Pleasure and Poetics as Tools for Transformation in Aśvaghoṣa’s mahākāvya

Abstract

Why does Aśvaghoṣa (c. second century C.E.), the first known author of a Buddhist literary work, choose a literary genre (mahākāvya) with erotic scenes and elaborate poetic language to present the truth that leads to liberation? This question, which has puzzled and fascinated scholars since the first known translations of Buddhacarita and Saundarananda, is often answered by turning to a statement Aśvaghoṣa makes, which suggests that such methods are necessary to reach his worldly audience, who are interested only in pleasure and not liberation. Dismissed as mere sugarcoating for “the bitter truth” of the Buddhist doctrine, the impact of the pleasures and poetics of Aśvaghoṣa’s work upon the reader has rarely been explored. Methods emphasizing a hermeneutic approach to scholarship, focused on interpreting what such works have to say, has meant less attention to what these works do to transform readers (their poetics). However, new attention to the literary aspects of Aśvaghoṣa’s mahākāvya, a genre of long-form narrative literature known for its poetic features, as well as recent scholarship on the Sanskrit courtly culture for which it was produced, suggest pleasure is a central feature. In this article I argue that comparative analysis of the dramatic structure of Buddhacarita and Saundarananda demonstrates that Aśvaghoṣa uses his ability as a dramatist to employ rasa, pleasurable aesthetic experiences, staged to gradually transform the minds of readers. I argue that as the plots of Buddhacarita and Saundarananda unfold, and the Buddha and his brother Nanda go from erotic and ascetic scenes to the sites of liberation, readers are engaged and moved in ways that refine their perceptions, introducing forms of concentration and insight not unlike the Buddhist practices depicted in these works.

1. Introduction

Why does Aśvaghoṣa the first known author of a Buddhist literary work (c. second century C.E.)1, choose a literary genre (mahākāvya) with erotic scenes and elaborate poetic language to present the truth that leads to liberation? This question, which has puzzled and fascinated scholars since the first known translations of Buddhacarita and Saundarananda, is often answered by turning to a statement Aśvaghoṣa makes, suggesting that such methods are necessary to reach his worldly audience, who are interested only in pleasure and not liberation (Aśvaghoṣa 1928a, XVIII. 63–64).2 Unfortunately, the impact of such pleasures and poetics upon the reader3 has rarely been explored, as these features are usually dismissed as mere sugarcoating for “the bitter truth” of the Buddha’s teachings.4 Methods emphasizing a hermeneutic approach to scholarship of Aśvaghoṣa’s works, focused on interpreting what they have to say, has resulted in less attention to what these works do to transform readers (their poetics). However, new attention to the literary aspects of Aśvaghoṣa’s mahākāvya, a genre of long-form narrative literature known for its poetic features, as well as recent scholarship on the Sanskrit courtly culture for which it was produced, suggest new ways of understanding the function of pleasure and poetics in Aśvaghoṣa’s work.

In this article I argue that comparative analysis of the dramatic structure of Buddhacarita and Saundarananda demonstrates that Aśvaghoṣa uses his ability as a dramatist to employ rasa, pleasurable aesthetic experiences, staged to gradually transform the minds of readers. I argue that as the plots of Buddhacarita and Saundarananda unfold, and the Buddha and his brother Nanda go from erotic and ascetic scenes to the sites of liberation, readers are engaged and moved in ways that refine their perceptions, introducing forms of concentration and insight not unlike the Buddhist practices depicted in these works.

Assumptions that the erotic and poetic features of Aśvaghoṣa’s works are problematic or contradict Buddhist values often reflect a lack of knowledge of the courtly context in which scholars now situate Aśvaghoṣa’s work. The Chinese monks5 and Colonial Europeans who first encountered Buddhacarita, for example, had only their own scholarly, conceptual frameworks for interpreting it. Chinese legends of Aśvaghoṣa, which likely predate the translations of his works, depict him as a monk (Eltschinger 2020, p. 100). Subsequent scholars inheriting this legend have tended not to question it as carefully as they have questioned the authorship of the many works that are falsely attributed to him by this same Chinese tradition. Colonial Europeans, working with Western concepts of religion, accepted Aśvaghoṣa’s identity as a monk and added to it their assumption that his evident Brahmanical background meant he was a convert to Buddhism. The idea that Aśvaghoṣa experienced a dramatic transformation of his identity, despite the fluid boundaries between the Brahmanical and Buddhist communities in Aśvaghoṣa’s works, suggests ideas of religion and of Buddhism foreign to Buddhacarita and Saundarananda. Some even assert that the only purpose of his literary work was a kind of missionary conversion of others to his own, presumably monastic, lifestyle. The further assumption that Buddhist monasticism is an ascetic tradition and not the middle way between hedonism and asceticism, as I suggest Aśvaghoṣa’s works present them to be, is often implied as well. Thus the question emerges, Why would a monk like Aśvaghoṣa seek to evoke the passions of an audience whom he wishes to convert to his ascetic lifestyle?

Aśvaghoṣa’s final verses, or colophons, in Buddhacarita and Saundarananda, are often interpreted as apologies for what is viewed as the erotic and poetic extravagence of these works, as if they represent a form of indulgence or transgression on his part. While the anecdotes and figures of speech the Buddha used to illustrate his teachings are prominent in the doctrine collected in Sūtra and Vinaya literature, and while poetic verses are commonly recited in Buddhist rituals, poetry itself is suspect due to its potential to distort the truth and divert attention from the path to liberation. The more elaborate poetics of Aśvaghoṣa’s Buddhacarita and Saundarananda are often blamed for manipulating illusions and the temptations of the senses in order to convince those interested only in worldly pleasure to convert to Buddhism. E.H. Johnston, whose critical editions, introductions and translations of both works from 1928 to 1936 are foundational to the field, sees Aśvaghoṣa as a former Brahman, who writes with “passion” out of his own conflicting desires and “the necessity of convincing himself” that “the pull which the world exerted on him” and its “ordinary joys” were to be denounced (Johnston 1984, pp. xcvi–xcvii). Linda Covill builds upon this view in presenting Aśvaghoṣa as “torn between his celibacy-demanding faith and a beloved woman” (Covill 2007, p. 18).

Yet Buddhist attitudes towards sexuality are more complex. Monastics must be well informed about the erotic partly because of the rules they memorize and follow. These include prohibitions against engaging in any form of sexual practice (Gyatso 2005). If Aśvaghoṣa was in fact a monk, he would not be the only one said to have composed erotic poetry such as that collected in Vidyākara’s treasury (Vidyākara and Ingalls 1968). The fact that the only evidence for Aśvaghoṣa’s monasticism actually comes from Chinese sources that are clearly defective in other regards (Nattier 2005, pp. 41–45) also warrants reflection.

Scholars such as Madeleine Biardeau have increasingly pointed out the interaction between Buddhists and Brahmans in Aśvaghoṣa’s period, when these two traditions were developing in dialogue, not only in texts like the Mahābhārata and the Ramāyana, but in the communities structured by caste where Indian Buddhists might feel completely “at home” (Hiltebeitel 2006, p. 229). Alf Hiltebeitel suggests such a lifestyle appears to “fit the Buddhist writer Aśvaghoṣa...to a T.” (Hiltebeitel 2006, p. 231). This is especially true given his position at the court of the Kūṣāṇa rulers, Central Asians with their own Buddhist traditions who supported Brahmanical culture and the arts in what appears to have been a cosmopolitan environment. The fact that the colophon of Buddhacarita notes it was composed for patrons reminds us that Aśvaghoṣa was not simply a poet or a preacher but someone employed to conduct artistic labor on behalf of those who appeared to promote the arts as much as they did Buddhism as a part of the Brahmanical heritage of their subjects.

