the post-canonical adventures of mahāsammata

STEVEN COLLINS AND ANDREW HUXLEY

THE POST-CANONICAL ADVENTURES OF MAHASAMMATA

In two articles published in volume 24(4) of this journal, ‘The Buddha and the Social Contract’ by Huxley, and “The Lion’s Roar on the Wheel- turning King’ by Collins, we have debated the original meaning and implications of the Aggafifia Suttu (= AS) and the Cakkavatti-Sihanada Suttu (= CSS), and the extent to which canonical Pali Buddhism contains a political philosophy. We continue to disagree on certain points of interpretation, but in this paper we shift from the contentious to the cooperative mode.’ We move to a different period of Buddhist history - from the early Chronicles and commentaries (roughly 4-5th c.A.D.) to the 19th c. - and turn to examine the ways in which the figure of Mahasammata was developed in Sri Lanka and S.E. Asia.2 The post-canonical adventures of MS cover a vast field and, apart from a pioneering expedition by Tambiah (1989), that field is terra incognita. By cooperating we intend, in a preliminary but we hope useful way, to sketch its extent and shape: perhaps at some future date we can allow ourselves the luxury of disagreement as to what it all means. Tambiah’s article. referred to a variety of secondary sources concerning AS, MS and kingship in Central, South and Southeast Asian texts. Our aim is both narrower, in that we limit ourselves to Theravada Buddhism in Sri Lanka and mainland Southeast Asia, and wider, in that we also catalog uses of MS for matters outside the palace and the capital city. To those who already know of MS’s role as head of royal lineages and sponsor of written law texts, we offer another view of this protean personality: an MS who is invoked in rites de passage and exorcism rituals, and who should be thanked for such small comforts of life as betel-chewing. This MS is a long way removed from the ‘Great Elect’ in AS.

Whether the subject is kingship or betel, one should not presume that those who invoke MS have the precise content of the canonical texts in mind. (We give examples of this in section VI.) Themes from AS and CSS are often used in a way similar to that in which the Mahav&ya-s (‘Great Sayings’) of the UpaniSad-s are cited in the Ved?inta tradition in India: as slogans or individual motifs shorn of their original textual setting(s).

Journal of Indian Philosophy 24: 623-648, 1996. @ 1996 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

624 STEVEN COLLINS AND ANDREW HUXLEY

We present our findings under six headings (individual texts often exemplify more than one of these, so this classification is only for expository convenience):

(I) Cosmology (II) Lineages, political and/or religious (III) Coronation rituals in Burma (IV) Caste and social stratification (V) Rituals of purification and exorcism in Sri Lanka (VI) Etiological myths.

We present the post-canonical MS as more complex than his present reputation, but we cannot claim to have revealed all his complexities. Our findings are not comprehensive, and may be biased by the availability of sources.3 His post-canonical career is most extensively developed in the legal texts of Southeast Asia; but the material there is so extensive, and so much more Huxley’s area of expertise than Collins’s, that it has seemed best to us to put that in a separate article, under Huxley’s sole authorship. It follows this piece, with the title ‘When Manu met Mahasammata’.

(I) COSMOLOGY

Almost every telling of MS’s story, even when the main interest is claiming MS as someone’s lineage ancestor, includes a certain amount of cosmology, along the lines of that in AS (as, for example, in the Sinhalese Rajtivaliya texts discussed in section II). The texts we refer to in this section are ones where the cosmology is expanded and made an object of interest in itself, often accompanied by a version of the traditional South Asian cosmo-geography of the four islands around Mt. Meru, and sometimes by astrological matters. The earliest retellings of the AS origin story are in Buddhaghosa’s Visuddhimagga (414-22 = XIII 28-65), and the commentary to the canonical Pa?isambhid& magga, the Saddhamma-paktisini, attributed to Mah%n%ma in the first half of the 6th c. (Patis-a 367ff.). These texts describe the contraction and evolution of the universe, at the end of one cosmic eon and the beginning of another, in a description of the special attainment (abhifiZ) of remembering past lives. Like the commentary to the AS (Sv 870 amhtikae Bodhisatto), also attributed to Buddhaghosa, they claim that the being appointed in this eon as MS was the Buddha Gotama in a former life: ‘for it is said that whenever anything extraordinary happens in the world, a/the future Buddha is/was the first person (to do it)’ (yam

