introduction 1

INTRODUCTION

The Gandavyūha-sūtra is one of the great sacred scriptures of Mahāyāna , widely known and deeply revered throughout the Buddhist world. Sometimes regarded as the Bud- dhist counterpart of John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, it tells an allegorical tale of a pilgrimage undertaken by a “son of good family” named Sudhana. The Great Mañjuśrī singles him out from among a large crowd of worshipers as a person who is spiritually prepared to embark on the final stretch of the path leading towards Enlightenment. The Great Bodhisattva sends him on a pilgrimage to visit more than fifty Good Friends, spiritual mentors, known as kalyānamitras, in order to seek their instruction in the Conduct of the Bodhisattva. These wise teachers come from all walks of life and include a surprisingly large number of women and non-Buddhists. Among them are five monks, a nun, four Buddhist lay women, an itinerant hermit, a ship’s captain, several householders and bankers, two kings, eight Night Goddesses, five , and even the Hindu God Śiva Mahādeva, as well as Gopā and Māyā, the Historical Buddha’s spouse and mother. None of these wise mentors is in possession of per- fect knowledge, but each one of them has achieved a different state of spiritual detachment, variously called vimoksa or dharmaparyāya, which they describe for Sudhana’s benefit before they refer him to his next teacher. The accumulative effect of their teachings is that Sudhana advances to a state of mind in which only the Great Bodhisattvas are able to provide him with additional instruction. After a lengthy visit to , the Buddha of the Future, in his palace of miracles, and a brief, second encounter with Mañjuśrī, Sudhana arrives at the residence of his last teacher, the Bodhisattva . The scripture concludes with theBhadracarī , a Buddhist hymn in praise of Samantabhadra, verses of which are still regularly recited by Bud- dhists in countries as far apart as Tibet and Japan. The meaning and etymology of the name Gandavyūha remain unknown. Its Chinese title, Rufajiepin, or The Chapter on Entering the Dharmadhātu (the Realm of Ultimate Reality) aptly sums up the Leitmotiv of the sūtra and has therefore been incorporated in the title of the present study. The text of the Gandavyūha has been preserved in several Sanskrit manuscripts and two modern editions, as well as in three complete Chinese and several Tibetan translations. The Gandavyūha enjoyed immense popularity in the Buddhist world. In ancient times it served as a source of inspiration for artists of murals in Buddhist cave temples in Central Asia, sculptors and book illustrators in China, as well as painters of hand scrolls and hanging scrolls in Japan. The most monumental and by far the most elaborate set of illustrations of this sūtra was cre- ated by the sculptors of the Buddhist sanctuary in Central Java (9th century c.e.) . The contents of theGandavyūha and its appendix, the Buddhist hymn Bhadracarī, have been illustrated in 460 bas-relief panels on the second, third, and fourth level of this great Buddhist monument. This set of bas-reliefs will be analyzed in detail in the following chapters. 2 introduction

A Short History of the Identification of the Gandavyūha Reliefs of Borobudur

The Dutch scholar N.J.Krom can lay claim to the discovery that theGandavyūha was the liter- ary source of inspiration for the sculptors of the reliefs on the main wall of the second gallery of Borobudur. In 1915 Krom returned to Holland on extended home leave from his duties as director of the Archaeological Service of Indonesia, at that time known as the Dutch East Indies. Shortly after his return he was commissioned by the Dutch government to write an archaeological description of Borobudur. The result of this assignment was the first installment of an impressive five-volume monograph on Borobudur (Krom 1920). His collaborator was Theodoor van Erp, an officer in the Corps of Engineers, who had conducted the first restora- tion of Borobudur. Van Erp assumed responsibility for the three portfolios of photographs and architectural drawings. He later published a companion text volume, devoted to an archi- tectural description of the monument, in which he gave a detailed account of the first partial restoration of the monument, carried out under his supervision between 1907 and 1911 (van Erp 1931). Krom took up his assignment while the First World War raged across Europe. Stranded in isolated, neutral Holland, he found there all the peace and quiet he needed to complete his detailed and voluminous monograph in record time. Other scholars had earlier recommended that a survey of Sanskrit, Tibetan, and Chinese Buddhist texts should precede efforts to iden- tify the literary sources of the many unidentified bas-reliefs of Borobudur. However, due to war-time travel restrictions, the rich South and Southeast Asian library resources of England and France, where such research could have been conducted to better advantage, remained inaccessible to Krom. Undaunted by this obstacle, he began to peruse a vast amount of second- ary literature in search of potential clues to the identification of the Borobudur reliefs. While pursuing this task, he chanced upon two excerpts, which the Indian scholars Rajendralala Mitra and Haraprasad Sastri had made of a palm leaf Sanskrit manuscript, preserved in the Library of the Asiatic Society of Bengal in Calcutta. It was a little known Buddhist scripture bearing the title Gandavyūha, a name of uncertain etymology and obscure meaning (Krom 1920, 481-84). Krom was struck by the resemblance between the visits paid by the chief protagonist of the story, a young pilgrim named Sudhana, to a number of Good Friends, or kalyānamitras, and the scenes carved in bas-relief on the main wall of the second gallery of Borobudur. There a story has been illustrated of a young man, who can be seen paying homage to a succession of teachers from many different walks of life, including even , goddesses, and Bodhisattvas. Krom correctly concluded that it was the Gandavyūha which had provided the inspiration for the sculptors of Borobudur. The Gandavyūha was accessible to Krom only in these two incomplete and sometimes rather sketchy excerpts. Most of the wise mentors whom Sudhana encounters in the course of his quest for Enlightenment were mentioned by name in the excerpts and several of them could easily be recognized in the reliefs by their traditional attributes. Among them were the Bodhisattvas Mañjuśrī and Avalokiteśvara, as well as the Hindu god Śiva Mahādeva. The rather non-specific, stereotypical manner of representing some of Sudhana’s other mentors sometimes made their identification more speculative. However, such mentors as bhiksus, a bhiksunī, and a Brahman could easily be identified by the dress and hair style indicative of their status. Together with the above-mentioned Bodhisattvas and Śiva they provided Krom with a