The Journal of Hindu Studies 2008;1:49–76
Doi: 10.1093/jhs/hin004
Ṛṣis Imagined Across Difference: Some
Possibilities for the Study of Conceptual
Metaphor in Early India
Laurie L. Patton
Abstract: What do metaphor, simile, and analogy look like before the explicit
tradition of Sanskrit poetics? How such formulations might be understood in the
midst of the multiple contexts of early India, and how they might be relevant to
a larger field of hermeneutics? The study of metaphor has been a staple of the
broader pursuit of hermeneutics for some time now (see Dilthey and Jameson
1972; Ricoeur 1974, 1975; Calinescu 1979; Johnson Sheehan 1999, just to name a
few works dealing with this topic). If Gadamer (1975: p. 430) is right that a
fusion of horizons between text and interpreter is one of the primary acts of
interpretation, then metaphors can be viewed as vehicles for that fusion, as well
as verbal constructions that move between different points of view within the
text that keep both similarity and difference in play.1
Thus, the roles of metaphor in early Indian texts, and the related topics of
simile, analogy, and semantic extension, are highly relevant to larger issues in
cross-cultural interpretation as well as to critical studies in Hinduism. This
piece will be a general call for further study of such comparative constructions
in the light of new theories of metaphor that have emerged in recent decades.
Early Indian environments provide great possibilities for doing the work that
metaphor, simile, and analogy do best – that is, reaching across difference.
While my hope is that these thoughts will spark some new possibilities in many
areas, I will use a specific case study from the Buddhacarita as my example – it
being a virtuosic text of early kāvya which moves across the difference of
Brahmanical and Buddhist realms, but is unadorned by the philosophical
notions of later Sanskrit aesthetics.
Some initial thoughts on metaphor and simile in early India
What do we know of early Indian theories of simile and metaphor? As Edwin Gerow
states beautifully, ‘It may well be the Veda, understood as Veda, as self-existent
utterance (mantra) … that created kāvya by serving as its model’. The ṛṣis are also
kāvi (Gerow 1977:21).2 And as such, they show ‘self-conscious organisation of language whose delineation and rationalisation constitute the matter of later poetic
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traditions’. By definition, then, Gerow concludes, the first poetics is implicit in the
first poetry (ibid).
These are important observations, but as Gerow also acknowledges, this does not
make a full blown poetics. While it is probable that some theorists did exist at this
early date (Bhāmaka refers to a Medhāvin as predecessor in 2.4; 88), the production
of the first several centuries (0–500 C.E.) are irrecoverably lost (ibid). Relatedly,
Sharma (1964:2) also points out that while poetic techniques evolved through
the ages in the words of rhetoricians, those adopted by the poets may have not
been synchronous with the theorists. Thus, even if Bhārata, the theoretician, is
dated to the first century C.E., we do not know for sure if Aśvaghoṣa, dated to
the time of the Kuśanas, was conscious of his particular poetics. Aśvaghoṣa himself
uses the term rasa (Buddhacarita 3.51) but it cannot be proved definitively whether
these terms indicate technical terminology (see discussion in Gerow, ibid, 222).
We do know, however, that a general theory of comparison existed before either
of these writers, poet, or theorist, composed their works. There are terms which
suggest links with poetics in Yāska’s Nirukta. Yāska (Nirukta 3.13) discusses an idea
about upamā, or simile, which is attributed to Gārgya: upamā yad atat tat sadṛśam,
‘Not that, but like that’. Pāṇini (Aṣṭhādhyāyi 2.1.55.6̄̄ 2.3.72̄ 3.1.10) also uses the four
elements of comparison: the subject of comparison (upameya or upamita); the thing
with which I is compared (upamāna); the property of similarity (sāmānya or samānadharma); and the grammatical indicator of comparison (sāmānyavacana or dyotaka).3
Gerow (ibid) sees in these basic ideas not a full blown poetics, but a general
rhetorical and exegetical status which these terms could have had in both poetry
or śāstra. Yāska and Pāṇini are concerned with the semantic properties of language
here; Yāska is focused on whether the subject of comparison (upameya) is greater or
less than its comparand (upamāna). Pāṇini needs these terms to explain grammatical constructions that create similarities, such as compounds, suffixes, and so on.
And what about the comparisons of Aśvaghoṣa himself? It is clear that he knew
the epics quite well, as we shall see below, and thus it would be important for us to
focus on the uses of simile and other forms of comparison in the epics themselves.
The work of Hirzel (1940), Weller (1927), Gonda (1949), Leidecker (1954), and
Sharma (1964), and more recently Brockington (1977) give us a helpful start in
the larger questions of the uses of simile and metaphor as comparative tools in
the world of early India.
Gonda’s work (1949) is, as usual, thoroughgoing and detailed, outlining an
expansive number of possible usages of similes, including ‘primitive’, expressive,
hyperbolic, and historical similes. He is attentive to the purposes of the text in that
he also focuses on similes used for tact, caution, magical, didactic, and devotional
purposes. He also points to similes that draw on mythology, legend, or even the
human circumstances of everyday life. He also considers similes which we might
place, in Greek classical rhetoric, under the term ‘proleptic’, and ‘copulative’
comparisons. Gonda shares the spirit of this article in that he argues for the necessity of knowledge of the culture for a full understanding of similes, the changing
Ṛṣis Imagined Across Difference
51
perspectives on similes over time, and the role that ambiguity plays in certain complex forms of simile. Given his purposes, Gonda’s inventory must leave to other
scholars a consideration of how one might read any individual text, or genre of
texts, differently as a result of these analyses.
Sharma and Brockington do take this question up more thoroughly, and focus
particularly on the epics. Sharma reminds us that later interpolated passages
within the Mahābhārata make reference to itself as kāvya.4 Even Winternitz
(1927; Ketkar translation 1971: 326–7; 471) acknowledged long ago that within
the stylistic and topic diversity in the epic, there are compelling elements of
poetry. Sharma goes on to take a later definition of simile (upamā) from Jayadeva,
which uses the four elements named above. Thus Cyavana, a ṛṣi to be discussed
below, becomes ‘youthful like a god’; 3.124.10; vṛndārakam ivā jaran. He applies them
to various themes in the Mahābhar̄ata – goddesses, fruits, lions, winds, and so on.
In Sharma’s discussion of metaphor (rūpaka), he points out that in ancient India,
rūpaka involves a more complete statement of the details of the objects of comparison (1964:126). Again using the later Jayadeva, he argues that a metaphor is that
figure of speech in which the ‘wall’ of comparison is ‘completely painted’ with the
picture of the object of comparison. Thus, in 1.1.65–6, the entire Kaurava family is
compared to a tree, where Duryodhana is the great tree of furious temper; Karṇa is
the trunk; Śakuni the branches; Duḥśāsana is the full grown flower and fruit; and
Dhṛtarāṣṭra, the unwise one, is the root.
In his study of the Rāmāyaṇa, John Brockington concludes that the upamānas in
the Rāmāyaṇa share a common stock with the Mahābhārata; about one fifth of the
similes in certain kāṇḍas are shared with the Mahābhārata. Brockington also
observes that they tend to be rather unsophisticated, employing a single point
of comparison and showing frequent repetition. He notes that chiasmus, or inversion of word order, is also frequent and often occurs in conjunction with the future
tense. He also remarks that such similes tend to emerge at moments of high emotional or dramatic content (1982:459–60).
These more recent authors build excellent inventories of similes and metaphors
within the early epics. They also embark on some important observations about the
role of such constructions, particularly within the context of how the epics might
have shared a common imaginative stock. And indeed, it is most helpful to begin
with the thick description, and all three authors have given us work from which
to spring into other metaphorical worlds. In what follows I would like to build
on their work, but pay deeper attention to the cultural and performative contexts
of metaphor. I will be using theories that were unavailable to the few who have put
their mind to the question in earlier decades.
Contemporary metaphor theory: Comparison beyond the figure of speech
A review of these ideas from contemporary literary theory is to help us think
through the more specific work that metaphorical constructions in ancient India
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might be doing. When it comes to English (and other European) language
approaches to metaphor, we have a different configuration than upamā and rūpaka.
Traditionally, it has been understood in Western theory (since Aristotle) that
simile, metaphor, and analogy are both comparisons across difference – in the case
of simile, an explicit comparison, and in the case of metaphor, an implicit comparison which suggests identity between two things. In the case of analogy, there is
not only a comparison across difference, as in a simile or metaphor, but also a construction that is more than a figure of speech. It can take the form of an extended
argument, a series of examples set up to persuade. (The example we will use below
from Aśvaghoṣa might well be understood as an analogy, but one with metaphorical properties of comparison.)
To take a well-known example from contemporary Western poetry: the simple
phrase ‘my hands were like a bandage to his wound’ would be a simile in which all
three components, hand, bandage, and the connector ‘like’ are kept separate. However, consider the line in Sylvia Plath’s poem, ‘Three Women’: ‘How long can my
hands/Be a bandage to his hurt …’. This is a metaphor, in which an identity
between hands and bandages is implied, and there is no explicit connector of ‘like’
or ‘as’. It is clear that hands are not bandages (back to Gārgya), but their identity in
the poem creates a variety of rich associations for the reader or listener.
