consuming and wasting far too much; it would be auspicious if you would hand them over to me to supply the kitchen meals." The king was terrified and sent a messenger to inform the Saṅgha. At that time there was a novice named Duanzheng, thirteen years of age, who said to the bhikṣus, "I can subdue and transform him." He immediately went to the spirit's place and told him, "The great bhikṣus will arrive one after another; if you wish to display your marvels, you can wait until the meal is finished." At that time, there were more than twenty thousand brahmans following the spirit. The king prepared a lavish feast. The novice devoured the delicacies and swallowed the food, crunching them completely with his teeth, yet was not yet sated. He then took the spirit's followers and swallowed them one after another, and by his supernormal powers they all ended up at Jetavana. The brahmans who had practiced the illusion bowed their heads in apology, sought to go forth from the household life, and all became śramaṇas; later, most attained arhatship. Because of this, the king had twofold faith and submission. When that bhikṣu had converted King Aśoka, he departed into the sky through transformation. As the king was about to leave that hell, the executioner said to the king, "The king may no longer leave." The king asked, "Do you wish to kill me now?" He replied, "Yes." The king said, "Who entered here first?" He answered, "I did." The king said, "If so, you ought to die first." The king immediately commanded his men to put the executioner into a house of pitch and burn him with fire. He also ordered the destruction of this hell, granting fearlessness to all sentient beings.