A History of Indian Literature v2.c19.s6.t2.20

v2.c19.s6.t2.20

However, there are many Jātakas and Avadānas in the Mahāvastu, which have no parallels in the Pāli. A very favourite theme in these is the glorification of the exceeding self-denial and generosity of the Bodhisattva. As King Arka, for instance, he presents to the Buddha of that time, 80,000 grottos (cave-temples) constructed of the seven kinds of precious stones (I, 54). On another occasion he gives away his wife and child merely in order to learn a wise saying (I, 91 f.). As a potter he is more pious than King Kṛkin, as he kills no living being, and sets up his pots at cross-roads, in order to fill them with rice and beans for hungry people; and when he hears that, during his absence, his parents have given to the Buddha the straw with which he had but lately re-thatched his hut, he rejoices for a whole month (I, 317 ff.). Some of the narratives remind us rather of the Brahmanical Purāṇas. Thus the description of hell at the beginning of the Mahāvastu shows various points of resemblance to that in the Mārkaṇḍeya-Purāṇa.³ The Rāja-Vaṃśa, the "history of the kings" (to whose race Śākyamuni belongs), begins in the true manner of the Purāṇas with an account of the creation (I, 338 ff.). The spirit of the Purāṇas is also breathed in the Jātaka (I, 283 ff.), in which a Ṛṣi Rakṣita, the Bodhisattva, attains to such miraculous powers, as a hermit, that he can touch the sun and the moon with his hands. The spirit of the Mahāyāna is very similar to that of the Purāṇas, and some narratives of the Mahāvastu exhibit that preference for phantasmagorias which is so characteristic of the Mahāyāna texts; we find splendid magical pictures, which show the miraculous power of the saints, and are, at the same time, to serve for the glorification of the Buddhas. The "sunshade stories" (chattravastu I, 253 ff.) are of this kind. After the Buddha has delivered the city of Śrāvastī from a dreadful plague caused by Yakṣas, gods and spirits hold sunshades over the Exalted One in order to honour him. The Buddha, however, with his usual kindness, uses his magic power to cause a Buddha to appear under each sunshade, so that each god thinks that the Buddha is sitting under his sunshade.