THE POST-CANONICAL ADVENTURES OF MAHiiSAMMATA 625

hi loke acchariyafthdnam, bodhisatto tattha ddipuriso ti; Vism 419 = HOS XIII 54, Patis-a 372). This sentence can be taken as generalizing, since the account of the contraction and evolution of the universe applies to any two consecutive eons; but earlier in the paragraph the texts specify that they are dealing here with the present eon and with ‘this very Blessed One, when he was a Future Buddha (imasmi? tava kappe ayaqz eva Bhagavii bodhisattabhiito). An English version of this text is easily accessible in N@unoli’s (1975: 455-63) translation of Vism. A few centuries later (the date is not certain: see Norman 1983: 138-9) the commentary to the Mahtivaqzsa, explaining the text’s (II 1) remark that the Great Sage (Gotama Buddha) was born into the lineage of MS, states that MS was a former life of ‘our Teacher’ (amhtikaqz pana Satths , . . Mahasammato nama rajLi ahosi, Mhv-f. 120, 122). An 18th century Mon Chronicler, the Monk of Acwo, cites the Mahavapsa-tikti, but elaborates the cosmology beyond what that text had said, in a somewhat confusing manner:

After the establishment of the first kalpa [= eon], our Bodhisatva [sic] was king MS to begin with. This was after sixty-four antarakappas [explained here as subdivisions of an eon] had elapsed from the establishment of the kalpa. . . . When we speak here of the generation of kings, it is not of the king MS of the beginning of the Kappa we speak, but of our Bodhisatva who was MS of the first antarakappa afterwards. So say the commentators of the Mahavamsa. From this first antarakappa our Bodhisatva was king MS also [Halliday 1913: 3414

In ‘The Lion’s Roar on the Wheel-turning King’, section 2, Collins referred to the concluding chapter in the 13th/14th c. Pali text called SEra(ttha)-saligaha, which draws explicitly on earlier canonical, commentaxial and other texts, to offer a systematic, ‘text-book’ cosmo- geography, shorn of any narrative context. HNSM reports various Sinhala texts of this kind, including the Jananandanaya Or.6603(47) X, in which a cosmology and an account of the election of MS is followed by Jiitaka -style stories of how various animal species chose their king.5 Nevill wrote that the Yaga Upata (Kavi) Or.6615(280) ‘commences with Lbkbtpattiya or the origin of the earth and its inhabitants, and the sun and moon in the firmament . . . Mahasammata yagaya is the next theme, where a bull is sacrificed by cutting it up and the bull coming back to life’. Nevill’s comments on two other Sinhala texts give an idea of how the story of MS was extended and adapted. The Mahtisammata Upptidaya: Set Siintiyak Or.6615(8)

is an account of the origin of the Kalpa, the formation of the heavens, the stars, etc. the arrival of MS’s reign. . . . On Sunday rice was created . . . , on Monday, forests; on Tuesday, flesh and fire; on Wednesday, the sixty-four sciences; on Thursday, silver and gold, on Friday, buffaloes and cattle; on Saturday, white ants and all insects.


Under Asvida constellation, horses . . ; under Berana, thieves; under Kati, fire etc. In Dvapara yugaya a king was cured by a brahman by yaga. Bali yaga was instituted. Sagalapura raja was cured by it, and Vijaya and his dynasty introduced it to Ceylon.

(This last motif is a kind of etiological myth: see section [VI].) In the Loka Rizja Upp&tiya Or.6615 (484), (493), Nevill says,

the title has nothing to do with Lanka, and the folklorist may distinguish the story as the Sinhalese ‘flood legend’ . . [there follows a version of AS #ll-171 Then Sakra deva [= Indra] looking down, recognised the want of a king among men . . , and sent a deva with a crown of celestial flowers to crown a king. He selected a boy of five months, who was crowned. Sakra deva then appeared, and named him MS. He also gave the king a Devy of the Sakra world as his wife. They had a son ‘.

Obviously, this version of MS’s story, although it does contain elements from the AS cosmology, is quite different in its political implications from the AS ‘Great Appointee’ version of kingship. (Other examples of Sakra choosing MS are given in section VI.)