Recent theories of metaphor have also argued about the degree of understanding with which we come to use similes, metaphors, and analogies in our language.
Philosopher Black (1979) argued that we come to language with a common sense
understanding of the words used, and that such a common sense understanding
affects the way we read, interpret, and pass on the comparison. Thus, to take
the example above, we have a clear understanding of the work of ‘hands’ and ‘bandages’ and thus the comparison between them, whether in simile or metaphor, is
all the richer because of it. Nor can we simply paraphrase it literally, as a logical
positivist might want us to do; there are too many cultural and individual connotations to both terms that would make this impossible to do so. Philosopher Ricoeur
(1975), and more literarily, Wheelwright before him (1962), go one step farther, and
argue that there is indeed a creative power to metaphor, and that metaphorical
language can cause an ontological shift – a change in being – within the listener
or the reader. This can also occur with well-crafted analogical arguments. Some,
like Davidson (1979), would argue against this idea, and suggest that metaphors
and similes only point to similarities, but are never meaningful in and of themselves, and therefore do not create meaning as such.
More radically, cognitive linguists and cultural theorists have expanded the idea
of metaphor beyond rhetorical figures and into the structure of thought itself.
Lakoff (1987) and Lakoff and Johnson (1999, 2003) side with the creative power
of metaphor’s meaning, but they do so for cognitive linguistic reasons, and not
strictly for philosophical meanings. In their view, much of natural language already
consists of metaphorical understandings based on bodily and cultural experience.
Thus, language does not simply point out similarities, it structures and is
Ṛṣis Imagined Across Difference
53
structured by bodily experience, and conditions our thought and behaviour. Here,
we need to simply refer to Lakoff’s well-known example: ‘Argument is War’ is the
metaphor we are using when we speak (or think) of ‘attacking’, or ‘vanquishing’
our opponents in theoretical debate. Moreover, according to Lakoff, our bodily
orientation creates metaphors in language that are so basic that we can barely conceive of them as metaphors, such as ‘up is good’, and ‘down is bad’. Such everyday
usages of metaphor are determined by bodily experiences such as locomotion,
vision, and spatial reasoning; our hands-on experience with bounded objects. Building on the idea of metaphor as bodily experience, Fauconnier and Turner (2002)
argue that ‘all learning and all thinking consist of blends of metaphors based on
simple bodily experiences’. Our mental work in society consists of these blends,
which are themselves blended in an increasingly complex mental structure. Our
mental growth, from childhood on, involves learning and negotiating these blends.
Perhaps most important in these recent theories are the ways in which anthropologists have argued that metaphoric constructions are culturally conditioned.
Lakoff and Johnson join with cultural anthropologists such as Fernandez (1986,
1991), and more recently, Mandelblit (1995), Emanatian (1995), and Buchowski
(1996), among others, to argue that certain conceptual (as well as simply rhetorical)
metaphors are deeply influenced by culture. Our climate, our ways of seeing the
world, our festivals, and our flora and fauna, all give the dimensions to the elements
we want to compare with each other. Even more significantly, what is understood as
‘similar’ and what is understood as ‘different’ are also culturally conditioned. Again
to take a simple example, Rosch (1973, 1975) has shown the ways in which colours
are differently classified across cultures, and the use of colour in metaphoric constructions also varies depending upon the meaning of the colour in the culture.
Broadly speaking, then, the main function of conceptual metaphor is to project
inference patterns from one conceptual domain onto another. The result is that conceptual metaphor allows us to reason about the target domain in a way that we
otherwise would not (Lakoff and Johnson, 1999:82). These usages occur not only
in discrete phrases which constitute ‘figures of speech’, but also at larger levels, such
as the sentence or the paragraph, even the abstract idea. As Al-Hasnawi has recently
observed, this broad conceptual definition of metaphor includes a large number of
instances of semantic extension: allegory, synecdoche, metonymy, etc. might be
categorised as being metaphoric (2007:1). He goes on to say, ‘Whichever term is used
for labelling these expressions, they all exhibit some kind of semantic and logical
violation to the referential components of their lexical constituents’. In addition,
we have ‘prototypes’ of concepts which are highly culturally inflected, and which
influence our construction of metaphors. Thus, to take a basic example, the term
‘mother’ is culturally biased to mean ‘housewife mother’ in the West. It is an
unmarked concept. And ‘working mother’ becomes the marked concept to show
its deviation from the ‘prototypical’ concept, or ‘norm’ of a non-working mother.
Wherever we land in this new forest of theories, it is clear that most thinkers
agree that conceptual metaphors have the play across difference as their basis.
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Conceptual metaphor theory is a broader category under which the specifics of
metaphorical figures of speech, simile, upamā, rūpaka, and so on, might be a subset.
As we think about the broad definition of conceptual metaphor as semantic extension across difference, there are several foundational challenges for studying the
construction of difference across cultures, particularly within early India. First,
we might explore what indigenous conceptions of difference and similarity actually
are in early Indian texts. Second, we might investigate more deeply the ways in
which cultural material can effectively communicate new ways of thinking through
metaphor, simile, analogy, and other forms of semantic extension.
Imagining ‘Differences’ in early India
Before we begin to think through this question of semantic extension in terms of a
particular passage, we must remind ourselves of the recent work of Bronkhorst
(2007:175–258), who has made some significant observations about intertextual
borrowing. He argues that, while it has usually been assumed that the early Buddhists knew particular passages from the Upaniṣads, it is not at all clear that they
were familiar with the exact passages, but rather a larger font of cultural knowledge from which the Upaniṣads also drew (2007:207–19; 258–62). While Bronkhorst’s
purpose is to throw open the larger question of dating in early India, particularly
viz a vis the relative chronology of the Buddhist and Brahmanical literature in the
Magadhan region, his observations also open up the larger literary question of
what it means to ‘borrow’ or to cite literature that is not properly in one’s own
‘sphere’ of influence or purpose.
Literary critics might call what Bronkhorst is arguing for an early Indian imaginaire – a series of tropes and figures about which the public has general knowledge,
and would have basic associations. While the case can be made that Aśvaghoṣa’s
knowledge of and use of Vedic and Epic materials is far more specific than some
of the Pali Canon’s use of Upaniṣadic materials, the larger point is an important
one: there are literary and performative ‘familiars’, to borrow a phrase of European
magic, that would strike a chord with almost any audience, and could be used for
any number of purposes: educational, aesthetic, philosophical, and devotional, or a
combination of any or all four of the above. It is important to state at the outset
that we are not arguing for any ‘ur’ texts, like the early Indologists posited about
the gāthā material in the Veda and later Vedic commentary; nor are we arguing for
an early Indian collective unconscious. Rather, we are arguing for a simple set of
cultural referents with which the audience might have been familiar and upon
which they drew.
The Buddhacarita is a wonderful document when one wants to look at the inclusion of Brahmanical materials in Buddhist world views, and the question of bridging difference. We know that its author, Aśvaghoṣa, was a Sāketaka and thus of
eastern origin, and also clearly felt the influence of the Rāmāyaṇa, which in turn
showed the influence of the Śākyas of the Ikṣvāku dynasty. As the earlier editor
Ṛṣis Imagined Across Difference
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and translator of the text, Johnston (1936, 1984 rev. ed.) notes that, ‘He had, unparalleled in Buddhist writers, a knowledge of Brahmanical learning, including knowledge of the Veda and ritual literature as well as mastery of the sciences a kavi was
expected to have studied (xviii)’.
Johnston further observes that the deduction is inescapable that he was born a
Brahman and given a Brahman’s education, partly based on the evidence of a
Chinese tradition and his preoccupation with the phenomenon conversion in his
three works – the Buddhacarita (only 13 of the 26 cantos are extant in Sanskrit);
the Saundarananda; and the Śāriputraprakaraṇa. He was revered as a writer – not
solely as an original teacher or philosopher, but rather a communicator with power
for stating the details of the Buddhist perspectives. Chinese tradition cites that he
was known for his magical powers, and Huan Tsang speaks of his dealing with evil
spirits at Pataliputra. The Chinese scholar I Tsing writes, ‘The Buddhacarita is widely
read or sung throughout the five divisions of India, and the countries of the
southern sea. He clothes manifold meanings and ideas in a few words, which rejoice
the heart of the reader, so that he never feels tired from reading the poem, besides
it should be counted as meritorious for one to read this book, inasmuch as it contains the noble doctrine given in a concise form’ (cited in Johnston, ibid:xxxvi).
I Tsing’s praise of Aśvaghoṣa may not have been shared by the scholastic community, as no commentary has been found on the Buddhacarita but two exist for the
Jatakamala. Johnston not unproblematically conjectures, ‘by writing for the general
public and by introducing so much Hindu learning, he [might have] offended
against the Puritan moment in Buddhism’. In Johnston’s view, he needs to justify
himself, for in the final verse he writes that he studied scriptures and wrote the
work not to display his learning or his skill in kāvya, but for the benefit and happiness of the world. And in the last two verses of the later epic, he does even more to
defend this procedure saying that his goal is to hold the attention of the worldly
minded and the non-believer (anyamanas) for those whose benefit he had coated
the medicinal power of sound doctrine with the jam of kāvya method and that
his hearers were to reject the superficially attractive dross and pick out the grains
of pure gold from his poem. He is not an innovator, in other words, but a translator
of the extraordinary to the ordinary person.
