E-Book Overview
Head, Eyes, Flesh, and Blood is the first comprehensive study of a central narrative theme in premodern South Asian Buddhist literature: the Buddha's bodily self-sacrifice during his previous lives as a bodhisattva. Conducting close readings of stories from Sanskrit, Pali, Chinese, and Tibetan literature written between the third century B.C.E. and the late medieval period, Reiko Ohnuma argues that this theme has had a major impact on the development of Buddhist philosophy and culture.Whether he takes the form of king, prince, ascetic, elephant, hare, serpent, or god, the bodhisattva repeatedly gives his body or parts of his flesh to others. He leaps into fires, drowns himself in the ocean, rips out his tusks, gouges out his eyes, and lets mosquitoes drink from his blood, always out of selflessness and compassion and to achieve the highest state of Buddhahood. Ohnuma places these stories into a discrete subgenre of South Asian Buddhist literature and approaches them like case studies, analyzing their plots, characterizations, and rhetoric. She then relates the theme of the Buddha's bodily self-sacrifice to major conceptual discourses in the history of Buddhism and South Asian religions, such as the categories of the gift, the body (both ordinary and extraordinary), kingship, sacrifice, ritual offering, and death. Head, Eyes, Flesh, and Blood reveals a very sophisticated and influential perception of the body in South Asian Buddhist literature and highlights the way in which these stories have provided an important cultural resource for Buddhists. Combined with her rich and careful translations of classic texts, Ohnuma introduces a whole new understanding of a vital concept in Buddhists studies. (6/1/2007)
E-Book Content
HEAD, EYES, FLESH, AND BLOOD Giving Away the Body in Indian Buddhist Literature Reiko Ohnuma
Columbia University Press New York
Head, Eyes, Flesh, and Blood
Image has been suppressed
HEAD, EYES, FLESH, AND BLOOD Giving Away the Body in Indian Buddhist Literature
Reiko Ohnuma
Image has been suppressed
co lu m b ia u n i versi t y press
new york
Columbia University Press Publishers Since 1893 New York, Chichester, West Sussex Copyright © 2007 Columbia University Press All rights reserved Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Ohnuma, Reiko. Head, eyes, flesh, and blood : giving away the body in Indian Buddhist literature / Reiko Ohnuma. p. cm. Originally presented as the author’s thesis (Ph.D.—University of Michigan). Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-231-13708-7 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 0-231-51028-4 (e-book) 1. Buddhist literature—India—Themes, motives. 2. Sacrifice in literature. 3. Gautama Buddha—Pre-existence. I. Title. BQ1029.I42056 2006 294.3'42—dc22 2006019767 o Columbia University Press books are printed on permanent and durable acid-free paper. Printed in the United States of America c 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For Toshi and Shoroku Ohnuma All good things began with you
CONTENTS
Illustrations Tables Conventions Used in This Book Acknowledgments
ix xi xiii xv
Introduction
1
The Gift-of-the-Body Genre
26
i
ii
Conventions of Plot
52
Conventions of Rhetoric
90
Dāna: The Buddhist Discourse on Giving
140
v
A Flexible Gift
167
Bodies Ordinary and Ideal
199
iii iv
vi
contents
vii
viii
Kingship, Sacrifice, Offering, and Death: Some Other Interpretive Contexts
242
Conclusions
266
Appendix: A Corpus of Gift-of-the-Body Jātakas Notes Bibliography of Works Cited Index
273 285 337 359
I L LU S T R AT I O N S
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