S.E. Asia also produced cosmo-geographical texts. The best known of these, translated by Coedes and Archaimbault (1973) and Reynolds and Reynolds (1982), is the work known (in Pali) as Traibhiimikatha or (in Thai) as Trai Phum Phra Ruang. This has normally been taken to be a work by Luthai, a 14th century king of Sukhothai, but Vickery (91) has recently cast doubt on this attribution, preferring to see the text as a compilation - perhaps using much earlier materials - of the late 18th c. Its author acknowledges some canonical and many non-canonical sources. The ninth and tenth chapters of this work contain an extended cosmo-geography and an account of the end and beginning of eons, with a traditional version of the AS story, including MS (Reynolds and Reynolds 1982: 324-5, Coedes and Archaimbault 1973: 231-2). If this text, or parts of it, can be taken back to the Sukhothai period, it may be relevant to mention that a stone on which a double footprint was carved and dedicated in 1426 (Na Nagara & Griswold 1992: 764) had been brought to Sukhothai twenty years earlier by Sumedhankara, a monk from Martaban, who might be the author of Loka(ppa)dipasdra (CPD 2.9.17). Luthai’s cosmology does not acknowledge this work, but it does explicitly draw on Saddhammaghosa’s LokapaGatti (CPD 2.9.14) which was written in Lower Burma during the 1 lth or 12th centuries (see Norman 1983: 1745). LokapaEatti, in turn, incorporates material from a number of places: AS, Sanskrit Buddhist texts and a cycle of legends about Asoka (Denis 1977, esp. I, 2 pp. XVII, LXVII- LXXV. Such works of Buddhist science continued to be produced. Around 1790 a Siamese monk wrote Lokusanthan (sic, in Lyons 1963: 3), explaining the life, reproduction, habits and death of humans and

THE POST-CANONICAL ADVENTURES OF MAHASAMMATA 627

animals in the world. Perhaps this is related to the Lokusaghana- jotarulanaganfhi, one of the three cosmologies which Finot (17: 71) found in Laotian monasteries. The other two are Luthai’s Traiphum and a Trailokyavinicchaya-kathd.

We look forward to the day when these SE. Asian cosmologies are studied in more detail. One issue to be investigated is the way(s) in which AS/MS motifs superseded, were blended with or juxtaposed to alternative, indigenous themes. Examples can be seen in a number of the Sinhalese texts collected by Nevill mentioned in this article; in the Burmese story of MS as the son of a Sun spirit called Pyu-zaw-hti, to be described in section (11).2; in the stories from Cambodia and Burma associating MS with the origins of 101 peoples and languages in section (VI); and in a remarkable Mon text recently re-described by Guillon (92; cp. San Win 12), which he calls the Mz& Muh, or ‘The Ultimate Origin of the World’. This text, ‘manuscripts of [which] could be found even recently in nearly all Mon monasteries’ blends certain Buddhist themes (though not, it would seem, any from the MS repertoire) into a specifically Mon ‘world view [and] mental universe’. The text was first published by San Win 1912. Finot (1917: 77) describes a Laotian work on meditation topics, Sadduvimala, which claims to be based in part on a text called Pathama-mulla-muli-tika.

(II) LINEAGES, POLITICAL AND/OR RELIGIOUS

We list the data here under three headings:

1. The Buddha’s royal Sakyan family as in the lineage of MS, and thence also Buddhist monks and nuns, as ‘sons’ and ‘daughters’ of the Buddha;

2. Gotama as in the lineage of Buddhas as opposed to that of MS, or any king;

3. Claims by and about historical kings in Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia.

1. The Buddha, Monks and Nuns as Skyans

The earliest extant Pali chronicles, the disorganized and clumsy DlpavaFa and the elegant MahdvaFsa, are roughly contemporary with the first Pali commentaries (4th-5th c.), but both genres incorporate earlier material (Norman 1983: 118). In their extant form the two Chronicles begin and end in the same way, but differ considerably in what they choose to recount. Chapter 3 of the former, in 61 verses, and