By moving away from European assumptions about sexuality, religious conversion, literary expression, and authorship, we can set aside the idea that the pleasures of Aśvaghoṣa’s works are the unconscious projections of their author and instead conceptualize them as poetic strategies engineered to engage and transform their readers. As I see it, Aśvaghoṣa’s statement in the colophon of Saundarananda instructs us that the pleasures and poetics his genre of kāvya relies on to “tell” its truth in literary form to an audience interested only in pleasure and not liberation” (Aśvaghoṣa 1928a, XVIII. 63–64) are significant. They are not superficial but integral to bringing about tranquility or peace.6

The colophon of the Tibetan translation of Buddhacarita (Aśvaghoṣa 2010, XXVII. 74),7 which extends the Sanskrit fragment of the text, further suggests that pleasure is an important part of this work as well. However, this is not evident from either the Chinese nor Johnston’s translation from the Tibetan (which he sometimes mixes with the Chinese). His translation of this last verse XXVIII. 74 reads:

Thus this poem has been composed for the good and happiness of all people in accordance with the Sage’s Scriptures, out of reverence for the Bull of sages, and not to display the qualities of learning or skill in poetry.

(Aśvaghoṣa 1984, p. 124)

As my reading of the Tibetan shows, Johnston notably omits the reference to the patrons who requested or sponsored the work, which establishes Aśvaghoṣa to be an artist or cultural worker in service to the Kuṣāṇa court, not simply the missionary preacher the early Chinese and most English translations suggest, who purpose is to “save the world” as the Chinese translation claims.8 Indeed, the final verses of the Chinese translation of Buddhacarita, which also censors the erotic details of the scenes with the courtesans, makes no mention of Aśvaghoṣa’s interest in the pleasure of the reader, which is clearly evident in the Tibetan term skyid. Johnston follows the Tibetan example in this case but translates skyid as the more abstract “happiness,” as opposed to the “delight” I use to indicate both the mental and bodily pleasure this term suggests in Tibetan.

As my translation of this verse demonstrates, Aśvaghoṣa’s noble purpose is not as exalted as the Chinese suggests which is to “save” the world in a manner more akin to the Buddha than to a court poet. As I read Aśvaghoṣa’s colophon, it is clear this is an author, not a preacher, who seeks to inspire “goodness” or ethics and pleasure or “delight”.

The noble Aśvaghoṣa composed this work about the Buddha and his acts

not to show off his talent and erudition but in response

to the request of patrons inspired by (the teachings of)

the excellent holders of the dharma

for the goodness and delight of all near and far.9

From this perspective, the ultimate value of Aśvaghoṣa’s work—the “gold” as he describes it in Saundarananda (Aśvaghoṣa 1928a, XVIII. 64)—is not simply the truth of the doctrine it contains, but the understanding of such truth in the mind of the reader. Literary experience refines the reader’s mind in a way that disciplines its ordinary emotions and senses, making tranquility possible. This process of refining the mind allows the gold of the dharma received to illuminate it. Just as gold is refined from the ore in the earth, so the raw materials of the reader’s own sensual and emotional capacities are the source of a clearer understanding of reality, which is the sense of the Sanskrit term that Aśvaghoṣa uses in his statement at the end of Saundarananda to refer to truth (tattvaṃ).

While a complete treatment of Aśvaghoṣa’s literary strategies is beyond the scope of this article, I rely here on a more extensive comparative reading of the dramatic structure of Buddhacarita and Saundarananda and their figurative strategies (Regan 2016) to demonstrate some of the ways the pleasures of Aśvaghoṣa’s works and their poetics function as a skillful means to gradually refine the reader’s understanding. As I theorize this process, the reader responds to the experiences of the Buddha and his brother Nanda on their paths to awakening and is likewise transformed by aesthetic experiences on what I call “the path of the text.” As Nanda, initially too caught up in lovemaking to perceive the dharma, is aided by the Buddha’s skillful means, so the reader, easily distracted by worldly attachments, is engaged and focused by Aśvaghoṣa’s literary techniques in a process that resembles and introduces the practices of meditation his works emphasize.

2. The Problems and Possibilities of Translation

Erotic scenes of the future Buddha and his brother entertaining women of the court in pleasure gardens and private chambers in Aśvaghoṣa’s Buddhacarita and Saundarananda may seem more appropriate as illustrations of the Kāmasūtra than descriptions of the Buddhist path to liberation. While Chinese translators made a special effort to replicate the rhythms of Buddhacarita’s Sanskrit verse like those in Buddhist literature translated for ritual recitation, they neglected to translate more complex elements of its poetics and censored the erotic scenes in the fourth century C.E. Fó suŏxíng zàn (Lettere 2015, p. 377). As monastic scholars, presumably translating for a monastic audience with different needs and expectations than those of the Sanskrit court, these Chinese translators may have been concerned with prohibitions against erotic. However, they may have also found it trivial or unnecessary. The style of this Chinese translation, which favors paraphrasing over the word-to-word correspondence of the Tibetan translation, might also demonstrate concern with monastic prohibitions against forms of wrong speech found in early Buddhist teachings, such as that in the Dīgha Nikāya, where the occupation of poet is said to be a “wrong livelihood,” unsuitable for someone on the path to liberation. Poetry’s potential to distort the truth of the dharma is highlighted in passages in the Aṅguttara Nikāya and Saṃyutta Nikāya, which cautions against sūtras that are “created by poets, mere poetry, showy in vowels and consonants, heretical, spoken by disciples.” (Covill 2009, p. 25, n. 19). Aśvaghoṣa’s apologetic statement at the end of Buddhacarita, as rendered in both the paraphrased Chinese and the more literal Tibetan translation discussed previously, emphasizes that he has not composed this work in order to show off his talent and erudition, implying that this is a fault his work might suggest. At the very least, we can assume that Chinese translators regarded the effects of the erotic and poetic features of Aśvaghoṣa’s work to be unnecessary for communicating the essential content of the work to their target audience.

Unfortunately, such omissions not only restrained the impact of its poetics but also made room for misinterpretations. The sexless depictions of the courtesans in the Fó suŏxíng zàn might give the impression that it was Siddhārtha’s boredom and not his exposure to suffering that led him to abandon his life in the palace, as Laura Lettere observed (Lettere 2015, p. 383). Just as the legends of Aśvaghoṣa’s biography and the works attributed to him had an impact on subsequent scholars, the Fó suŏxíng zàn had an impact on European readers. The first European translation of this work by Samuel Beal in 1883 was one of the earliest English translations of Buddhist literature, published in The Sacred Books of the East, edited by Max Müller (Beal 1975). Together with the subsequent translation of Buddhacarita from a Sanskrit fragment, published in a later volume of this series by Edward B. Cowell in 1894 (Cowell 1991), Aśvaghoṣa’s work was one of the earliest and most influential texts to introduce Buddhism in the West. Its classification as a primarily religious text, and not by its Sanskrit literary genre, has impacted scholarly assumptions that its purpose is primarily didactic (to teach doctrine) and not literary (to transform the reader with its poetics) as I suggest.10

New translations, which are themselves new readings of classic works, are essential for the development of the literary methods our re-examination of Aśvaghoṣa’s work demands. Works like Buddhacarita and Saundarananda, last translated into European languages in the late nineteenth to early twentieth century, are frequently compromised by misinterpretations, such as what Herbert Guenther has described as “the translators’ inability to distinguish between ontology and epistemology” (Guenther 1996, p. 181). The diction of such translations often projects Western concepts, such as “sin,” and “enlightenment,” into the Buddhism they describe, effectively appropriating or “colonizing” it within Western traditions. Such problems, as well as E.H. Johnston’s own admission of his limitations, helped produce the first complete scholarly translations of Aśvaghoṣa’s mahākāvya in English in almost a century: Linda Covill’s 2007 translation of Saundarananda (Handsome Nanda) and Patrick Olivelle’s 2008 translation of Buddhacarita (Life of the Buddha).