One might say then, that Aśvaghoṣa is, in fact, a master of comparison, of semantic extension – of bridging difference and making it intelligible, and one might turn
to his methods of creating these bridges. We can, following these recent modes of
metaphor theory mentioned above, see three different kinds of differences stated
by Aśvaghoṣa himself in the text: between Brahmanical and Buddhist realities;
between those who had converted and those who had not, and between the educated elite and the larger public.
Another important piece of cultural background to Buddhacarita’s similes is
worth mentioning here. As Olivelle has noted in the introduction of his recent
translation of the Buddhacarita (2008:xlv), and as Hiltebeitel also notes in a recent
work (2006:235), much of the conversation within the text is about dharma, both
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the dharma of the householder and the dharma of stage of life asceticism. Aśvaghoṣa
couches much of the imagery of the Buddhacarita in Brahmanical terms, and argues
for Buddhism as a kind of fulfillment of Brahmanical dharma. But he also is engaged
in the refutation of Brahmanical arguments (Olivelle, pp. xxxii–iii). As Olivelle
writes, on the one hand, Aśvaghoṣa presents various Brahmanical arguments to
the Buddhist position in the forms of characters and dialogues, and on the other,
he presents questions of spiritual technologies within Brahmanism as inadequate
with regard to final liberation (ibid, p. xxxiii).
While we do not have the time to delve into specifics, we know that Aśvaghoṣa
was familiar with sacrificial procedures,5 some form of Upaniṣadic thought,6 materials from the Śāstras,7 and most importantly, material from the Mahābhārata8 and
the Rāmāyaṇa.9 He also might have known forms of classical religious traditions
involving both Śiva and Viṣṇu,10 as well as jyotiśāstra. It is important to remind ourselves here, however, that we should continue to think of an imaginaire, rather than
clear evidence that Aśvaghoṣa had read exactly what we now know as the critical
editions of any of these texts. In creating his metaphors and similes of Brahmanical
knowledge, he was drawing upon a common set of cultural references. And, equally
importantly, in choosing an image, he was also allowing, as all poets must, other
associations with that image to emerge in the play across difference.
Aśvaghoṣa, then, strikes me as an excellent source from which to begin thinking
anew about conceptual metaphor and semantic extension in early India. He uses a
wealth of Brahmanical material in his comparisons, and thus is clearly interested in
bridging difference between the Buddhist and Brahmanical worlds. He is teaching
for a public, and explicitly states the performative goals of his literary work.
The case study
With this in mind, then, by way of background, let us turn, then, to the specifics of
the Buddhacarita passage as a case study – Canto 1.40–6. The passage shows what we
see throughout the Buddhacarita – Aśvaghoṣa’s great knowledge of the Brahmanical
world around him, at least as he chooses to use it in the text. Brahmans are using
comparisons from contemporary narrative, the imaginaire, mentioned above, to
reassure the king of the eminence of Buddha in this earthly life.
The scene is after the birth of the future Buddha, when Buddha’s father, King
Śuddhodana, is receiving the description of the omens about the birth of Buddha
from the Brahmans that come to visit him. The king is both fearful and joyful
(1.31). His Brahmans see that, according to the signs he will become either an enlightened seer or a cakravartin monarch. If he is a king, he will be at the head of all kings,
and if he is a spiritual seeker, a forest dweller, he will overcome all other forms of
practice and stand like Meru among all heights. Aśvaghoṣa writes that the Brahmans
observe that, because his eyes are unblinking, blazing and yet mild, steady and yet
with long eyelashes, he has eyes that see everything. And the king then asks them:
how can these omens be seen when they were not seen in previous monarchs?
Ṛṣis Imagined Across Difference
57
And the Brahmans answer:
[This first verse 1.40, except d, from the Tibetan/Chinese translation, and following Johnston and Olivelle here.]
There is no earlier and later when it comes to wisdom, famous actions and the
fame of kings. And since it is natural that there is a cause for the effect, listen to
our parallels 1.40.
yad rājaśāstram bhṛgur aṅgirā vā/ na cakratur vaṃśakarāv ṛṣī tau
tayoḥ sutau saumya sasarjatus tat/kālena śukraś ca bṛhaspatiś ca
While the text on the customs of kings was not composed by those ṛṣis Bhṛgu
and Aṅgiras, founders of lineages, it was created eventually by their sons, Śukra
and Bṛhaspati, my lord 1.41.
sārasvataś cāpi jagāda naṣṭaṃ/ vedaṃ punar yaṃ dadṛśur na pūrve
vyásas tathainaṃ bahudhā cakāra/ na yaṃ vasiṣṭhaḥ krtavān aśaktiḥ
The son of Sarasvatī proclaimed again the lost Veda, which the ancient ones had
not seen. Vyāsa thus arranged it in many parts; and Vasiṣṭha did not do this, as he
was not able to 1.42.
vālmīki ādau ca sasarja padyaṃ/ jagrantha yan na cyavano mahaṛṣi
cikitsitaṃ yac ca cakāra nātriḥ/ paścāt tad ātreyo ṛṣir jagāda
And Vālmīki was the first to create the text in verse which the great ṛṣi Cyavana
did not create, and the text of healing which Atri did not make was later created by
the ṛṣi Ātreya 1.43.
yad ca dvijataṃ kuśiko na lebhe/ tad gādhinaḥ sūnur avāpa, rājan
velāṃ samudre sagaraś ca dadhre/ nekṣvākavo yāṃ prathamaṃ babandhuḥ
And the state of being a twice born which Kuśika did not win was gained by the
son of Gadhin, King. And Sagara established a boundary for the ocean which at first
the sons of Ikṣvāku had not set up 1.44.
ācāryakaṃ yogavidhau dvij̄ānām/ aprāptam anyair janako jagāma
khyātāni karmāṇi ca yāni śaureḥ/ śurādayas teṣv abalā babhūvuḥ
And Janaka reached the position, achieved by no one else, of teaching the twice
born in the ways of Yoga, and Sura and his family was not able to do the famous
deeds of Sauri 1.45.
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tasmāt pramāṇaṃ na vayo na vaṃśaḥ/ kaś cit kva cic chraiṣṭam upaiti loke
rājnām ṛṣīnāṃ ca hi tāni tāni/ kṛtāni putrair akṛtāni pūrvaiḥ
Therefore, neither age nor family is the measure. Anyone may attain excellence
anywhere in the world; even among royals and ṛṣis, the sons performed the various
deeds that the ancient ones failed to do 1.46.
And thus the king is reassured, his doubts removed, and he congratulates everyone all around.
Most significantly for our purposes, Olivelle notes earlier in his introduction that
a major theme runs through the text: that the young can surpass the older, and
refers to the passage we will discuss below as a prime example. After reciting a list
of ṛṣis who have been outdone by their progeny (Buddhacarita 1.46), the advisors to
Buddha’s father claim that ‘neither age nor lineage decides’ the spiritual merit of a
person: ‘This is clearly a defensive posture in Aśvaghoṣa’s “apologia” ’, writes Olivelle, showing that ‘it is quite legitimate for the “recent” Buddha to challenge and
surpass the ancient Brahmanical wisdom’ (2008:xxxii).
I believe Olivelle (and indirectly, Hiltebeitel) are quite right about the larger motivation for the structure of this passage, and the text in general. In addition, their
insight also gives us the best frame for thinking through in more detail the question
of semantic extensions, both at the level of the image and at the level of the sentence.
In this passage, we are working primarily at the level of the sentence because in
English, we might well call this passage of Buddhacarita 1.40–6 an analogy with
metaphoric properties. To remind the reader, an analogy is a comparison across
difference, but need not take the form of a single figure of speech. It can also take
the form of a logical argumentation or extended discourse. And that is essentially
what the Brahmans are arguing here. Aśvaghoṣa uses many analogies in his work
similar to this one, such as that of 4.73–81, where Udayin is trying to persuade the
young prince Gautama to make love to the women that have been provided for
him. There, he notes that other ancient ṛṣis have given up their asceticism and
made love to nymphs, and apsarases, and so on. And he does so by reminding
him of the stories of each of the sages who did this. So, here also in this passage,
the analogical argument proceeds by a series of ancient examples. The comparison
is ‘Just as these sages were surpassed by their sons, so, Śuddhodana, this will happen to you too’. And yet, as in many extended analogies, each example takes on
some of the properties of metaphor: in his extended argument, each example that
Aśvaghoṣa uses acts as a kind of condensed image which compares Śuddhodana
with a specific ancient ṛṣi.
One can find even more intriguing things going on in the text when one asks the
new questions that metaphor theory suggests that we ask. In its focus on cultural
constructedness of semantic extension, such theory suggests that we delve more
deeply into the detailed cultural connotations of each of the images used in this
short passage. And when we do, we see additional meanings and nuances beyond
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the straightforward meaning that Aśvaghoṣa is indeed favouring the younger over
the older. The author is also doing something even more, even richer, even more
subtle: he is creating a series of very specific and discrete contrasts with each comparison, and in doing so, he is redefining gotra itself.
