The History of Buddhist Thought c19.61

c19.61

There is one legend which has received a quite disproportionate amount of attention, the contest with Māra. In itself it is an important mythological legend, but it is never told in the Scriptures, and is never connected with any point of doctrine. Even in its developed form, as in the Jātaka, it has no doctrinal significance. Gotama there goes to the tree to win enlightenment, and Māra tries to drive him away because the seat is his. He fails to do so because Gotama has kept certain virtues in perfection, and Māra’s host flees. Then Gotama proceeds to meditate and attain complete knowledge. Thus in between the story of his visiting other teachers in his search for the right method with his years of striving and just before his enlightenment comes the fight with Māra without any organic connection. There can be little doubt that the figure of Māra the wicked (*Māro pāpimā*) comes from the brahmanic legend of Death the wicked (*Mṛtyuḥ pāpmā*).¹ If we knew more of the origin of this legend, the origin of the myth would no doubt be clear. There are other brahmanic legends of fights with monsters, such as Indra with Namuci, and Māra is once actually called Namuci (*Sn.*, 439). Whether it was originally a sun myth or a myth of the fight for the tree of immortality is a question for the comparative mythologists.² It is not now the fashion to assume that all the stories told by primitive peoples, which we call myths, were nature-myths.