Chapter 2 of the latter, in 32 (on which see Collins, ms. Chapter 3.4.b), list many names and numbers of kings from MS to the Buddha’s father king Suddhodana, in ‘the Lineage of Great Kings’ (mah&iijavaqtso, after Dip III 50), and ‘the Lineage of MS’ (Mah~sammatava~o, the title of Mhv II, cp. II 1). Two Jataka tales, the Mandhlitu (#258) and Cetiya (#422), also list names of descendants of MS in their prose sections, which are attributed to Buddhaghosa. Other texts mention particular kings in the lineage in more depth, e.g. Makhadeva and Nimi in Jtitaka #541. Similar lists are given in Buddhaghosa’s commentaries (e.g. Sv 258, Pj II 352), and they become standard thereafter (as, for example, in many of the texts given in section 11.3.) Malalasekera’s (37) Dictionary of Pali Proper Names gives details and some textual references; different versions of the list show discrepancies in kings’ names and cities. Geiger (12: Appendix A) sets out ‘The Dynasty of Mahasammata’ correlating versions in Pali and Sinhala texts, the Sanskrit Mahavastu and Tibetan Dulva.

We hear of S.E. Asian chronicles written before the fall of Pagan. But the earliest surviving chronicles date from 16th century Burma and Chieng Mai (Wyatt 1976; Hla Pe 1985). The JinakaZamHZi (21- 24), written in Chieng Mai some time after 1527 (Norman 1983: 143) gives an extended ‘lineage of our Bodhisattva’, starting from MS. Thilawuntha’s Mah~sammatava~a, otherwise known as Rajavavsa, written in 1520, devotes over 70% of its text to reproducing the MS lineage from the Mahliva~sa. The fact that it contains so little Burmese material could account for its influence elsewhere in S.E. Asia. The Cambodian law texts state that ‘according to the Phra RtijavaFsa King MS was the promulgator of the Phra dhammathat’; or, rather, what our source actually says (in case any reader thinks it is always easy to spot references to MS) is: ‘Le Preas reach Pongsa voda dit que le Preas bat samdach moha Sam Nhuti reach est le promulgateur du Preas Thomma satth’ (Leclere 1898 vol 1: 19). This is, we think, a reference to a copy of Thilawuntha’s text which had travelled to Ayuthaya or Pnomh Penh. It is then quoted to corroborate a dhammathat which has made a separate journey eastwards from Burma: thus does tradition confirm itself! The only definite reference we have found in the Tai-Shan literature is the chronicle of Hsenwi which refers to Hkun Lu and Hkun Lai as ‘MS kings’ (Scott and Hardiman 1900: 231). In Hsenwi, which was one of the Shan States most influenced by the Burmese, MS appears to have become a generic term for a founding king. (See further section [VI] on MS as a general exemplar for kingship.) These and other SE Asian texts dealing with MS lineages are probably inspired by the Sri Lankan


chronicles, but they are not simply copies of them. Varamandhata, the eighth descendent of MS according to Jat. #422, is missing from the Dlpava~~a and Muh~vu~~~ but present in chronicles from Chiang Mai (Notton 32: 7) and Mon Lower Burma (Halliday 1913: 34).

Any monk or nun, by ordination into the Monastic Order, becomes a ‘child of the Buddha’ (Buddha-putta) and so part of his lineage. A number of commentarial texts (Sv 792, Ps I 295, Spk III 161, Mp II 65, Vbh-a 281) offer as an example of the kind of reflection which leads to the arising of the Energy Enlightenment Factor in any monk or nun the self-admonition ‘in terms of social class [i&i, literally ‘caste’] you are not lower class (Mmuku-@tiyo); you have been born in the royal line of Okkaka, come down in unbroken lineage from MS; you are a grandchild of the great king and queen Suddhodana and Mahamaya, and the elder brother of Prince Rahula’. (The phrase ‘born into a high family, in the unbroken lineage of MS ’ is given as one of the grounds for properly honoring the Buddha at Ud-a 256.) The Buddha’s cousin and fellow Sakyan Devadatta, as both a member of the Sakyan family and a monk, is said also to be in this line and lineage (Ps II 231), but his many crimes and misdemeanors later disqualify him from the title (Ja II 438).