Let us begin, as contemporary conceptual metaphor theory would suggest that
we do, by asking more about cultural context of each of these ṛṣis mentioned by the
Brahman advisors. If we take the position that the Buddhacarita’s date is probably
around the Kuśana kingdom, then we might explore other attitudes about famous
ṛṣis and seers during this period, which would include both late Vedic texts and
early Purāṇic texts. And once we consider this, a major observation needs to be
made at the onset. While it is difficult to rehearse all of the stories, from the perspective of one late Vedic text about which I wrote my first book (1996:215–53), the
Bṛhaddevatā, which also includes a great deal of Purāṇic material, is very clear that
ṛṣis are indeed very powerful beings. Indeed, as the story of Gṛtsamāda and many
others show, in this era of early Indian history, in certain narratives many of the
ṛṣis approach the status of gods, or at least show themselves to be in direct competition with the gods. In addition, as I argue in that work, it is fairly clear that one
can see a pattern of textual emendation from the earlier Vedic narratives in which
any possible flaw of the ṛṣis is cleaned up to make the ṛṣi nearly inviolable.
And thus, Aśvaghoṣa’s examples of the great ṛṣis doing anything which is incomplete, or to borrow a phrase from 1.42 describing Vasiṣṭha, aśaktiḥ, ‘incapable’,
could be read as quite a complex, if not paradoxical statement about the properties
of a gotra. In the Brahmanical stories, ancient ṛṣis get themselves out of tricky situations, they are all powerful seers, they found lineages (see specifically Patton
1996:254–74), and they frequently take the shape of gods and trick both humans
and gods into thinking they are divine. Thus, for the most ancient and illustrious
of them, as suggested in these parallels, to be incapable of doing the work that their
sons did might be an odd locution to a Brahmanical ear.
But there is a referential tension here, given that there is also a larger perspective in ancient (and contemporary) India that sons should indeed be illustrious.
Such an idea is commonplace from the earliest Indian texts, and one need only look
so far as the aphorism, sarvatra jayam anvicchet, putrād icchet parājyam11 to see this
basic idea played out in everyday life. But to focus on one thing (the sons) actually
could be in tension with the other (the success and illustrious of the fathers). What
is intriguing here is that these Buddhacarita examples still honour and respect the
power of gotra: Aśvaghoṣa explicitly uses the vṛddhi forms of names such as Atri and
Ātreya in 1.43, and Śura and Śauri in 1.45 to show that the lineage has remained
intact. The ministers to the king are in fact implying that the Buddha will complete
something that his own father cannot. But in this case, given the father’s anxiety
about the omens with which his son is born, their words have a soothing, rather
than an insulting effect. The king’s son will continue and in fact surpass the work
of his father, and all of these ancient seers and ṛṣis were surpassed in all their
works.
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Thus, we can read this passage as a group of comparative statements about the
ways in which gotras evolve. It is an extended analogy involving conceptual metaphors at the level of the sentence which bridge several differences: between the
ancient world of the ṛṣis and that of their descendants; between the ancient world
before Buddha’s birth and the world that will come after it; and between the ṛṣis’
world and the kings’ world. And these contrasting images between sages and their
descendants create that history in rich and subtle ways, involving questions of
what it means to be a priest, what it means to be healed, what it means to be a
composer of texts. In fact, if we take the cultural connotations of these contrasing
images into account, they create specific histories of specific ṛṣis, each with their
own distinct message.
Bhṛgu and Aṅgiras; Śukra and Bṛhaspati
Let us look at those comparisons in detail. In the list we first encounter the ṛṣis
Bhṛgu and Aṅgiras. These two frequently occur in various versions of lists of the
seven ṛṣis – as, in fact, do all the ṛṣis on this list12 Bhṛgu appears in several hymns
in the Ṛg Veda (RV 1.18.6; 8.3.9; 6.18; and 8.102.4). In the Brāhmaṇas, he is understood as a son of Varuṇa, and is called Varuṇi (Aitareya Brāhmaṇa 3.34; Taittirīya
Brāhmaṇa 1.8.2, 5). In the famous Vedic battle of the ten kings, the Bhṛgus are allied
with the Druhyus, although it is hard to tell whether as priests or as family (RV
8.3.9; 8.6.18; and 8.102.4). As a collective, they are associated with fire (RV 1.58.6;
1.127.7; 1.143.4; 2.42; 3.2.4; and 4.7.1). Relatedly, in the later ritual texts they are
associated with fire rituals such as agnisapana (4.6.5 and 2; 5.6.8; AV 4.14.5) and
the daśapeyakratu (Taittirīya Saṃhitā 1.8.18; Taittirīya Brāhmaṇa 1.8.2.5). Indeed,
Bhṛgu is understood as so powerful that in Atharva Veda 5.19.1, when the Srñjaya
Vaitahavyas die, they do so because they have attacked Bhṛgu. (Also see Aitareya
Brāhmaṇa 2.20 for a similar characterisation of Bhṛgu.)
Aṅgiras also appears in Ṛg Veda 1.45.3, 139.9, and 3.31.7, as the father of the race
of Aṅgiras. Their ritual specialties were ayana and dviratra ceremonies (AV 18.4.8;
Pañcaviṃśa Brāhmaṇa 10.11.1; Taittirīya Saṃhitā 7.1.4.1). And in many passages early
on, the Bhṛgus are closely associated with the Aṅgirases (TS 1.1.7 and 2; MS 1.1.8̄̄;
VS 1.18; TB 1.1.4, 8; 3.2.7.6; SB 1.21.13). They may well be associated with Atharvan
rites and priestly functions. In the Atharva Veda, the term bhṛgvaṅgirasaḥ is applied
to the Atharva Veda and its hymns (AV 9.10.107ff).
We also see them together with Atri, born as sages from the coals. In Bṛhaddevatā
5.97–103, Vāc in bodily form appears to Ka and Prajāpati as they are sacrificing.
They become excited, spill semen, which is then scattered onto the fire by Vayu,
the wind. From the coals Aṅgiras is born, from the flames, Bhṛgu is born and
Vāc then insists upon having a third son, Atri, ‘the third’ (also see Patton
1996:411–12).
In the epics, we know that the Mahābhārata is according to some scholars, subject to a whole scale ‘Bhṛgu-ization’ in which most illustrious figures trace their
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ancestry back to the Bhṛgu family (see Goldman 1976). The Rāmāyaṇa contains
some references to the Bhṛgu family, but to a surprisingly lesser extent.
Despite the strong power of the Aṅgiras and Bhṛgu pair, Śukra and Bṛhaspati
appear as the heroes of Aśvaghoṣa’s tale – the ones who create the science of polity
invoked in the first verses of the Artha Śāstra. Indeed, it is their rājaśāstra that is the
foundational text for political life. While Śukra is not very well known in the Vedic
period, he does appear later in the epics in a much greater way. There, he is the son
of Bhṛgu and brother of Cyavana, a ṛṣis to be discussed below.
Bṛhaspati, on the other hand, has a larger presence as the male counterpart of
the goddess of speech, Vāc in the Ṛg Veda (1.70; 1.125). As is well known, his name
literally means ‘Lord of Speech’. A priest who wanted to become a ‘main priest’, or
purohita, also performed the sacrifice called the bṛhaspati sava (TB 2.7.1.2).
In later texts, the two are associates, and often even great rivals. In the
Mahābhārata, Śukra, the priest of the Asuras, takes on Bṛhaspati’s son Kaca to help
him learn the art of revival. Bṛhaspati, the priest of the gods, does not have this
power, and they need to have it in order not to be defeated by the Asuras who
are threatening the gods with Śukra’s powers of revivification (1.71.1–35). Later,
Śukra gives his daughter in marriage to Yayāti, who later breaks his promise not
to make love to another. Śukra instantly curses him to lose his youth (1.76–9).
Śukra and Bṛhaspati are contestants in a war for the truth in a myth found in
Baudhayana Śrauta Sūtra: (18.46) which narrates the tale whereby both Bṛhaspati
(on the side of the gods) and Śukra (on the side of the demons), have truth, and
neither side can be victorious. A Gandharva predicts that, in the contest between
Bṛhaspati and Śukra, Śukra will win. Indra is listening in the form of a ray of sunlight and a parrot. Indra, possessed with this knowledge, offers him his own daughter Jayantī and four wishing cows. Thus, Śukra went from the demons to the side of
the gods, and the gods won. In 18.47, Śukra remains the guru of the gods, which is
also traditionally Bṛhaspati’s role. Śukra also receives wealth from the demons, and
says that he is also their guru. The demons tell him not to sacrifice. Bṛhaspati, in
the meantime, designated here as the son of Aṅgiras, performs a sacrifice and emits
gold. Śukra thinks he can steal this gold for the demons, and Indra learns of this
plan. And thus, he makes a mountain, and the descendants of Śukra go to the
mountains in Kurukṣetra.
As Wendy [Doniger] O’Flaherty writes of this myth, Śukra is the perfect double
agent, acting for both the gods and the demons, until Indra discovers him and he
must be banished. As she also observes, Śukra is a Brahmanical figure, not simply
demonic, and this is equally true on the side of Bṛhaspati: it is never clear whether
Bṛhaspati is primarily sage or god. Śukra takes over some of the functions of both
Tvaṣṭṛ, the maker, and Bṛhaspati; he finds and releases cattle as Bṛhaspati does and
he fashions Indra’s thunderbolt. He is also said to be the father of Tvaṣṭṛ.