3. New Approaches to Reading Aśvaghoṣa’s Literary Works

As contemporary scholars of Aśvaghoṣa, alert to the literary features of his works in distinct ways, Covill and Olivelle developed their translations with historical and philological insights that appear to have sparked a wave of new scholarship with their own scholarly reflections on them. Olivelle claims his verse translation of Buddhacarita is meant to “convey the literary spirit of the text.” (Olivelle 2008, p. lii). His Life of the Buddha uses rhymes, repetition, and modern rhythms to effectively mirror the Sanskrit in ways not achievable in Johnston’s prose. Covill, on the other hand, who sees Saundarananda primarily as a didactic work, not a true poem (Covill 2009, pp. 15–16), avoids verse in her Handsome Nanda, while updating its diction in the same way as Olivelle.

Despite her failure to see Aśvaghoṣa’s work as poetry, Covill is nevertheless interested in what its poetic language does to convert readers to Buddhism, as she presumes is Saundarananda’s aim. While she rejects 7th–10th century Indic models of poetics as too anachronistic to be helpful in understanding Aśvaghoṣa’s, she nevertheless uses the (much later and more culturally distant) theories of metaphor proposed by George Lakoff to support her analysis of what she calls the “conversion metaphors” she claims Aśvaghoṣa relies on to convert his presumably Brahmanical audience to Buddhist points of view. While this focus on metaphor is a promising shift in scholarly approach, Covill’s lack of attention to the genre of Aśvaghoṣa’s work means that she makes assumptions that he is (1) not at all interested in the pleasure of his audience, (2) sees kāvya as inherently superficial, (3) only “pays lip service” to its value in order to proselytize (Covill 2009, p. 65), and ignores more relevant earlier forms of Indic. Such views limit her access to any function the poetics of the work might have besides this kind of missionary conversion she presumes is its goal.

While Johnston himself does not neglect the significance of Aśvaghoṣa’s function as a poet, those who follow him are often less interested in these aspects of his work, privileging (like Johnston) what they see as the ultimate value of this work, i.e., its truth.11 Covill is not the only scholar interested in exploring features such as metaphor as rhetorical instruments for the delivery of doctrine.

Other recent work on the aesthetic dimensions of Aśvaghoṣa’s mahākāvya comes from scholars of Buddhist philosophy interested in reading its poetics as a kind of philosophical discourse.12 The work of Sonam Kachru, for example, has reflected on the way in which aesthetic devices present “poetic argument” to recontextualize perspectives (Kachru 2020) or otherwise present disjunctive views (Kachru 2012, 2015). Poetic features are also seen to mediate moral attention (Kachru 2019), narrate no self (Eckel 2015), or draw attention to the limits of representation (Tzohar 2019). Some of these scholars (notably Kachru 2020) appear to agree that Aśvaghoṣa’s poetics have their own distinctive contributions to add to their doctrine as I argue, and suggest further study of kāvya in Sanskrit traditions to explore this, as is my aim in this article. Yet, even these scholars of Aśvaghoṣa’s works continue to see their pleasures as problematic and have often been wary of using Sanskrit traditions of poetics in their readings, thus limiting the kind of analysis I propose.

Unpacking what Aśvaghoṣa claims he is doing in Saundarananda, I see direct references to the genre of the work. As one examines the features of this genre of kāvya closely, it becomes clear this is not a disguise for the bitterness of truth but rather a specific literary form which leads with story (as opposed to a doctrine) and is dependent on pleasure. As I read it, he says, “I have told truth in the form of a literary work (kāvyavyājena tattvaṃ kathitam) for an audience mostly interested in sensual pleasure (viṣayaratiparaṃ) and not liberation (mokṣāt pratihataṃ)” (Aśvaghoṣa 1928a, XVIII. 64). Pleasure is required according to the rules of kāvya (kāvya-dharmā) to make the work pleasing (hṛdyaṃ kathaṃ syād) so that its medicine can be consumed (pātuṃ tiktam ivauṣadhaṃ madhuyutaṃ hṛdyaṃ kathaṃ syād) (Aśvaghoṣa 1928a, XVIII. 63). Just as medicine can have no effect unless it is drunk, the tranquility and ultimate understanding of liberation Aśvaghoṣa wishes for his readers cannot be achieved without the aesthetic experience of the pleasures the literary work provides. When Aśvaghoṣa tells his audience that the purpose of Saundarnanda is not mere pleasure and instructs readers to focus their attention on that which leads to tranquility as opposed to pleasure alone, this does not mean that Aśvaghoṣa’s purpose is simply to present doctrine in ornate form. If one could “extract” the “gold” (cāmīkaram) of the dharma from the pleasures of the mahākāvya form, this would imply that the tranquility to which the text leads is only something achieved by means of doctrinal study (Aśvaghoṣa 1928a, XVIII. 64).13

When he claims the ultimate purpose of his work is not erotic pleasure in itself (na rataye), this does not mean that pleasure is not one of his aims. The work must sweeten the truth for the reader, a process in which the erotic is used to capture the attention that is otherwise distracted (grahaṇārthamanyamanasāṃ) and calm the mind (vyupaśāntaye) (Aśvaghoṣa 1928a, XVIII. 63). Aśvaghoṣa emphasizes that what should ultimately capture one’s attention is not the erotic play of the work (grāhyaṃ na lalitaṃ) but that awareness of tranquility (tadbuddhvā śamikaṃ) that is ultimately produced by reading or listening to it. Aśvaghoṣa likens this process of refining one’s ordinary awareness through the aesthetic experience of the text to that of refining gold (cāmīkaram) from the raw materials of the earth (pāṃsubhyo dhātujebhyo) (Aśvaghoṣa 1928a, XVIII. 64). When Aśvaghoṣa claims in this verse that the tranquility (śāmikaṃ) his work ultimately presents is more important than the diversions associated with scenes of pleasure (lalitam) we need not only interpret this as an apology for the work’s sensuality, nor conclude that the sole purpose of a work such as Saundarananda is “not for his pleasure,” as Covill has translated (Aśvaghoṣa 2007, pp. 363–65).

Rather, we might understand that such explicitly erotic pleasure associated with rati is the basic raw material that Aśvaghoṣa’s audiences will refine through the aesthetic experience of kāma. The pleasure of the text that is an aspect of his genre, mahākāvya, which instructs in the manner of a courtesan or mistress, as Sanskrit tradition subsequently claimed,14 captivates the attention while relying on rasa and reflection to produce peace (śānta). As I argue Aśvaghoṣa’s kāvya shifts the attention of its readers from the distraction of external pleasures (rati) to the refined pleasures of aesthetic experience (rasa) in a way that resembles the early stages of the meditation practices Aśvaghoṣa’s works especially emphasize.