2. The Lineage of Buddha us Opposed to that of MS and Kings

Many cases given in 1 above and 3 below seem deliberately to coalesce what is usually (if loosely) called the ‘charisma’ of kings and Buddhas/ monks, World Conquerors and World Renouncers, for the (equally loosely described) purposes of ‘legitimation’. Some texts, however, contrast the lineage of MS with that of Buddhas. One striking example is an account of the Buddha Gotama’s life redacted as an Introduction to the Jtituku collection and to the commentary on the canonical Apudiinu. At first, when Siddhattha has only just left home and begins to eat his first begged meal, he has to overcome his disgust at it, compared to the food he was used to as a prince, such as ‘perfumed sah-rice kept in storage for three years . . . with various delicacies’. So disgusted was he that ‘his intestines began to turn and were about to come out of his mouth (Ja I 66, transl. Jayawickrama 1990: 88; Ap-a 71). But he masters himself with a self-admonition. Later (Ja I 88-90, transl. ibid.: 120-121; Ap-a 93-4) he returns for the first time after his enlightenment to his family, the Sakyans, who are ‘proud by nature and stubborn in their arrogance’. Various miracles occur which humble them, but still no-one invites him and his 20,000 monks for a meal on the next day. That morning, he enters the city to beg for alms: no-one offers him


food. He asks himself whether Buddhas of the past went straight to the houses of the nobility (issara-r@-s) or to every house in turn; the answer is the latter. He says to himself ‘I too must accept as mine this tradition, this legacy [uyuqz vuqzso, uyu~ paw+] so that in future my disciples pursuing their training under me will fulfill the duties connected with the begging of their daily round’. When his father, king Suddhodana, is told that his son Siddhattha is begging for food he is distressed, on the grounds that other people will think him (Suddhodana) incapable of feeding such a large number of monks. He asks his son why he is begging, and is told that ‘this is the customary practice of our lineage’ (cdrittuqz eta? . . . amhtikum Ja I 90; va?su-c&ittup Ap-a 94). Suddhodana asks ‘Lord, is not the Khattiya descent from MS our lineage? And in this lineage there was not one Khattiya who went about begging alms’. The Buddha replies to his father: ‘Your majesty, this royal lineage is your descent, but mine is this lineage of Buddhas, from Dipankara, KondaCna and others right down to Kassapa [the Buddha preceding Gotama]. These, and many other Buddha& thousands in number, have begged their daily food . . . ‘.

Perhaps this might recall to educated audiences a sentiment expressed in other texts (e.g. Spk 151, Vbh-a 10-l l), which respond to an imag- inary opponent who objects to the Buddha’s employing the categories of ‘pleasing’ and ‘unpleasing’ in a suttu as if things were intrinsically one or the other. (%tnamoli’s translation [1987: 9ff.1, to be cited below, has ‘intrinsically’ for patiyekku [Skt pratyeku], ‘individually’, or ‘separately’.) Such judgments are relative, says the opponent, to the likes and dislikes of different people: some people like to eat worms or peacock’s meat, others don’t. This is refuted by grounding the capacity to distinguish objects as intrinsically pleasing or not in the judgment of the average being [mujjhimaka-sattu]. For [they are] not distinguishable according to the likes and dislikes of great emperors [ati-issara] such as MS, Mahasudassana, Dhammasoka and so on. For to them even a divine object appears unpleasing. Nor is it distinguishable according to [the likes and dislikes ofJ the extreme unfortunates who find it hard to get food and drink. For to them lumps of broken rice-porridge and the taste of rotten meat seem as exceedingly sweet as ambrosia. But it is distinguishable according to what is found agreeable at one time and disagreeable at another time by average [men such as] accountants, government officials, burgesses, land owners and merchants (pp. l&11).

Another standard commentarial passage, which one might set along- side the idea that the lineage of Buddhas and of the Monastic order is something quite different from the lineage of MS and kings, names MS, along with Mandhata and Dhammasoka, as examples of ‘talk about kings’ (rtiju-kuth& which is expressly denigrated as something monks


and nuns should not indulge in (Sv 89, Ps III 221, Mp V 44, Spk III 294). Such talk is one of a number criticized as tirucchana-kutha, literally ‘animal’ or ‘bestial talk’ (for references and discussion see Homer 1942: 82 n. 3, Rhys Davids and Rhys Davids 1921: 33 n. 2).

