On Yuan Chwang's Travels in India, 629–645 A.D. v2.c20.6

v2.c20.6

The original invention of the silly story here told was perhaps due to a punning explanation of the great rishi's name. This is given by Yuan-chuang here, as in a previous passage, as Uddo (or Udra) Rāma-putra, but another form of the name, viz. Udraka, is given by our pilgrim in his translations. Then we have also the forms Rudra and Rudraka with Rāma-putra added. The word udra denotes an otter and I-ching translates it in this name by Shui-t'a or "Water otter". But the uddo or udra does not live in the water, he lives in the jungle, and hunts his prey on land and in water. Then Rudra or rudraka means fierce and terrible, and so we find Rudraka Rāma-putra rendered by Mêng-hsi-tzŭ or "the fierce son of joy". This Udra or Rudra was, we know, a great religious teacher living in a hermitage near Rājagaha at the time when Siddhārtha left home to enter on his career. Siddhārtha went to him to learn the way of salvation, but finding that the teaching did not lead to absolute final results he went away to work out his problems alone. On becoming Buddha he proposed to go to his former master Udra and impart to him the new method of salvation. But a voice from the heavens told him that Udra had died the night (or seven nights) before. The Buddha sighed over Udra's misfortune in not surviving to hear the new way of deliverance, for he knew that Udra, who had attained "the samādhi of the negation of thought", would have grasped his doctrines quickly, and thus have obtained release from all future births. As matters stood the rishi, according to some accounts, had gone to the "Heaven of the negation of the absence of thought", and is to remain there for an immensely long period. When his life there is over he is to be reborn in this world as a wild cat or a fox, and go about with an insatiable appetite preying on birds, beasts, and fishes.¹ Then dying of starvation he is to go to Hell for a period, and, as Yuan-chuang has stated, the Buddha did not announce how long this purgatory is to last. There is no satisfactory explanation for this descent of Udra into lower lives, and the myth does not seem to suit the affectionate respect with which the Buddha is represented in some treatises as speaking of his old teacher.²