Buddhacarita and Saundarananda do present truth in more doctrinal forms and use reasoning to persuade readers. They stage debates to make arguments about doctrine and present some of the earliest known extended teachings on dependent arising (Buddhacarita XIII) and yogic practice (Saundarananda XVI–XVIII). However, if the truth—as Aśvaghoṣa uses this term to explain he has “told truth in the form of poetry” (kāvyavyājena tattvaṃ kathitam)—is to be grasped, it must be seen for oneself. Such a truth cannot be confused with discursive or generalized statements about reality, such as those emphasized in the Abhidharma. It must therefore be told (kathitam) in a different way than doctrine. As we have seen, there are many aspects to the form of literature (kāvya) that Aśvaghoṣa employs to enable his audience to perceive the truth of the Buddha’s insight. While Aśvaghoṣa’s highly developed use of figurative language (alaṃkāra), which I discuss elsewhere (Regan 2016), is centrally important, this article focuses on those elements of Aśvaghoṣa’s poetics that are central to the pleasure of his genre (mahākāvya), including the themes of his work that are important in courtly culture, and his skills as a dramatist to refine the experience of sensual pleasure by means of aesthetic experience (rasa).

4. The Pleasure of Courtly Culture: Refining Subjects

Aśvaghoṣa’s dependence on pleasure reflects its value in the courtly culture for which his works were composed. Both Buddhacarita and Saundarananda are set at the court of their Śākya clan, and Aśvaghoṣa’s portrayal agrees with what we know of the courts of the day (Pollock 2003, p. 78). As Daud Ali explains, literary texts such as Aśvaghoṣa’s were used to educate subjects in the virtues and norms of courtly life (Ali 2004, pp. 15–18). Training in pleasure (kāma) was considered to be a discipline. As Ali shows, the vinaya of pleasure was so strongly emphasized in medieval courtly discourse, including manuals on erotics, such as the Kāmasūtra, that it was “paralleled in early India only by the religious orders” such as Buddhists, whose code of conduct is likewise termed vinaya. Despite the apparent differences of the vihāra or monastery and the court, these two institutions were similarly charged with “tasks of arduous ethical self-cultivation” as their primary focus (Ali 2004, p. 95). Discourses, from those on politics (such as the Arthaśāstra) to erotic love (the Kāmasūtra) and aesthetics (the Nāṭyaśāstra), were powerful in the early court because of how they produced communal self-reflection on virtue (Ali 2004, pp. 20–21). The courtiers are called to recognize themselves within the textual world and, thus, to align themselves with the values they see mirrored in them. They are both the subjects of the text and are also made into good subjects of the courts as their experience of mahākāvya encouraged ethical reflection and cultivation of virtue that conformed with courtly norms (Ali 2004, pp. 92–94).15 Ali argues, further, that the theme of erotic love was especially important in courtly literature for the way in which courtships, contests, games, and combat provide a way to reflect on broader social relationships (Ali 2004, p. 235). Given its depiction not only of the joy of lovers in union but also the suffering caused by separation, not to mention the wide range of erotic expression suggested in the Kāmasūtra, including the biting, scratching, and slapping that lovers might employ in intense passion, which Ali explains as functioning to “train the body to be attentive to the senses,” the literary experience of erotic love presents a wide spectrum of human exchange in harmony and in conflict (Ali 2004, p. 236).16 The actions of lovers viewed through the lens of mahākāvya demonstrate both the ideal qualities of self-discipline embodied by a hero, such as the Buddha, as well as the faults of someone such as Nanda, that must be overcome if one is to flourish in courtly society.

5. The Pleasure of the Genre of mahākāvya: Refining Awareness

As we have seen, Aśvaghoṣa explains that pleasure is necessary according to the rules or principles (kāvyadharma) of the genre of his work.While the genre of mahākāvya is not described in detail as far as we know until Bhāmaha and Daṇḍin’s seventh century manuals on poetics (Pollock 2003, p. 52), such manuals appear to have been based on pre-existing works, such as Buddhacarita and Saundarananda, which correspond to their definition of the “composition in cantos” (sargabandha) or “long poem” (mahākāvya).17 As Daṇḍin’s Kāvyadarśa describes it, this long poem is based on well-known stories (itihāsa) of clever noble heroes (nāyaka) in pursuit of one of the four traditional aims of life: dharma or duty; kāma or pleasure; artha, ambition or power; and mokṣa, liberation. It seduces and pleases people through its figures of speech and its variations of meter. It engages them in vivid scenes of natural beauty and sparkling palaces, where its heroes engage in the acts of love and valor that evoke its dramatic and affecting moods, or rasas (Daṇḍin 1938, I.14–I.19).

5.1. Rasa: The Refinement of the Senses and Emotions

While there are many pleasures of mahākāvya for the reader to enjoy, including the displays of technique, erudition, and allusion, the aesthetic experience of explicitly erotic (śṛṅgāra) rasa is at the heart of Aśvaghoṣa’s understanding of what he needs to “tell truth” to an audience interested only in the pleasures of the senses. As I have suggested this is implicit in his use of rati, which Aśvaghoṣa uses to emphasize more basic erotic pleasure vs. kāma, the refined experience of the erotic one enjoys in a work of art.

The erotic is one of eight primary emotional capacities (bhāva) understood in the earliest known theories of rasa18 to lie dormant within individuals until aroused by the characters, gestures, or images (literally causes or kāraṇa) in a scene of drama or kāvya.19 As a connoisseur (sahṛdaya), one of “those who share their hearts” in this way (Gerow 1984, p. 55), experiences the transient feelings that arise, inherent emotional capacities (stāyibhāva) are activated which “gives rise” (niṣpatti) to a refined aesthetic experience of a sentiment to be savored or enjoyed. This is the most common understanding of rasa (Ali 2004, p. 188).20 My comparative analysis of the dramatic plots of Buddhacarita and Saundarananda demonstrates a consistent way of structuring the cantos that depict scenes of the Buddha’s path to awakening with the same sequence of moods (rasas) he uses for the parallel stages of the path on which the Buddha leads Nanda to realization. As I will demonstrate in my discussion of each work below, Aśvaghoṣa relies on scenes infused with the erotic (śṛṅgāra) to engage the reader in the early cantos, followed by those marked by the ascetic or heroic (vīra), then depends on the return of a more subtle erotic flavor in the later cantos where the Buddha and Nanda have found a middle way between hedonism and asceticism.

This strategic use of the erotic rasa does not simply draw the attention of those focused on pleasure but also develops reflection and awareness of its role on the Buddhist path and in the relationships it mirrors in courtly culture, Ali suggests. What Aśvaghoṣa’s works do, then, as opposed to what they might seem to say, suggests that readers must take pleasure in his work. However, such enjoyment is not designed to merely titillate but to transform the capacity for sexual pleasure (rati) into a more refined state of awareness in which aesthetic experience of the erotic (śṛṅgāra-rasa) leads to peace.