(O’Flaherty 1976:120). Śukra is not the priest of the demons in the Vedic texts,
but he does assume the role in the Brāhmaṇas, by which time he and Bṛhaspati
are functioning on opposed sides. But the bond that unites Bṛhaspati and Śukra
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as priests, grandsons of Prajāpati, and sons of Bhṛgu and Aṅgiras are far more
important than their roles as enemies on the sides of the gods or the demons
(Doniger O’Flaherty, ibid).
What is the texture of Aśvaghoṣa’s comparison here? The Buddhcarita takes on
the almost inadvertent, passive nature of Bhṛgu and Aṅgiras’ birth from the coals,
and begins to show that their wily sons, who impersonate each other and compete
with each other, are the politicians who can complete texts in a way that the earlier sages cannot. The comparison is between first the great sacrificers Bhṛgu and
Aṅgiras, whose skill remains sacrificial manipulation, priestly comfort to other
Aryan families, and perhaps Atharvan mantras, and second, Śukra and Bṛhaspati
whose relationship is defined by rivalry and whose priestly functions are so clearly
and explicitly political in nature. The metaphor could easily have gone the other
way – that Bhṛgu and Aṅgiras stand for something rather more solid than their
wily descendants. But Aśvaghoṣa makes their later creation of the śāstra the defining moment of the comparison. His metaphor is far more than simply the triumph
of the younger over the elder; it is a world in which simple priestly gifts are
replaced by craftier priestly skills, and alliance and ‘brotherhood’ born from coals
and fire is replaced by rivalry for the sake of heaven itself.
(A note here: following Bronkhorst, do we need to know whether Aśvaghoṣa
read the Baudhayana Śrauta Sūtra or the Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa to surmise this? Not
especially, since we know from a variety of textual sources that Bhṛgu and Aṅgiras
are known as major sages and Śukra and Bṛhaspati are known as competitors and
politicians. In fact, we cannot know whether Aśvaghoṣa had much detailed knowledge of Vedic sacrificial texts, even though we do know that he had knowledge of
epic texts. However, we can infer, from the variety of stories about these sages and
with a certain consistency in their personalities and strengths, that they exist with
these particular traits in the popular imaginaire.)
Vasiṣṭha and Vyāsa
The same methods might be applied to others in Aśvaghoṣa’s list of ṛṣis and their
exploits. We could turn next to the comparison that Aśvaghoṣa makes between
Vasiṣṭha and Vyāsa – where Vasiṣṭha is called ‘aśaktiḥ’ or ‘incapable’ of doing what
Vyāsa achieves later in apportioning the Veda. The most illustrious Vasiṣṭha is
mentioned frequently indeed in the Ṛg Veda (RV 7.7.7; 7.12.3; 7.23.6; 7.37.4; 7.39.7;
7.40.7; 7.76.7; 7.76.7; 7.77.6; 7.80.1; 7.90.7; 7.91.7; 10.15.8; 10.66.14; 10.122.8). In later
classical mythology, Vasiṣṭha was also one of the saptaṛṣis in the seventh, i.e. the
present, manvantara, and the rājaguru (royal teacher) of the Sūryavaṃśa or Solar
Dynasty. He was the manasaputra, or mind-born son, of Brahmā. Later texts, such
as the Mahābhārata, also state that he had in his possession the divine cow Kamadhenu, and Nandinī her child, who could grant anything to their owners. He is
understood to be the chief author of the seventh maṇḍala of the Ṛg Veda. Vasiṣṭha
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and his family are glorified in Ṛg Veda 7.33, extolling their role, like the Bhṛgus
above, in the battle of the ten Kings.
Vasiṣṭha and his family are known for their rivalry with Viśvāmitra (1.165), who
seems to have served as the domestic priest of Sudās, and then fell out with him.
Equally importantly, Vasiṣṭha and his family are the purohitas par excellence, and
they are mentioned as the purohitas of the Bhāratas (PB 15.4.24) as well as the
purohitas of the people (prajāḥ, TB 3.5.2.1). They are also the priests at the famous
sacrifice of Śunaḥśepa (Aitareya Brāhmaṇa 7.16; Śaṅkhāyana Śrauta Sūtra 15.21.4).
Intriguingly, two Vedic hymns (7.33.11 and 7.55) suggest that Vasiṣṭha, like Bhṛgu,
also is a son of Varuṇa, perhaps out of that god’s alliance with the nymph Urvaśī.
In addition to the epics’ numerous mentions of Vasiṣṭha as a ṛṣi, the epic contains many allusions to Vasiṣṭha and Viśvāmitra’s rivalry (Mahābhārata 1.165–6).
In the Rāmāyaṇa (1.69.15), which, as mentioned above, Aśvaghoṣa knew well in
some form, Vasiṣṭha as the foremost priest of the Ikṣvāku family recites the lineage
of the whole house of Ikṣvāku. In addition, Vasiṣṭha is one of the few who remain
conscious in the appearance of terrifying Rāma Jāmadagnya who tests Rāma with
his heavy bow (1.73.15). In the Mahābhārata, Vasiṣṭha performs many dharmic acts.
He reminds the forgetful king Saṃvaraṇa to go back from his love nest to his kingdom so that the rains can come forth again (1.163.1–25). He also rescues his daughter-in-law from king Kalmāṣapāda, who himself is cursed, and then, in turn, frees
Kalmāṣapāda from the curse he is labouring under (Mahābhārata 1.176.10–20;
1.168.1–10).
Vyāsa is the great grandson of Vasiṣṭha. As is well known, he was the son of
Satyavatī, a fisherwoman, before she married the Kuru king Śantanu. Vyāsa’s father
was the Brahman Parāśara, grandson of Vasiṣṭha. His mother later married
Śantanu, the king of Hastinapura, and had two sons by him. Neither son produced
an heir before he died, leaving Satyavat̄i without sons, except for Vyāsa, and without grandsons. Thus, Satyavat̄i asks Vyāsa to perform niyoga, whereby a relative
(usually a brother or cousin-brother) can produce sons with the widows of Vicitravīrya, one of the sons who had died. Vyāsa is repulsive, and because the first widow
closes her eyes when Vyāsa approaches her, produces a son who is blind, King
Dhṛarāṣṭra. The second widow blanches when Vyāsa approaches her, and produces
a son who is also pale, King Pāṇḍu. Vyāsa is thus the grandfather of the warring
factions of the Mahābhārata, and acts as a guru and guide to the cousins during various points in the epic. In addition, Vyāsa is the recorder of the epic, and is thus a
character in the narrative which he himself authors.
What is the complex comparison that Aśvaghoṣa achieves here? Vasiṣṭha’s lineage is one where he is the keeper of wealth, and the sacred sensibilities of an entire
Ṛg Vedic gotra. He is responsible for a maṇḍala of the Veda, and a hymn of the Veda.
He acts dharmically, and is a ‘rescuer’ of those who are vulnerable and cursed. His
ancient rivalries with Viśvāmitra are well known, as are his vanquishing of his jealous rival through his miraculous powers. But he is not the great author and editor
and distributor that Vyāsa is. Indeed, Vasiṣṭha is a keeper of goods, not a divider or
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a distributor. On the other hand, in the story of his creation of progeny, Vyāsa
reconciles his family and creates lineage out of his own commitment to dharma.
In Brahmanical tradition, Vasiṣṭha remains an all-powerful ṛṣi, even in his anger
in the battle with Viśvāmitra. But in Aśvaghoṣa’s hands, he is aśaktiḥ, so caught
up in his own dharmic adventures that he is unable to arrange the text of the Veda
that Vyāsa, with his peacebuilding and focused capacity, is. Moreover, one scholar
(Sullivan 1999:112–17) has made a case that Vyāsa is implicitly identified with
Brahmā, the great creator god and grandfather.
Cyavana and Vālmīki
Aśvaghoṣa’s pairing of Cyavana and Vālmīki is equally intriguing. Cyavana is unable
to create the verse-text (the Rāmāyaṇa) that Vālmīki later is capable of doing. In the
Ṛg Veda, Cyavana is understood to be an old, decaying man, whom the Aśvins
restore to strength and young age (Ṛg Veda 1.116.10; 1.117.13; 1.118.6; 5.74.5;
7.86.6; 7.71.5; and 10.39.4). Like the ṛṣis discussed above, Cyavana too is named as
a Bhṛgu or Aṅgiras in the Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa, and is tormented in his decrepitude
by the king’s sons. Instead of using the Aśvins for rejuvenation, here he uses a pond
to be restored to life (SB 4.1.5ff). Cyavana seems also to have sacrificed to the
Aśvins (JB 3.121–8), and angered Indra. However, this may have been a temporary
rivalry because another Brāhmaṇa suggests that Cyavana the king Śāryāta with the
great Indra consecration (aindreṇa mahābhiṣekeṇa; Aitareya Brāhmaṇa 8.21.4).
Cyavana is also a seer of sāmans, or Vedic chants (PB 13.5.12; 19.3.6; 14.6.10; and
11.8.11).