3. Historical Kings and MS

In the sources we have used for this article, claims by real, historical kings to be descended from MS are ubiquitous in Sri Lanka, standard in Burma, and somewhat rarer in - but by no means absent from - Thailand, Cambodia and Laos. The claim can be made explicitly by invoking MS’s name, or implicitly by alleging descent from the lineage of the Sun (sariya-vqzsa), from that of Okkaka (Skt Iksv%ku), or from the Sakyan family. In a Buddhist context each and any of these claims may be taken, perhaps, to imply the others: but one must be careful, since claiming ancestry in the Sun lineage is commonplace among kings everywhere in South Asia (for a non-Buddhist example from South India, see Spencer 1982). Indeed since Rama is in the Sun lineage, and is well known throughout South and Southeast Asia, to claim ancestry in the Sun lineage could equally well be appealing to his story, at least when there is no evidence one way or the other. Buddhist kings sometimes justified their royal function by asserting that they prevent disorder or restore order, and referring to MS as a precedent. This rhetorical association need not imply a claim to have MS as an ancestor, but the two things are clearly related.

Of extant Sri Lankan inscriptions, the earliest to contain a claim to be from the Sakyan family and the lineage of the Sun are by king Kassapa V, in the early 10th c. (EZ I 52, II 32); the earliest to claim descent from the Okk%ka lineage are by a prince called Lam&n Mihinda in the mid-10th c. (EZ III 224), and the first by a king those by Mahinda IV, in the second half of the 10th c. (EZ I 98 et freq.). The first to mention MS by name would seem to be by Parakkama-bahu I, in the later 12th c. (EZ II 274, IV 7). These claims then become standard, with MS mentioned by name in inscriptions set up by Nissanka Malla in the 12th c. (EZ IV 88 et freq.), Parakkama-b&r VI and Bhuvaneka-bahu VI in the 15th (EZ III 67, 281), and a number of kings in the 16th (EZ III 247, IV 15, 26, V 453). In texts, the earliest such claim is that made by the Dipavarpsa (X lff.) and Mahdvarpsa (VIII 18ff.) that Pandukabhaya, the third king of Sri Lanka and founder of the earliest capital Anuradhapura had a S%kyan princess as his maternal grandmother. This kind of claim is most extensively developed in the family of texts known by the name Riijiivaliya, composed from the


14th to 19th c. One of these, describing kings up until Rajasimha II in the late 17th c., has been translated by Gunasekara (1900), and they are described in some detail by Godakumbara (1961: 75-80) (cf. Wickremasinghe 1900: 75-7, HNSM Index to vol. IV). They begin with a cosmology expanding that of AS, and a cosmo-geography of Jambudvipa and the other islands around Mt. Meru; continue with a description of the election of MS as king and, analogously, the choice by various animal species of one among them to be king; relate stories of the kings between MS and the earliest kings of Sri Lanka; and finally recount events and kings in Sri Lanka down to their own time.

In Burma, inscriptions refer to king Kyanzittha (Kalancacsa) in the 1 l-12&1 c. as a ‘scion of the exalted solar race’ (the translation given in EB I 51 for udiccidiccavarpujo; text at ibid.: 49, cf. Lute 1969: 74; and EB I 151, 167, cf. Lute ibid.: 55 and Aung Thwin 1985: 57, 221 n. 22). Rajakumar, Kyanzittha’s son, illustrated a temple with paintings of ‘Varakaly~a, MS, [and] Mahasudassana the Cakravartin’ (Lute ibid.: 377). King Mindon in 1852 set up an inscription in which he both called himself a ‘solar king’, and traced his descent back to kings Alaungpaya (r. 1752-60) and Narapati-sithu (r. 12th-13th c.; Scott and Hardiman 1901: 124-6; Aung Thwin 1985: 221 n. 22). Both Nyaungyan Min (r. 1597-1606) and Alaungpaya were likened to MS by later chroniclers (Lieberman 1984: 49, 247 n. 70, 255; cf. Aung Thwin 1982: 94, Koenig 1990: 86-7), on the grounds that they, like MS, had saved the world from disorder; and this seems to have been a trope especially favored by kings in the Restored Toungoo dynasty from the late 16th c. (Lieberman 1984: 72-4, citing, as an instance, an edict of Tha-lun, r. 1629-48). On 15 April 1837 the newly crowned King Thayawaday issued an order including the following explanation: The Elder Brother King was sick and was unable to look after the administration for some time with the result that the people suffered greatly; as it was in the beginning of the world when people requested MS to rule over them; so the Young Brother King has taken over; the former king will be nursed back to health as if he were the father of the king.’ (ROB vol. 8 pp. 1734 s. 2)

The reality behind this charming expression of filial affection was that the incumbent king Sagaing’s insanity was becoming too widely known to disguise for much longer. His younger brother deposed him in order to pre-empt a similar move from his chief wife, who with her brother and ministers was then tortured and executed in the normal way.