According to the tenth century theorist Abhinavagupta, each of the different flavors of rasa one enjoys in kāvya, including the erotic and heroic, emphasized in Daṇḍin’s seventh century descriptions of the specific genre Aśvaghoṣa employs (sargabandha or mahākāvya), has its basis in an aesthetic experience of śānta or tranquility. This tranquility is similar to, but not identical to the tranquility identified with meditative experience, according to Abhinavagupta21 (Gerow 1994, p. 206). Such an idea would appear to support my understanding that Aśvaghoṣa’s works seek to engage the reader in literary practices involving concentration and insight that are akin to yogic practices of meditation.22

While theories of śānta-rasa do not appear in evidence in Aśvaghoṣa’s era, the parallel structure of Buddhacarita and Saundarananda suggest that the dramatic structure of these works follows a sequence of stages in which distinct flavors of rasa refine the emotions of the reader in a way that ultimately produces tranquility. Abhinavagupta’s observation of this correspondence between the literary practices involved in experiencing kāvya and the yogic practices involved in meditation is especially interesting to consider given Aśvaghoṣa’s emphasis on meditation teachings.23 As Abhinavagupta notes, the ability to lose oneself in the aesthetic experience of rasa is like forms of meditation that rely on concentration to take one beyond the ordinary experience of the self, which results in tranquility. The erotic mood or rasa is one of the elements of the poetics on which Aśvaghoṣa relies to cultivate the concentration necessary for the Buddhist insight he wants his audience to grasp. This aesthetic experience, beyond the ordinary experience of self, cultivates a refined state of awareness that recognizes tattvaṃ, the truth of the way things are in reality (Aśvaghoṣa 1928a, Saundarananda, XVIII. 64).

5.2. Dramatic Structure: The Path of the Text and Its Pleasures

My analysis suggests the structure that guides the reading practices of the text present stages similar to the stages of the path the Buddha uses in Saundarananda to guide Nanda’s experiential understanding, depending on his capacity and states of mind. Ultimately, absorption is the key element of Aśvaghoṣa’s works that functions to “captivate the imagination of an audience focused on other things”24 in order to take the reader on the path of the text from pleasure to liberation. As I shall show in detail below, early cantos of both Buddhacarita25 and Saundarananda depend upon the erotic to arouse the senses and emotions of readers and capture their minds and hearts. The texts do so in order to focus readers’ attention beyond themselves and their ordinary concerns so that they may be fully absorbed in the scene and able to relish the pleasure of its rasa. Abhinavagupta’s theory of rasa suggests that the scenes of love play which dominate the early cantos of both Buddhacarita and Saundarananda are ultimately connected with the tranquility (śāmikaṃ) Aśvaghoṣa claims his work is intended to produce in this way (Aśvaghoṣa 1928a, XVII. 64).

Since Buddhism, as it is taught by the Buddha in Aśvaghoṣa’s works, is a sequential path involving practices or rituals performed and experienced in time, any description of its truths in abstract form remains limited. Presentations of doctrine about how to end suffering may be convincing from a logical point of view yet difficult to implement in ordinary life, as we see in the case of Nanda. Divorced from actual contexts of suffering and the impact of practices and experiential insight, Buddhist truth is ultimately difficult to apprehend and apply. A concrete and imaginative narrative of a life provides a path to walk in which Buddhist insights may likewise be gradually learned and applied. The way the stages of aesthetic experience draw the reader along a textual path to truth corresponds to the Buddha’s subsequent instructions in stages of yoga, which likewise draw the student into states of absorption that initially depend upon the senses and the imagination to engage and energize, and gradually grow more refined as insight is developed.

Both the first act, or first fourteen cantos, of Buddhacarita and the eighteen cantos of Saundarananda use a dramatic structure to describe the path to awakening or “tell truth in literary form.” Built on a five-stage dramatic plot,26 each work is divided into cantos structured by shifting meters, rasas, and forms of figurative language that correspond to progressive stages of the action. The reader is drawn onto the gradual path of the Buddhist insight the text provides by means of the pleasures of its poetic strategies, including the erotic imagery that performs or elicits rasa. The plot of each work is structured around the distinct stages of pleasure, renunciation, training in discipline, meditation, and the middle way (in which a more refined form of pleasure returns) that leads to wisdom. In Saundarananda, the stages of the Buddha’s teaching, which are the primary focus, mirror practices of reading offered by the text. Just as Nanda begins his path caught up in sensual pleasure and must be taught a way to truth that takes advantage of this entanglement, so too does the path of the reader begin in scenes infused with erotic rasa in order to encourage states of awareness. The reader’s path corresponds to the experiences Nanda is put through by the Buddha to absorb him in the heavenly realm of the apsarases and thus focus him on practices leading to understanding.

As readers move through these different stages of the plot along with Siddhārtha (in Buddhacarita) or Nanda (in Saundarananda), they are exposed to various poetic strategies of the text that correspond to the experiences and practices of the main characters. For example, when Nanda is absorbed in sensual pleasures with his wife or Siddhārtha in the pleasure garden, the text unfolds vivid details that immerse its readers in scenes filled with the erotic images and moods associated with the form of śṛṅgāra-rasa described as love-in-union (saṃbhoga) by the alaṃkārikas. However, as the path of the text proceeds, and Nanda is separated from Sundarī, or the courtesans are left behind by Siddhārtha, the form of śṛṅgāra-rasa known as love-in-separation (vipralambha) dominates the scene. In those in which Siddhārtha is challenged by Mara or Nanda wrestles to conquer his senses, images and moods shift to the heroic, or vīra-rasa.

The audience is likewise engaged in a refined experience of what it is to be completely absorbed in love, torn away from the beloved, deluded by erotic fantasies, and heroically battling the obstacles of illusion at each corresponding stage of the path of the text. In this way, opportunities for reflection and new forms of experiential understanding become available.

6. Pleasure on Siddhārtha’s Path: The Poetics of the Middle Way in Buddhacarita

Pleasure is an essential component of the middle way. While the Buddha’s awakening is the culmination of Buddhacarita’s dramatic first act, neither Siddhārtha nor Aśvaghoṣa’s audience could arrive at this scene of liberation (mokṣa) without the pleasure (kāma) of the scenes leading up to it. Pleasure motivates Siddhārtha’s journey that leads to insight, just as the aesthetic experience of the erotic (śṛṅgāra-rasa) in the early cantos motivates the reader to enter the work. These are not mere sensual pleasures, but the raw materials of experience that are necessary to the experiential understanding of reality or truth. As one of the approved aims of a householder’s life in Brahmanical traditions, kāma is one of the aims Siddhārtha would be expected to accomplish. Indeed, his name, sarvārtha-siddha, might be interpreted to mean “the accomplisher of all the aims.” It is also something that “all bodhisattvas” must experience along the path to liberation, as the verse at the end of the second canto of Buddhacarita explains:

But all bodhisattvas of unrivaled spirit

went to the forest, after they’d tasted

the pleasures of the sensory objects,

and after a son had been born to them.

Although the cause had grown deep roots

by his collected good deeds,

until he reached Awakening, therefore,

he pursued sensual pleasures.

(Aśvaghoṣa 2008, p. 57)27

The pleasures of this love-play with which the courtesans seduce the bodhisattva are described as sweet or madhu:

In that palace women entertained him

with soft voices and alluring gestures,

with playful drunkenness and sweet laughter,

with curling eyebrows and sidelong glances.

(Aśvaghoṣa 2008, p. 47)

Here, madhu is the same term Aśvaghoṣa uses to describe the sweetness he calls a necessary ingredient of kāvya. Likewise, the term used by Aśvaghoṣa to describe the way that the bodhisattva is kept suspended in his ignorance of the way things are in the world below is grah, the same term he uses to describe how kāvya works to capture the attention of the senses and the interest of the reader in Saundarananda (Aśvaghoṣa 1928a, XVIII. 84).

Then, ensnared by women skilled in erotic arts,

Who were tireless in providing sexual delights,

He did not come to earth from that heavenly mansion,

As a man of good deeds, from his heavenly mansion.