The Mahābhārata (1.5.10ff) relates the story of Cyavana as a son of Bhṛgu. As the
story goes, Bhṛgu had a wife named Pulomā, who became pregnant. A rakṣasa by
the name of Puloman visits the hermitage and falls deeply in love with Pulomā,
who had been promised to him first. The rakṣasa asks the fire whose wife she is,
because he feels that he first chose her, and not Bhṛgu. Her father broke his promise and married her to Bhṛgu. The rakṣasa questions the fire many times, and
threatens the fire. The fire responds that it is no less fearful of speaking untruth
than Bhṛgu’s curse. And the rakṣasa Puloman feels that this statement of the fire
is enough to seize the wife ‘with the speed of wind and thought’. And after Pulomā
is seized, the child falls from her womb, and is thus known as ‘Cyavana’. The rakṣasa
sees the child and turns to ashes, thus letting the woman go. Pulomā tells her husband that her son, just born in his brilliance, also saved her life. Cyavana is one of
the six sons of his father Bhṛgu. Later in the Mahābhārata, Cyavana demonstrates
his ability to live and breathe underwater, at the saṅgam of the Gaṅgā and the
Yamunā. When he is dredged up by the fishermen, they are afraid of his curse
(MBh 13.50.19).
Rāmāyaṇa 1.70.28–36 tells the story of Cyavana’s heroism when king Asita dies.
He persuades Asita’s queen not to commit sati because she is pregnant. He brings
her to his hermitage, and she eventually gives birth to Sagara. Cyavana helps to
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raise him and teaches him a great number of skills, including archery and polity.
Sagara asks Cyavana about his father, and after hearing from Cyavana, Sagara
becomes angry with his father’s enemies and vanquishes them one by one.
Vālmīki is an intriguing contrast indeed for Aśvaghoṣa to have chosen. He has a
murky possibility of being a Bhargava in other texts. In a study of this issue, Goldman (1976) points out that the Rāmāyaṇa’s later book, the Uttarakāṇḍa (7.94.26;
7.84.16), has two possible references to Vālmīki as a Bhargava. Rāmāyaṇa commentators, such as Govindarājā, also seem to accept this characterisation. Viṣṇu Purāṇa
3.3.18 also suggests this. But, as Goldman puts it, the Uttarakāṇḍa offers no clear
explanation of Vālmīki’s Bhargava affiliation while the latter rely somewhat uneasily upon a Purāṇic reference (Goldman, p. 98). What we do know of Vālmīki from
the Rāmāyaṇa, however, is a clear commitment to his creative transformation of
sorrow (śoka) at the death of a bird at the hands of a hunter. He was able to channel
it into verse (śloka).
The well-known story of the birth of Vālmīki is a much later one, from the
Skanda Purāṇa and the Adhyātma Rāmāyaṇa 2.6.84. We cannot say for sure whether
it might have been a part of the general lore with which Aśvaghoṣa would have
been familiar. According to this tradition, Vālmīki was a Brahman boy lost in
the forest and raised by a hunter. He also became involved with thieves. When,
at one point, he meets the sage Nārada in the forest, he is persuaded by the ṛṣi
of the error of his ways. And he asks who a righteous man is, and Nārada tells
him of Rāma. He also lets an anthill grow around him as a form of penance. Hence,
his new name Vālmīka, or ‘ant-hill’. In the epic tradition, Vālmīki is also referred to
as Pracetas (Rāmāyaṇa 7.87.17), which is also a name for Varuṇa. This would make
yet another Bhargava in Aśvaghoṣa’s list who might descend from the god Varuṇa.
What is intriguing, however, is that Cyavana, Vālmīki’s putative ancestor, is the
one who does penance in an anthill in Mahābhārata 3.122.3–4. (Goldman and others
suggest that these two figures might have been confused by later thinkers, hence
the tradition of Vālmīki’s birth and their putative connection.) The story is that
Cyavana’s tapas is so great that an anthill grows up around him, and he remains
immobile. Cyavana is not recognised by the beautiful princess Sukanyā who plays
nearby, but the sage himself is quite taken by her. She inadvertently pokes his shining ascetic’s eyes, not knowing who he is. Cyavana remains unmoving, but is
unwilling to harm the young girl. He creates constipation amongst the royal troops
who are stationed nearby, and he is thus discovered. Sukanyā then becomes
Cyavana’s wife.
When the Aśvins discover that she has given herself to the old man, they challenge her to choose them instead. They say that they will transform her husband
into a young man, too, and she can choose between the three. Cyavana agrees to
plunge into the water, and the Aśvins do as well. When they all climb out of thewater, they are all divinely beautiful. The princess is then asked to choose, and,
choosing with her heart and mind, chooses her husband. Cyavana thus gains youth
and beauty as well as Sukanyā for his bride (Mbh 3.123).
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While we must conclude with Goldman that this particular connection is impossible to sort out definitively, Aśvaghoṣa’s comparison in this passage is mentioned
frequently in the secondary literature, mostly because of the question of the identity of Vālmīki and, as Goldman and more recently, Leslie (2003) suggest, the
tenuous Bhṛgu connection.13
But even with this historical murkiness, we can still think about the nature of
the contrast that Aśvaghoṣa is creating beyond the question of mistaken lineages.
Cyavana has much sorrow in his life, either through his age and decrepitude in the
Ṛg Veda and the Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa, or his troubled birth in the epic. To be sure,
Cyavana himself is transformed in many of these stories, most notably in the
Mahābhārata, where he moves from immobility in the anthill to being youthful
and getting the girl at the end. However, Cyavana does not create a lasting testimony to that transformation such as Vālmīki does. Thus, Aśvaghoṣa might be read
as making a clear commentary on creativity itself: the sagacity and nurturing ways
of Cyavana cannot ultimately be as creative as Vālmīki’s verses. Vālmīki can produce a Rāmāyaṇa out of his sorrowful difficult circumstances and Cyavana cannot.
Atri and Ātreya
The Buddhacarita 1.43 argues that Atri was not able to complete the healing work
that his descendant, Ātreya was. What we know of his less illustrious ancestor, Atri,
is that he is also a sage associated with healing powers in the Ṛg Veda. The entire
fifth maṇḍala of the Ṛg Veda is attributed to the family of the Atris. In addition, they
probably were in close relations with the other Aryan tribes, and might well have
had a wide influence. Atri is mentioned in 5.39.5; 5.67.5; and also Atharva Veda
2.32.3; 4.29.3; Mantra Brāhmaṇa 2.7.1; Taittirīya Āraṇyaka 4.36; Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad
2.2.1, and 4; also Kauṣītaki Brāhmaṇa 24.3; Aitareya Āraṇyaka 2.2.1.
In Ṛg Veda 1.116.8, Atri is rescued from a fire-pit by the Aśvins. And Atri is mentioned as a model in Ṛg Veda 5.78, a hymn by the ṛṣi Saptavadhri in praise of the
Aśvins, after the ṛṣi Saptavadhri fails when he is hired by a king to create progeny.
In many of the texts mentioned above, the story goes that Atri was kept away from
his wife at night. Every night they would imprison him in a pit (and in other versions, a room or a box) and every morning they would release him. Finally, Atri
propitiated the Aśvins, who rescued him and freed him from his prison. And when
he came out, he made love to his wife, and then returned back to his confinement.
And he conceived of the hymn to praise for the Aśvins’ rescue (see larger discussion
in O’Flaherty 1981; 57–64). In the Rāmāyaṇa, Rāma visits Atri’s hermitage during his
fourteen years of forest exile. Atri points out the path to Daṇḍakāraṇya forest to
Rāma, and spends a great deal of time displaying great gifts of hospitality.
Ātreya, on the other hand, is definitively associated with health and healing in
that he, like the others mentioned by Aśvaghoṣa, is the author of the Caraka
Saṃhitā. As we receive the legend, the Aśvins taught Ayurveda to Indra, who in turn
instructed his disciple Ātreya who in turn wrote the Ātreya-Saṃhitā in five
Ṛṣis Imagined Across Difference
67
adhyāyas, consisting of 46,500 ślokas. This Saṃhitā later became the basis of the
works of Harita and Caraka. Ātreya, also known as Punarvasu Ātreya, imparted
the Ayurveda to his disciples, among them the most noted are Agniveśya, Parāśara,
and, of course, Harita. Caraka later edited the work and it became known as Caraka
Saṃhitā. In another lineage, Caraka Saṃhitā (1.3–5) relates that Brahma taught the
Ayurveda to Prajāpati, and from Prajāpati to the Aśvins, and the Aśvins to Indra.
Indra then taught Bharadvāja, who went to him eager to learn the Ayurveda. The
text (1.6–14) goes on to say that the ṛṣis had begun to develop diseases that hindered their ascetic pursuits, and they gathered to discuss ways to combat the issue.
Intriguingly, many of the sage names by Aśvaghoṣa are also in this list: Aṅgiras,
Bhṛgu, Ātreya, Bhargava, and Cyavana.
So, our final example includes the more straightforward simile in which Atri is a
praiser of healing and healers, the Aśvins. Like Vasiṣṭha, he is a composer of a sūkta,
or hymn, of the Ṛg Veda. And he too, is associated with healing and celebrates his
rescue from the pit by the Aśvins. However, Atri does not and cannot compose and
edit an entire saṃhitā of healing, which his son does in response to a global crisis.