The place of MS as first in the lineage of the Sun was sometimes taken by the figure of Pyu-zaw-hti, the offspring of a sun spirit (Lieberman 1984: 83). The Glass Palace Chronicle, commissioned in 1829 by king Bagyidaw, recounts two versions of this story: in one, Pyu-zaw-hti is

THE POST-CANONICAL ADVENTURES OF MAH.&SAMMATA 633

a human being born normally, descended from MS (Maung tTn and Lute 23: 30-3); in the other (derived from Burmese historical ballads) he is the son of a Naga princess and ‘the Sun prince’ (Ibid.: 33ff.), and as the child of a snake-like Naga, born from an egg. It prefers the former, citing as authorities the Pali canonical Sutta Nip&a v.423, where the Buddha declares he is ‘of the Sun race’ (ibid. 36, rendering tidiccsi nama gottena), the 16th c. Burmese chronicler Thilawuntha, and the Zrattha-safigaha (giving the first two of the verses translated in ‘The Lion’s Roar . . . ’ section 2).

Connexions between kings and MS are less numerous in Thai- land, Cambodia or Laos, although he was certainly known there, from both Pali and vernacular texts. MS or his lineage appear in the Thai chronicles translated by Notton (1926: 91-2, 103, 106 [this a state- ment that a certain Brahmin was not de la race Samantartija], 141-2); 1932: 7). In ‘The Abridged Royal Chronicle of Ayudhya of Prince Paramanarmchitchinorot’ there is reference to a King Phra Adityavamsa, who ruled for six months in 1629 (Wyatt 1973: 44); and references to the suriya-vaqa are found elsewhere (see Griswold and Prasert na Nagara 1972: 35; 1973a: 71 et freq.; 1973b: 121; 1978: 122). Coedes (1960: 20-4) has published an inscription dated at 775 A.D. in which a king is referred to as Manunii sama, ‘like [or: the same as] Manu. No doubt further research will uncover more: but the trope seems to have been less common in these areas of Southeast Asia than it was in Sri Lanka and Burma.

(III) CORONATION RITUALS IN BURMA

Since MS was elected king, he would naturally have received a coronation. This fact is mentioned in a number of Sinhalese texts (e.g. HNSM 6604[103] IV, 6615[12], 6615[495]), but in Burma it became a favorite theme, elaborated into poetry and ritual. Ba Thein (1910: 153, S.V. Yazabalakyawhtin)] mentions a poem on the subject, Muddhabitheka mawgun, by the Chaungauk sayadaw (1736-93). The best known literary treatment was written about 1815 by the 1st Maungdaung sayadaw. His Rtijtidhirtija Villisini is admired by Pali scholars: to Bode (1909: 79) it is ‘a specimen of the elegant scholarship of the time’; to Maung Tin it is ‘his masterpiece . . . very ornate and diffuse’ (1914: 7). As the following extract from Maung Tin’s translation shows (he has ‘inauguration’ for abhiseka, our ‘coronation’) the elegance or obsequiousness of the praise of King Badon coexists with hard-nosed positivist scholarship. The author cites authority for every last detail - from the canon, from


the commentaries and sub-commentaries, or from specialist works on kingship that nd longer survive:

The exact traditional ceremony of inauguration, observed by righteous kings, beginning from the creation of the world with MS the descendant of the light-giving sun, otherwise called Manu and coming down in order to Raja, Vararoja, Kalywa, Varakalyaiga and other kings - the exact process of the inaugural head-bathing and other rites as laid down in Narapatijayacariya and other books - the five symbols of royalty, as the requisites of inauguration as given [in] the &taka and other books, - in like manner the auspicious fig pavilion as the fitting place for inauguration, - the throne, the wheel and so on as measures of the time for inauguration, - the person to be inaugurated belonging to the three families worthy of the three conches as given in various books, - the inaugural rites themselves replete with words auspiciously recited with due ceremony according to custom and as laid down in books, - the advantages in inauguration in obtaining the title of True King [ekaryika-rcija, a ‘certain/definite/absolute king’] - and the disadvantages of non-inauguration in not obtaining the title of True King with all manner of kingly powers - this ninefold meaning of inauguration he understood clearly. He had himself inaugurated, as befitting a worthy prince, by three worthy persons, with due ceremony, according to full traditional rites and with a sufficiency of verbal formalities, the consecrated oil being poured out of three conches going round in the right direction and falling like a continuous healing shower of ambrosial juice thus altogether surpassing the inauguration of all other kings of the earth . . [Further texts are discussed.] This three fold ceremony, consisting of [l] observation of ancient custom [2] consecration of the prince and [3] consecration of the head are mentioned in such books as Sumangala ViBsini and Swatthapakasani [sic]. (Maung Tin 1914: 11 [Pali], 18-9 [transl.])