(Aśvaghoṣa 2008, p. 47)

Aśvaghoṣa’s poetics emphasize the middle way of the bodhisattva’s path in this figure that bridges dharma or virtue with kāma, comparing the “heavenly mansion” or abode in the heavenly realms that will be earned by “the man of good deeds” with the figurative “heavenly mansion” in which Siddhārtha is pleasurably “ensnared” by the courtesans. The pleasures provided by these “experts in kāma” are explicitly sexual pleasure, or rati, the term Aśvaghoṣa has used to describe the main interest of his worldly audience in Saundarananda (Aśvaghoṣa 1928a, XVIII. 84).The relationship between literal erotic pleasure, or rati, in capturing the object of seduction, and the pleasure of a work of kāvya, is to “captivate the imagination of an audience focused on other things,”which Aśvaghoṣa has stated as his aim.

Siddhārtha is never depicted as inappropriately or excessively attached to pleasure, which he simply engages in as is appropriate for his age and station in life. Rather than detract from his virtue, kāma contributes to his being considered an ethical model, as we see in his early scenes with the courtesans in Buddhacarita, where he displays the refined qualities of the sort of lover the Kāmasūtra praises. As we see in canto two,

He was not excessively attached to sensual pleasures

Did not engage in improper love for women

Reigned in the wild horses of the senses

And impressed his family and the people with his virtues.

(Aśvaghoṣa 2008, p. 57)28

The Kāmasūtra explains that a man who is skilled in the arts of love actually benefits society (Vātsyāyana 2002, p. 70), which may provide one explanation for how the bodhisattva is constructed as an ideal lover, even as he remains essentially celibate in the scenes of Buddhacarita. Due to his circumstances in the early cantos, it is therefore pleasure, not liberation, that initially motivates the bodhisattva to leave the palace in the third canto of Buddhacarita.

Then, one day he heard songs depicting groves,

with soft fields of grass, with trees resounding

with the songs of male cuckoos,

and adorned with lotus ponds.

Then, he heard how enchanting were the city parks,

parks that were very much loved by the women folk;

so he made up his mind to visit the outdoors,

restless like an elephant confined in a house.

(Aśvaghoṣa 2008, p. 57)

Here, clearly, Aśvaghoṣa frames the starting point and motivation of the bodhisattva’s path to liberation as a desire for kāma, not mokṣa; he seeks pleasure groves before ascetic groves. The site of pleasure is both the starting point of the middle way and the starting point of the reader, who is motivated by the aesthetic pleasure of śṛṅgāra-rasa in these scenes to become absorbed in the path of the text and to begin to connect with the point of view of the bodhisattva that is the source of experiential insight29.

Pleasure is not a problem for Siddhārtha so much as something in which he loses interest as he faces the shock of the realities beyond the shelter of the palace walls. When he is subsequently unable to respond to the courtesans’ charms, and his companion chides him for neglecting his duty as a lover, Siddhārtha explains

I am not adverse to the pleasures of the senses.

I know everyone is devoted to them.

But they are only transitory.

If it were not for old age, sickness and death,

I would delight in all forms of sensual pleasure.

(Aśvaghoṣa 1935, IV. 85)30

As the audience is included in those devoted to sensory pleasures, the erotic mood remains an important component in the scene, even in the absence of Siddhārtha’s interest. A close reading, however, demonstrates how the erotic attention of courtesans trying to capture the interest of the future Buddha contains within it seeds of future devotion.

Struck by his beauty

they stared, trying to hold back

lashing at each other with

glances, they softly sighed.

(Aśvaghoṣa 1935, IV. 6)31

Just as actors on the stage spark seduction with their gestures, the poetics of the scene trigger forms of feminine charm known in the Kāmasūtra, as the women are encouraged by the courtiers to overcome their shyness. From flirtatious glances and games that beg for a touch, to the whispering of secrets, and clothes “accidentally” allowed to slip from limbs, images glisten with their suggestion of the fertile power of the natural world.

One, pretending to be drunk,

let her blue dress fall again and again;

flashing her underclothes, she beamed

like the night with streaks of lightning.

(Aśvaghoṣa 1935, IV. 33)32

Such an image is emblematic of the way in which “the dirty parts” of human experience to which Aśvaghoṣa alludes in his statement are important sources of deeper forms of awareness. The figure of speech here functions not only to kindle the erotic rasa but also to highlight and foreshadow the events of the awakening. Thus, the seduction of one courtesan “playing the role of the man,” as the Kāmasūtra describes it (Vātsyāyana 2002, p. 60) who commands Siddhārtha to “conquer the earth” of her body (Aśvaghoṣa 1935, IV. 42), suggests the command of the seat the bodhisattva takes, in the thirteenth canto, as he conquers the distractions of Mara.

As Siddhārtha enters the ascetic phase of his path, Buddhacarita shifts meters and poetic strategies to emphasize the heroic (vīra) rasa that represents the other significant aim of Brahmanical life that is most commonly featured in descriptions of kāvya (Peterson 2003, pp. 16–17). As Siddhārtha meets a series of gurus and challenges them in debate, a more didactic and doctrinal portion of the narrative threatens to weaken the reader’s attention in the same way the bodhisattva ultimately becomes too feeble to continue in asceticism. As Siddhārtha recognizes he must find a middle way, he is figuratively embraced by the elements of natural world.

Having bathed, he slowly climbed

the banks of the Nairañjana in his weakened state

as the trees on the shore lent a hand

lowering the tips of their branches in devotion to him.

(Aśvaghoṣa 1935, XII. 108)33

The path of the middle way that Siddhārtha enters in the twelfth canto as he decides to bathe and seek the nourishment his mind, body, and senses require includes his first encounter with a woman since his departure from the palace. The pleasure that he takes in her, and the way she recognizes him, not as a potential lover but a holy man, demonstrates a new refinement. Here, the shift in scene is underlined by a change from the heroic or vīrarasa that dominates the middle cantos of Buddhacarita to a subtle erotic or sṛṅgārarasa, introduced by the bodhisattva’s departure from the ascetic grounds in determination to satisfy his senses.

While the woman in other versions of the narrative is referred to as Sujātā, signaling her essential virtue or the fact that she comes from a good family, Aśvaghoṣa names her Nandabalā, suggesting not her virtue but the joyful vitality she brings Siddhārtha through her offering of rice milk, with “the joy of her heart spilling over.” Her beauty is described as being “like Yamuna,” alluding to the river in which he has just refreshed and caressed his body with a sensual pleasure he has previously denied himself.

Pleasure/contentment in a refined sense is part of the process of experiencing truth. The implication is that the satisfaction Siddhārtha experiences in this scene is not simply that of food but also the pleasure the beautiful woman who offers it to him provides. It is also significant that Nandabalā is the only woman we have seen in the intimate presence of the bodhisattva since his rejection of the women of the palace. While he expresses no aversion here, neither is there attachment or craving. Aśvaghoṣa depicts him as simply contented by Nandabalā and her offering. The nourishment she provides the bodhisattva is not simply food, but the satisfaction of all of his senses. This contentment of the middle way is what will enable the final stages of enlightenment. In the same way, the pleasure of the refined aesthetic experience of sṛṅgārarasa grounds the audience, enabling them to persist on the path of the text as it approaches the more challenging analytical passages that demonstrate the process of insight the Buddha uses to achieve awakening.

The truth that manifests at the moment of awakening in Buddhacarita, however, is not the doctrinal words of wisdom that one might extract from the text. Rather it is a reality that shines through in a dramatic scene, where flowers of gold and emerald rain down in celebration, and everyone in all the realms appears united in peace and joy (Aśvaghoṣa 1935, XIV. 89–91). The experiential understanding of the truth of enlightenment in the scene is not simply an idea (“he became awakened”) but rather a moment of transformation in which all participate, including the audience, through the refinement of awareness the aesthetic pleasure of the text enables.