Thus, Aśvaghoṣa’s comparison is between a sage who is rescued and eloquent, as
well as associated with healing, and his son who ‘takes charge’ of healing with
verve and initiative in creating the text.
Concluding thoughts
While there are several other stories to be explored in Aśvaghoṣa’s brief passage,14
several important themes have emerged here. It cannot escape our notice that
most of these ṛṣis are Bhargavas, or possibly associated with the Bhargava lineage.
This may well be due to Aśvaghoṣa’s knowledge of epic material, his willingness to
participate in the Bhargava imaginaire. In addition, a striking number of the ṛṣis
have associations with god Varuṇa. What we might make of this association is
another question; we might conjecture that insofar as Varuṇa is associated with
priestly functions, and therefore perhaps partly learned and creative functions,
he would be an appropriate lineage for these creative ṛṣis.
Second, we have the richness of the comparisons themselves. We see the contrast between the straightforward priestly functions of Bhṛgu and Aṅgiras and
the rivalrous, calculating ones of Śukra and Bṛhaspati. We also see the change from
Vasiṣṭha’s somewhat turbulent holding together of dharma within the troublesome
context of his rivalry with Viśvāmitra, and the near-transcendent dharmic virtuosity of Vyāsa. Aśvaghoṣa also creates the connection between Cyavana, who, even
though being transformed in a number of ways, cannot create a text from his trials,
and Vālmīki, who can. And finally, we see the beginning of healing in Atri’s rescue
by the Aśvins, but the true fulfillment of healing in the composition of the Ayurvedic text by his son.
Far more intriguing, to my mind, is the fact that the creation of a śāstra is used
in the similes that Aśvaghoṣa constructs. In each case we have looked at, the
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superiority of the son is based on his willingness to compose a text. And in the case
of the inferior father, many, if not all, have Vedic hymns to their name, but nothing
more. And here is the crucial difference that should be noted: creativity in the earlier Vedic period tended to be about perceiving Vedic hymns – receiving the vision
of a god and reciting his or her praise in an appropriate manner (Gonda 1963;
Patton 1996). It was rarely about the arranging, editing, or composition of longer
treatises. And thus, the earlier ṛṣis, the lesser fathers, were actually engaged in a
different mode of composition entirely. What surpasses each of them is a son
who creates a śāstra. And thus, the difference between ‘seeing’ (dhī, dṛś, etc.) a sūkta
and ‘making’ a śāstra (note Aśvaghoṣa’s many uses of the verb kṛ) is one of the
major motivators in Aśvaghoṣa’s similes. It may well be, then, that Aśvaghoṣa is
transcending his own (possibly Śaivite) background. He might well be implying that
he is also saying that his own texts, and particularly the Buddhacarita itself, are a
kind of triumph over his own forbears.
With these lessons from Aśvaghoṣa in mind, it might be important to propose
several principles of interpreting simile and metaphor in early Indian texts. First,
we might understand early Indian texts not just as ‘examples’ of doctrinal or historical positions, but as aesthetic wholes in their own right.15 It is important to
note here that this is not a revival of the earlier assertion of ontological value
of texts beyond their historical situatedness. Rather, it is an attempt to include historical and aesthetic dimensions in a more unified whole. The second principle follows from this: that, given our understanding of texts as both historical and
aesthetic documents, one might examine modes of comparison, such as metaphor,
simile, and analogy, with an eye toward their situated cultural content at the same
time as their aesthetically compelling nature. We might do so at the level of the
image, the phrase, the sentence, and the paragraph. Third, and relatedly, we might
approach these texts as being more than simple-mindedly ‘didactic’ in their intent,
but rather creative in their own right, geared towards pleasing and challenging
peoples’ minds and not simply ‘instructing’ them. Fourth, and also relatedly, we
might be open to the possibility of self-conscious irony, or ironic commentary,
in the construction of these comparisons. Fifth, we might be open to the various
performative possibilities that help us to understand metaphor and simile constructions, and that metaphors might look differently in the context of sacrificial
rituals, courtly recitation, popular village drama, or contemplative reading within
an ascetic environment. Sixth, we might understand metaphoric constructions
which move across traditions as more than an issue of ‘borrowing’ or whether
one author had read a text, but rather with a larger idea of imaginaire – a wealth
of cultural material from which all authors and constructors of metaphor and
simile might draw.16 Seventh, and finally, we might revisit our idea of authorship,
and the relationship between the makers of conceptual metaphors and their
inventions.
Several very small beginning suggestions for new readings follow from this. We
might read more of the hymns of the Ṛg Veda for their properties as poems and the
Ṛṣis Imagined Across Difference
69
various levels of metaphoric constructions within them. The Ṛg Vedic hymn to the
frogs (7.103), for instance, may well have many different levels of semantic extension than have been previously discussed. In addition, there may well be associative
properties and cultural connotations even to a ‘stock phrase’ in an epic metaphor
that we may have missed by simply understanding it as a ‘stock phrase’. This might
also be true with even ritual texts of stock phrases such as the Śrauta Sūtras. We
might also be more attuned how conceptual metaphors are constructed differently
according to the performative contexts. For example, in a philosophical text, such
as the Abhidharma texts, conceptual metaphors’ purposes may be designed more for
virtuosic analysis than the conceptual metaphors of a text used for entertainment
such as the Mahābhārata, or to record a conversion, such as the Therigāthā, or for
the conversion of others, such as the Buddhacarita. What is more, a deeper awareness of the cultural imaginaire may give us a better sense of how to read different
texts against each other; for example, there might be intriguing results if we read
the Mahābh̄arata texts against those of the Gṛhya Sūtras, which are concerned with
the domestic rituals that some of the epic characters might also have been part of.
To be sure, there are already many important instances of these kinds of
approaches in various pieces throughout the history of work on early India.17
But now we have some compelling recent theoretical invitations to explore even
more thoroughly the cultural nuances of conceptual metaphor, and to examine
the subtler dynamics of semantic extension in early India. Aśvaghoṣa’s ṛṣis, and
it seems, Aśvaghoṣa himself, might be asking us to take up this very task.
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to Sara McClintock. V. Narayana Rao, Parimal Patil, Brian Black, Karen
Muldoon-Hules, James Hegarty, and Alf Hiltebeitel for their comments on this
paper.
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Notes
1 For a larger early treatment of this idea, see Peters (1978); he follows Philip
Wheelwright and I.A. Richards in their understanding of metaphor as creating ‘new’
meaning.
2 Also see Renou, Etudes Védiques et Paninéènnes I pp.26–7; IX, pp. 15–16; Gonda, Vedic
Literature, pp. 71, 74.
3 See discussion in Gerow (1977), pp. 221–2̄; De (1960), pp. 3–8; Gerow (1971) s.v. upamā.
4 Ādi Parvan, Appendix I pp. 884–5; 13.34–6.
5 We have the similarities in sources that Johnston takes pains to show us: he notes
that Agni is dvija in 11.71. In 13.68, he applies nabhi to Agni and Soma by using the
word dhaman in its Vedic sense as a connotation. Buddhacarita 12.30 might imply
Vedic ritual employment in prokṣana and abhyukṣana, both of which are used in the
Śrauta Sūtras. Samaruḥ is a word in 4.24 which is attested to in the Brāhmaṇas, and
most importantly for our purposes, we have mention of oblations to Agni and
references to the Soma sacrifice (2.37) and to animal sacrifice 10.39 and 11.64–6. The
Pūrvamīmāṃsā Sūtras are not specifically referred to, except if vidhi is used in the
technical sense of 9.66. The efficacy of sacrifice itself is argued against in 11.64 and
following.
6 Buddhacarita 12.21 and Śvetasvara Upaniṣad 5.2 also suggest a sharing of phrases and
ideas. Brahmanical ascetics are described in chap. 7 of the Buddhacarita.
7 Equally important for our purposes, in the Brahmanical literature, Aśvaghoṣa refers
to the standard authorities of Uśanas, Śukra, and Bṛhaspati, and are called the
fundamental treatises in the Mahābhārata. Rājaśāstra is the term for the science of
politics while niti is the principle of worldly conduct at 4.62. Perhaps the treasure
and horses classification in 2.2a, b, and 4d might be from a work of śāstra. Aśvaghoṣa
uses several terms in the same way that Kauṭilya’s Arthaśāstra does. Aśvaghoṣa also
refers to medicine in similes, especially the three humours (11.40). He also mentions
astrology and astronomy in terms of the lunar asterisms and their regents (2.36; 16.2
and 17.41).
8 Buddhacarita 8.18–19 is quite similar in idea between Bhagavad Gītā 21.3.6 and 7. The
Kurus are referred to in 11.31 and Arjuna at 10.17; Bhīṣma at 11.18 (referring to a
story in the Harivāṃśa), and Buddhacarita 4.79 for the fatal attachment to women.
Aśvaghoṣa also refers to Śantanu’s love for Gaṅgā 12.2 from the Ādiparvan, but in
kāvya like style he focuses on Śantanu’s grief when Gaṅgā left him, something not
focused on in the epic. Buddhacarita 13.11 also discusses the princess Kumudvatī, and
alludes to the cycle dealing with Kṛṣṇa and Balarāma.
