The Concept of Friendship in the Jātaka Tales

chapter 2 The Concept of Friendship in the Jātaka Tales Ranjini Obeyesekere Abstract This article discusses three stories from the Jātaka Collection, a compendium of Bud- dhist folk stories—some of which date back to the third century bce. The collection as it exists today was complied, scholars believe, between the first and fifth centuries ce. Since that time it has been translated back and forth into many languages and has become part of the popular culture of the Asian Buddhist world. The three stories the author has selected are from a fourteenth-century ce Sinhala text and focus around the theme of ‘friendship.’ They deal with three different forms of friendship as experienced in medieval Indian and Sri Lankan societies. Introduction Friendship as an experienced form of human interaction has existed since the beginning of time. The fact that humans project such relationships on to other creatures as well, especially pets, suggests its pervasive and powerful presence as a form of social and emotional interaction. Today, the concept in its many forms and permutations has been analyzed and theorized, seen as an ideal of moral or social conduct, or as a formula that is constantly changing according to changing societies and cultures. In this article, I have examined three stories from the collection of folk tales popularly known as the Jātaka, or stories of the Buddha’s previous births. These Jātaka stories first appeared in the Buddhist canon formulated by the council of early Buddhist monks in the third century bce.1 They were used—as they are still used—in sermons by monks to illustrate a moral point or some human frailty. The Jātaka were also depicted in early Buddhist sculptures, and in later 1 That a collection of these birth stories (though perhaps not in their present form) existed as far back as the third century bce was suggested by the nineteenth-century Pāli scholar, Rhys Davids, who claims that the collection was included as a section of what became known as the Buddhist canon in both the Mahayana and Theravada traditions of Buddhism. See Rhys Davids, Buddhist Birth Stories, lxxx–lxxxiii. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ��7 | doi �0.��63/9789004344�98_004 Ranjini Obeyesekere - 9789004344198 Downloaded from Brill.com09/26/2021 09:36:59PM via free access <UN> 60 Obeyesekere centuries as temple murals or frescoes throughout the Buddhist world. Since the early Buddhist period they have percolated into the cultural imagination of Buddhists and have been translated into many languages. While most of the Jātaka were originally in verse form, with possibly a few prose commentaries, the first full prose version was believed by scholars to have been in Sinhala, a Buddhist commentarial text written in Sri Lanka; this version would have been translated into Pāli in the fifth century ce. In the fourth century ce, this Pāli text was translated (and maybe also adapted) into the Sinhala Book of Five Hundred and Fifty Jātaka Stories. As the Jātaka stories appear again in the fourteenth century as a retranslation from the Pāli, the early Sinhala version is very likely to have been lost. One thus gets a sense of the long tradition of translations of Buddhist texts—back and forth—that existed in the ancient and medieval Buddhist world. The fifth-century Pāli text was translated into English by E.B. Cowell; the stories presented here are taken from the fourteenth-century Sinhala work, volume one of which is now translated into English.2 The three stories that I have chosen deal specifically with the theme of friendship. Here a caveat might be in order: since my background is in litera- ture, my approach to these texts may seem to be from a literary rather than a sociological perspective. Still, in analyzing these simple stories, I shall try to describe some of the ways in which the varied kinds of relationships were cat- egorized as friendship, and the contexts in which they appear in these stories. In doing so I attempt to throw some light on how the concept of friendship was perceived and understood at that time and in that society and the moral codes on which the concept was founded. Each story deals directly with the theme of friendship as it was understood and experienced in a traditional medieval South Asian society. Each story deals with a different form or kind of friendship involving different agents and contexts. I shall discuss what underlying conceptual resemblances there are between the different forms as illustrated in the three stories, even though they may not have been conceptualized in any formal way in those Indian or Sri Lankan societies; and if so, how they relate to modern day concepts of friendship. We can thus get a sense of how the special relationship we term ‘friendship’ existed in its many forms and variations, in human societies across time and geographical space. 2 Obeyesekere, The Revered Book of Five Hundred and Fifty Jātaka Stories; see also Cowell (ed.), The Jātaka or Stories of the Buddha’s Former Births. Ranjini Obeyesekere - 9789004344198 Downloaded from Brill.com09/26/2021 09:36:59PM via free access <UN> The Concept of Friendship in the Jātaka Tales 61 The Jātaka Story of the Devoted Ones The first story, entitled “The Jātaka Story of the Devoted Ones” (Abhinha Jātaka: No. 27),3 has a three-part structure, as in the case of most Jātaka tales. The beginning of the story is described as “the story of the present.” It indicates when and in what context the Buddha related this story. This is followed by an account of a “story of the past.” This second part refers to an event or story about a particular incident in a past life of the Buddha at the time he was still a Bodhisatva, working his way to becoming a Buddha, when he happened to be born in animal form, as a bird, or in human form. Then there is a concluding section that connects characters in the past story with those in the present. Here the story goes as follows: Two friends lived in the city of Sävät. One of the two became a monk, but the other visited him every day. The lay friend offered alms to the monk, then ate his own meal, and thereafter accompanied the monk to the monastery. There he chatted with the monk, walked around with him till sunset and only then returned to the city. The monk would accom- pany his friend up to the city gates and see him off. The other monks began to talk about this close, almost unnatural association and they brought up the matter with the Buddha. The Buddha then related this story of the past. A little dog was in the habit of hanging around the royal elephant’s stable and picking up left over grains of rice. The two became very close friends. The dog would grab the elephant’s trunk and sway back and forth play- fully. As they lived thus, one day, a villager from a remote hamlet, bought the dog from the elephant keeper, and returned to his village with him [the dog]. From then on that elephant, not seeing the dog, refused to eat his food, would not drink any water, would not even take his daily bath. The king is upset that his royal elephant is dying and sends his minister to find out the cause. The minister checks the animal, sees that there is no physical illness, realizes that the elephant is sad about some loss, and makes inquiries from the elephant keeper: “Did the elephant have a close association with anyone?” “Yes master. There was a certain dog and they were very good friends.” “Where is the dog now?” 3 Cowell et al. Vol. 1, 69–70. Ranjini Obeyesekere - 9789004344198 Downloaded from Brill.com09/26/2021 09:36:59PM via free access <UN> 62 Obeyesekere “He was taken away by a certain villager.” “Do you know where he lives?” “No your honor, I do not know that.” The Minister realizes that the elephant is pining for his friend the dog. The king is informed, a proclamation is made throughout the country that a dog taken from the proximity of the royal elephant’s stable should be returned. The villager releases the dog, and the second part of the story ends as follows: The dog ran swiftly to the elephant. The elephant lifted the dog in his trunk, placed him on top of his head, then wept for joy, put the dog down gently and ate his food only after the dog had first eaten. The story concludes with the Buddha linking the story of the elephant and the dog to that of the monk and his friend. He says, “Monks, these two were close associates not just in this life but in the past too.”4 Let us now look at this friendship. On a certain level the animal story is a meta- phor for the human world. At another level it has a meaning and life of its own—as a possible relationship existing even between nonhuman creatures. This particular friendship is unusual—between two unlikely species. Yet the word used is the same word that is still used in the language for friend— yahaluvo dedenek (two friends). There is the enormous difference in size, and such size should naturally generate fear in the smaller creature. In this case it happens not to be so. Nor is the relationship erotic or gender based. The source of the friendship is one that grows out of daily close association and the trust that such association generates.

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