7. Pleasure and Poetics as Skillful Means in Saundarananda

Themes of pleasure are even more prominent in Saundarananda, in which Aśvaghoṣa’s aesthetic practices clearly model those of the Buddha in utilizing the erotic as a skillful means to guide those primarily interested in pleasure along the path of liberation.

Saundarananda depends upon dramatic scenes depicting the erotic attachment between Sundarī and Nanda for the central conflict of its plot. Here, the dramatic scenes of the narrative mirror the process by which the Buddha instructs Nanda, alternating between traditional monologic Buddhist discourses and imaginative strategies, or skillful means, creating experiences that powerfully introduce the way things really are (tattvaṃ).

These scenes acknowledge that a student such as Nanda, immersed in sensual pleasures, is unable to understand the dharma through doctrine alone. When lectures do not work, the Buddha strategically stimulates Nanda’s lust as a way to motivate him to engage in Buddhist practice. The Buddha’s approach is the model of the skillful means of Aśvaghoṣa’s dramatic narrative, in which erotic scenes complicate traditional discourses on renunciation in order to demonstrate how love and longing may be a vehicle for understanding complex Buddhist truths as they emerge in lived experience.

The first dramatic scene represents the essential conflict of Saundarananda: Nanda and Sundarī are so caught up in making love in the inner chambers of the palace that they fail to notice the Buddha is outside at the door. The lovers are described as being so deeply entwined with one another they have no perspective on anything else.

With eyes only for each other’s eyes,

they hung upon each other’s words,

and rubbed off their perfumed pigments with caresses

completely absorbed with one another.

(Aśvaghoṣa 1928a, IV. 9)34

Yet such experiences form the basis for the new ways of seeing they will encounter in their separation. As the lovers enact a figurative drama for their own pleasure within the literal drama of the scene, Sundarī acts as if she is angry and Nanda as if he is afraid. At one point, Sundarī puts a mirror in his hand and paints a moustache on herself as if she is her lover and puts make up on him as if he is her (Aśvaghoṣa 1928a, IV. 13–19). The notion that they are blinded by their intimacy from access to the Buddha’s teaching is thus complicated by the demonstration of their understanding of the constructs of their roles and how to manipulate these illusions.

Since pleasure does not motivate Nanda to get into a chariot and go beyond his chambers, where he might witness suffering, the Buddha constructs a way for Nanda to directly experience the suffering caused by his attachment to the erotic. When Nanda catches up with the Buddha in canto five and asks him to return to accept a noon meal at the palace, Śākyamuni declines but hands him his bowl as a gesture of receiving his offering. As Nanda attempts to move towards home with the bowl still in his hands, the Buddha declines to take the bowl so that Nanda must follow him to the aśrām.

Seeing Nanda’s grief at the thought of his wife’s eyes searching for him, the Buddha tries to point out the way in which sensual pleasures of the world are similar to “offerings for a fire stoked by wind” (Aśvaghoṣa 1928a, V. 23). Nanda accepts ordination out of respect for his brother’s wisdom and agrees to follow the Buddha’s dharma without truly understanding its meaning (Aśvaghoṣa 1928a, V. 51). In the same way, Aśvaghoṣa’s audience needs more than lectures to understand the dharma. True insight into the suffering caused by erotic attachment depends on understanding not only what it means to be happily united in love but also in the experience of what it means to be bereft of the beloved. Just as the Buddha acts to separate the lovers, so too do Aśvaghoṣa’s dramatic scenes shift the reader’s aesthetic experience from the enjoyment of the erotic mood of love-in-union (saṃbhoga) to that of love-in-separation (vipralambha).

While doctrine does not move the lovers to wisdom, the suffering of their experiences clearly does. As Aśvaghoṣa portrays them in their scenes of lament and longing, it becomes clear that distance has only amplified the bond between the lovers and intensified their yearning for one another. Though he is now at the aśrām, Nanda remains entwined with his beloved. Blinded by his desire for Sundarī, all he sees in the creeping vines are images of her limbs (Aśvaghoṣa 1928a, VII. 5–9). Despite the ideal conditions for practices of tranquility provided by the forest grove, Nanda is tormented by the traces of Sundarī everywhere. Even while being lectured on the evils of women, he is only aware of “a bower of vines blooming with flowers,” which seem to hold him so that he feels “embraced by the tender young stalks swaying in the breeze,” clearly a figure of Sundarī.

Meanwhile, back in their bedchamber, Sundarī has similarly “let him go from her sandalwood perfumed arms but not from her mind” (Aśvaghoṣa 1928a, IV. 38)

Her eyes red and smeared with tears

her slender limbs aching in pain

she fell down, scattering her string of pearls,

like the branch of a mango tree weighed down with fruit.

(Aśvaghoṣa 1928a, VI. 25)35

The way the lovers mirror each other in grief is expressed in mirror images of their tearful faces like lotuses bent over in the rain. As Nanda’s hair is shaved off, his “tearful down-turned face looked like a rain-soaked lotus in a pond with the tip of its stalk curling away” (Aśvaghoṣa 2007, p. 111), while Sundarī’s also lotus-like face “rested on the hennaed stem of her hand, like a lotus bent over its reflection in the water” (Aśvaghoṣa 2007, p. 117).Yet, their grief is not simply a display of worldly passion but also gives rise to the possibility of Buddhist insights into inseparability. As the audience takes in the images of these scenes and the moods of these characters, they become witnesses to the Buddhist truths revealed not by instruction but by erotic experience. The fact of the lover’s interdependence means that they are now transformed. Sundarī is no longer herself, beautiful, without Nanda (Aśvaghoṣa 1928a, V. 52 and VI. 1), as the first verse of the canto devoted to the anguish of her love-in-separation proclaims, and he is no longer nanda or joyful without her.36

It is ultimately their experience of the loss of one another, dramatized in the scenes of these cantos, more than the lectures they receive from their associates, that provides Nanda and Sundarī with Buddhist insights into the causes and methods for the cessation of suffering. For example, Sundarī’s lament that “women who don’t want to suffer grief like this should not have faith in men” resembles Buddhist teachings on renunciation. Meanwhile, Nanda’s lament reveals his growing awareness that “there is no bond in the world, whether of wood, rope or iron, so strong as this bond of flirtatious words and a face with darting eyes.”(Aśvaghoṣa 1928a, VII. 13–14). It is only the experience of suffering the Buddha imposes upon Nanda, by separating him from Sundarī, that opens his mind to an appreciation of what he will understand as doctrine only much later when he is ready to receive instructions.

Aśvaghoṣa’s extension of Sundarī and Nanda’s dialogue in these scenes of their separation provides his audience with an aesthetic experience of the erotic that relies on affect and sensory images to create opportunities for ethical insight. If it is true, as Ali suggests, that erotic themes were especially valued in courtly culture for ethical reflection that would inculcate courtly values, such values would appear to include or at least be harmonious with Buddhist values. The poetic descriptions in these early scenes of love and longing shimmer with reflections that do not simply oppose the doctrines of kāma and dharma but suggest their deeper connection. The insights such scenes reveal include not only the more common Buddhist teachings easily encapsulated in doctrine, such as the problem of attachment and the truth of impermanence, but also the more complex truths, such as the interdependence of self and other, which are ultimately a product of nonconceptual, experiential understanding (Aśvaghoṣa 1928a, VII. 14).