9 Rāmāyaṇa references are quite plentiful indeed. Aśvaghoṣa constantly mentions that
Buddha is from the Ikṣvāku dynasty, and suggests that Vālmīki is the ādikāvi (1.43).
One early Indological piece by Gawronski argues, in a good example of what
Bronkhorst would say was shaky understanding, that Aśvaghoṣa knew the Ayodhya
kāṇḍa and made explicit comparisons between Buddha leaving his home and Rāma
leaving for the forest. Buddhacarita 28.31 seems also to suggest that he knew the
continuation of the story. There is great similarity between the scene where
Hanuman visits Rāvana’s palace and sees the women asleep, and the scene of the
sleeping women in the young prince’s palace in the Buddhacarita. There are echoes in
Buddhacarita 4.20 that he knows the story of Viśvāmitra’s asceticism and its
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10
11
12
13
disturbance by the Apsaras, Ghṛtac̄i (Rāmāyaṇa 4.35.7). In the Bāla kāṇḍa, Menakā is
the Apsaras, and not Ghṛtac̄i (Johnston xlix). Finally, at 9.9, Aśvaghoṣa shows that
the purohita and minister to the future Buddha with the visit of Vasiṣṭha and
Vāmadeva, Daśaratha’s purohita and minister, to Rāma in the forest. Oddly in the
Vālmīki epic, Vāmadeva’s name occurs seldom but he is mentioned in
the Mahābhārata with Vasiṣṭha in the context of the retelling of Bharata’s journey
to the forest (note Johnston, p. l).
Śaivite ascetics is probably the inference in 7.51 and 13.21 and Vaiṣṇavas in 7.3 if we
understand cakradhara as bearing Viṣṇu’s discus. Buddhacarita 1.58; 8.73, 27.56 also
may well refer to Indra’s flag festival. For Buddhacarita 5.27 also suggests that the
Maruts are Indra’s attendants and Hayanta his son at 9.5. In 2.36 Śuddhodana
honours the lunar asterism. Chinese tradition suggests that Aśvaghoṣa was a Śaivite
before his conversion, and Śiva is referred to several times in the Buddhacarita.
Buddhacarita 10.3 implies knowledge of ascetic practices and 13.16 quotes a variant of
the Kumarasaṃbhava story where Jama is not burnt up by the god’s eye. In 1.88, we
also have an allusion to the birth of Skanda.
I am grateful to Velcheru Narayana Rao for this small proverb. While I could not
trace its provenance, it seemed appropriate to the discussion.
They frequently occur in the list of seven ṛṣis, or saptaṛṣi, but they do so at a much
later date than the earliest lists. The earliest list of the seven Ṛṣis is given by
Jaiminīya Brāhmaṇa 2.218–21: Vasiṣṭha, Bharavāja, Jamadagni, Gotama, Atri,
Viśvāmitra, and Agastya, followed by Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upanisad 2.2.6 with a slightly
different list: Gotama and Bharadvāja, Viśvāmitra and Jamadagni, Vasiṣṭha and
Kaśyapa, and Atri. In the Chandogya Upaniṣad 4, the sage asks the gotra of Satyakāma
Jabala; so it is clearly important by this stage. Buddhist literature as a whole makes
frequent references to gotras. One list includes Bhṛgu, Aṅgiras, Marici, Atri, Paulaha,
Pulastya, and Vasiṣṭha. (Intriguingly, one pandit mentioned to me that according to
one text, Bhṛgu and Aṅgiras could not properly represent as founders of families and
so later Jamadagni, Gautama, and Bharadvāja took their place. I did not have the
chance to inquire about the text or the reason.) The Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa lists
Gautama, Bharadvāja, Jamadagi, Atri Vasiṣṭha, Kaśyapa, and Viśvāmitra.The late
Gopatha Brāhmaṇa 1.2.8 has Vasiṣṭha, Viśvāmitra, Jamadagni, Gotama, Bharadvāja,
Guṅgu, Agastya, and Kaśyapa. Only later do we get a list that includes both Bhrigu
and Aṅgiras, found in the Sandhyvandanam as Atri, Bhṛgu, Kutsa, Vasiṣṭha, Gautama,
Kaśyapa, and Aṅgirasa. The major three that are always included, intriguingly are
Vasiṣṭha, Atri, and Kaśyapa, and the Buddhacarita also mentions these.
Even more importantly, Leumann supposed in 1896 that Cyavana, in witnessing a
similar scene of hunting in the forest, was unable to produce anything like the
Rāmāyaṇa from his sorrow. Indeed, as Johnston, following Leuman, writes, ‘he did
not produce his outcry in meter’. Leslie (2003:119) takes issue with this supposition,
and argues that both Leumann and Johnston are wrong: in her view, there was no
similar occasion between the two sages. See longer treatment of Cyavana in Leslie
(2003:130–5). See also discussion in Witzel (1987), who among other things focuses
on the early development of the story of Cyavana; and Doniger [O’Flaherty] 1973;
1985; 1999.
Ṛṣis Imagined Across Difference
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14 For example, 1.44 contains a great deal of material. Kuśika is portrayed as the
grandfather of Viśvāmitra, a sage who, through his own abilities at tapas, was able to
move from kṣatriya to Brahman, or twiceborn (dvija) status. Kuśika is referred to in
Ṛg Veda 3.33.5, 3.26.1; 3.29.15̄; 3.30.20̄; 3.42.9̄; 3.50.4; 3.53.9, 10. The family, and
Viśvāmitra in particular, figures in the legend of Śunaḥśepa and had, like Vasiṣṭha’s
lineage, become priests to the Bhāratas. Indra was one of this family’s major deities.
In the Mahābhārata (1.165), Viśvāmitra is known to have been enraged not to receive
Vasiṣṭha’s wealth-giving cow, and a battle ensues with Vasiṣṭha’s (and his cow’s)
miraculous martial powers. Viśvāmitra is overwhelmed by Vasiṣṭha’s great ascetic
powers, and retires to the Himalayas and performs great tapas, and gains the status
of a Brahman. Sagara’s ‘setting the boundaries’ in 1.44 suggests the story of his
recovery of the sacrificial horse from the demons (Mahābhārata 3.104–08). After
receiving the sons as a boon from Śiva, he sent 60,000 of his sons to dig through the
earth and dig up the ocean bed. In the farthermost north-east corner of the ocean,
they discovered the horse grazing near another great ṛṣi, Kapila. Neither Sagara’s
grandson Aṃśumat nor his great grandson Dilīpa can avenge the ancestors’ ashes,
but his great grandson Bhagīratha was successful in bringing down the river Gaṅgā
to revive them. The establishing of the boundaries of the ocean may well refer to the
sons going to that most north-eastern corner of the ocean, or to their digging up of
the ocean bed. In addition, in 1.45, King Janaka appears in the Upaniṣads
(Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad U 2.1.1; 3.1.1–2; 4.1–4) as well as the Mahābhārata (cf.
12.313) as a great teacher, even though he reverses the usual expectation that
Brahmans teach kings, and is a king who teaches Brahmans. Śūra is the father of
Vāsudeva, the great Mahābhārata king. Vāsudeva is also known as Śauri, and the
father of Kṛṣṇa.
15 Two particular examples of this approach might be that of Hiltebeitel in arguing for
the Mahābhārata as a literary document (1999:155–6) and Flores (2008), in arguing for
the reading of Buddhist texts as literary documents. Flores is particularly persuasive
in his chapter on metaphors, similes, and ironies, ‘Right Figures of Speech’ (88–101).
Flores understands metaphor to be a comparison towards a higher, more
spiritualised realm, which is not the fuller meaning of semantic extension that we
aspire to here. However, even in this narrower view, Flores shows the ways in which
this particular kind of semantic extension is used by the Buddha to change the terms
of reference in any given conversation. For example, when a Brahman asks whether
the Buddha would approve of killing anything, the Buddha responds, ‘Slaying wrath
you’ll live in happiness. Slaying wrath you have no more need to weep. Kill the
poisoned root of anger, Brahmin’ (Samyutta Nikāya 7.1.1, cited in Flores, 89).
16 The French term imaginaire, the imaginary, the imaging or the imagining function of
the psyche, is a concept coined in the 20th century, to re-ennoble and to re-enhance
the suffering and discredited term ‘imagination’. L’imaginaire (treated grammatically
as a noun) has two overlapped meanings (Wunenburger 2003). In the first instance, it
designates the products of the imagination, the passive body of images, and
representations created by an individual or collective fantasy. As H. Védrine puts it,
L’imaginaire is ‘the whole world of beliefs, ideas, myths, ideologies that pervade each
individual and each civilisation’ (Védrine 1990). In the second instance, L’imaginaire
is seen, on a larger scale, as the dynamic human faculty of creating this complex
76
Laurie L. Patton
system of images. For Claude-Gilbert Dubois, it is ‘the visible outcome of a psychic
energy, which has its formal structures both at the level of individuals and of
collectivities’. Dubois (1985); see the helpful article from Braga (2007).
17 For particularly good examples of approaches which integrate all of the principles I
suggest the above, see Shulman (2001) and Malamoud (1996). I also look forward to
the completion of Roy Tzohar's dissertation, ‘Word as World: Metaphors and
Intersubjectivity in the Buddhist “Mind-Only” School of Philosophy’, from Columbia
University.