Even while the audience may already glimpse the truth shining through the images of these lovers, Nanda still has further stages of the path to go through before he can learn from his experience. Since traditional methods of sermons still fail to free Nanda from his obsession with Sundarī, the Buddha must find a way to motivate him to concentrate on practice. Seeking to harness his desire, the Buddha takes Nanda to the heavenly realms where gorgeous nymphlike apsarases are so alluring they replace Sundarī as the object of Nanda’s intensifying passion. The only way to gain the merit to win these heavenly lovers is to accomplish the practices of the dharma, the Buddha tells him. Finally motivated, Nanda commits himself to the path of the Buddha’s teachings.

Just as Nanda becomes focused with the aid of his erotic fantasies, so too does the aesthetic experience of the erotic mood in these scenes absorb the audience further at this midpoint in the textual path (Aśvaghoṣa 1928a, X. 60). Nanda is transformed through the intensification of his passion and the austerities it provokes, but this does not lead him to his goal. He who was naturally beautiful becomes ugly, emphasizing his complete separation from Sundarī in this ascetic phase of his path (Aśvaghoṣa 1928a, XI. 1–2), but his perspective has become refined enough to see that his project is not going to bear fruit. He finally is able to understand the dharma, which Ānanda points out, namely, that the heavenly realms are impermanent, so even attaining the apsarases will only cause future suffering (Aśvaghoṣa 1928a, XI. 6). Ānanda (whose name, which means bliss, suggests a more refined version of Nanda’s own) suggests that Nanda should be motivated not by sexual satisfaction (riraṃsā) but tranquility (praśāntā) (Aśvaghoṣa 1928a, XI. 25–34), echoing the words of the poet in the final verses about the purpose of his work for the audience. Nanda experiences “great shame” (parām vrīḍam), which causes him to reflect (together with the audience) on his previous misunderstanding (Aśvaghoṣa 1928a, XVIII. 63–64). His movement to a new stage of the path is symbolized by the figures of him as an elephant no longer captive or rutting but regal as if in command of himself (Aśvaghoṣa 1928a, XII. 1).

Finally understanding the way the world works, Nanda claims that he finds the Buddha’s dharma itself to be satisfying (tvaddharme parame rame) (Aśvaghoṣa 1928a, XII. 10). Here, he uses the same form ram he used previously for sexual bliss. By transferring ram in this way, Aśvaghoṣa reinforces the idea that Nanda has finally understood what it means to transform his interest in the bodily and mental satisfaction of lust into a more refined satisfaction or pleasure in the same way Aśvaghoṣa audience’s has turned their primary interest in pleasure of the senses to the aesthetic experience that can shift their interest to the dharma. Understanding the value of the Buddha’s doctrine at last, Nanda requests an explanation of the dharma in order to attain realization (paramaṃ prāpnuyāṃ padam) (Aśvaghoṣa 1928a, XII. 15). The audience is likewise readied to receive the instructions on yoga, which are the primary focus of the final cantos (Aśvaghoṣa 1928a, XII. 17).37

8. Conclusions

The significance of the aesthetic pleasure of the text as a tool for Buddhist training becomes especially clear in Saundarananda in the final teaching on meditation the Buddha delivers. Instructions on discipline in Canto XIII, on mindfulness in Canto XIV, and meditation in Canto XV are now gradually given to Nanda, who is finally ready to receive them. We should note that these meditation instructions explicitly reference the analogy of gold Aśvaghoṣa has used in the colophon to describe what he hopes the reader has gained from his work, i.e., to describe the mind, which is likewise purified and refined into a state that is flexible, tranquil and able to be used as is needed. (Aśvaghoṣa 1928a, pp. 66–69). In the same way that Nanda’s training by the Buddha has gradually subdued his unrestrained passions, so the aesthetic experience of these scenes has refined the mind of the reader in a way that opens it to the experience of truth. While one aspect of this truth is certainly the doctrine the Buddha delivers, the training of the reader’s senses and emotions is what helps to make the experiential understanding of this truth possible.

This kind of truth is not simply “the bitter medicine of moralistic literature,” as one recent scholar interprets Aśvaghoṣa (Protass 2021, p. 6). Reality itself (tattvaṃ), with its impermanence and suffering, is also a “bitter medicine” which must be taken in and swallowed in order to know the truth. While the images of the separated lovers in Saundarananda may not evoke delight, there is a kind of sweetness in the jewel-like verses, which invite the reader to dwell and savor the rasa of erotic longing, thus providing a glimpse of the otherwise bitter reality of love. This kind of truth is not simply a kind of content to be mined from form. It is not possible to separate it from the aesthetic fabric of the larger text or the poetics through which it shines, just as it is not possible to separate it from human experience. And yet perhaps that is also why the Buddha’s instructions for Nanda no longer preach the kind of renunciation of prior cantos. He now encourages Nanda to see the truth “as it is,” not as an ascetic but with his senses fully employed. As he now explains, the enlightened one must live in the world and perform acts that benefit others and promote healing. One must live in the world of the senses without grasping or dwelling on particular attributes, such as gender or features that appear beautiful (Aśvaghoṣa 1928a, XIII. 29). This is the culmination of the training the Buddha gave Nanda by shifting his gaze from the particularity of the beloved’s beauty to the more general beauty of the apsarases. If one makes one’s mind refined like gold, it is adaptable to all circumstances, capable of seeing beyond shifting appearances without grasping after their shimmering reflections. Once again the metaphor of gold is used to describe the gradual process and stages that are required for the mind to become properly refined (Aśvaghoṣa 1928a, XVI. 55–64). While Nanda’s practice was too feeble and he only longed for his beloved, verbal instructions did not have any impact. However, his ability to shift his erotic desires to the apsarases energized and motivated him to practice. The reader’s aesthetic experience of this shift in Nanda’s focus likewise trains the mind so that the Buddha’s dharma may finally be received and understood. The figure of the mind refined like gold manifests as Nanda’s beauty now returns in a more glorious form. No longer simply handsome in a worldly sense, Nanda is described as shining like gold in his saffron robes (Aśvaghoṣa 1928a, XVIII. 5–6).

Just as canto sixteen describes how different conditions or states of mind require different approaches to meditation, so Nanda—and the reader—require different scenes and rasas at different stages of the path to awakening, which is, for the reader, the path of the text. Just as one should not perform practices that produce tranquility when depressed, but rather, work with techniques that energize, so a trip to the heavenly realms (aesthetically or otherwise) might be in order (Aśvaghoṣa 1928a, XIII. 43).

In this depiction of the middle way between attachment and revulsion, the possibility of a more Brahmanical kind of Buddhism emerges. This is represented by Sundarī, who symbolically re-enters the scene, in much the same way that Nandabalā appears in Buddhacarita, as the Buddha suggests Nanda will now return to her, and that she will understand and follow his example (Aśvaghoṣa 1928a, XVIII. 5–6). She will “speak of non-attachment to her women” just as he will speak “of liberation to those who need it” (Aśvaghoṣa 1928a, XVIII. 57–58). This off-stage depiction of husband and wife united in the practice of dharma is distinct from the monastic view we see in other versions of Nanda’s tale. While such a resolution may be intended to appeal to Aśvaghoṣa’s mixed audience at the court, it also suggests the possibility that our view of Aśvaghoṣa and his intentions has been too narrow.

As we have seen, reading Aśvaghoṣa with a focus on pleasure opens up the possibility of catching new details and hearing new voices within a literary text that has been unduly constrained by our assumptions. Reading through the lens of poetics has the promise not only to reframe our approach to scholarship but our understanding of Buddhism itself.