The author’s general stance is that, since a king is not a king without a coronation, the first king in the world must have undergone the first coronation in the world. To follow MS’s example is therefore a guarantee of correctness. A text preserved in the Myanma Min Okchokpan Sudan 6 gives a detailed account of the coronation ceremony as envisaged under the Konbaung dynasty [1752-18841 mixing themes from AS and CSS. (Direct quotes in the following summary are from the translation in the appendix to Okudaira 1994.) The head of the sangha and twelve brahmans start proceedings by depositing the Tipitaka in the throne room. As 108 monks chant in the background, princesses, brahmans and rich men in turn ‘request the king to rule according to the law’. Firstly the eight princesses admonish the king: ‘May you be steadfast in the laws practised by the Maha Thamada, the first King in the world’. They warn him against greed, anger and ignorance before pouring the water over his head. Then it is the turn of the eight b&mans to say ‘May the faith increase in glory; may you love and pity all the living beings as your own son . . . ’ They advise him to keep his temper, to follow the laws and to heed the words of the educated before they in turn pour the water over his head. Finally eight rich men, having repeated the previous address, add ‘May you receive tax according to the law . . . by consuming one-tenth of our products. . . . May the kings


of many countries bow their heads before you, may there be no thieves or robbers . . . ’ And, add the rich men, if you break your oath, may the world be ruined by earthquakes, hell-fire, rebels and witches. The king, soaked for the third time, gives a speech in which he asks to be victorious over his dangerous enemies and to attain the white elephant and the treasures (to become, in other words, a cakkavatti).

Like AS, to which it alludes, this elaborate Konbaung ceremony has been taken as evidence of a social contract theory (Thaung 1959: 176). Fumivall, more accurately, sees it as an oath backed by a conditional curse and adds:

An oath meant something in those days, probably a good deal more than murder . to break an oath was like involuntary suicide. A king who broke his public oath was inciting, or at least providing an excuse for, his subjects to rebel. And the coronation oath was taken in the presence of those most likely to rebel.’ (Furnivall 25: 142)

This distinction is, we admit, not always easy to make. Wyatt (1994: 1083) summarises a chronicle of the Nan kingdom written in 1821:

This section admonishes kings to heed the tenets of Buddhist morality and it also warns that those who do not tread the path of righteousness (using the same Pali word r+sacc~ [sic] as the Buddhist chronicles used earlier) will be punished by all the various spirits - the spirits of rivers, lakes, streams, caves and so forth - that were the main subject of the animistic texts with which we began.’ (Wyatt 1994: 1083)

Succu, ‘truth’, can also be used in relation to the virtue of keeping promises. While we would like to distinguish a legalistic contract from a supernatural oath or a constitutional duty, it seems that r~$zsucca, ‘the king’s truth’, does not discriminate between the three concepts. The Nan chronicler certainly relies on supernatural penalties to discipline the errant king, but this may just be a faGon de purler. To threaten the bad king with rebellion, and thus, in effect, to treat his oath as part of constitutional law, may be counted as Zbse mujeste’; to threaten him with the supernatural is acceptable piety. In a lengthy preamble to a short order announcing mercy to those who steal royal property, Badon confirms his own understanding of the coronation as a promise backed by a curse:

Kingship in this life is due to the accumulation of good deeds done in one’s former lives. After ascending the throne, there was a coronation. This means that the king promises to rule with benevolence and justice and is placed under a curse if he fails. I have had the coronation five times. I observe all the royal virtues and help all monks live within the Vinaya. (ROB 18-3-1796; Vol. 5 p. 113)

For whatever reasons, there were Konbaung kings who did not undertake this climactic coronation ceremony. Furnivall implies that they could


make do with the 13 lesser grades of coronation ceremony which he enumerates from the Myanma Min Okchokpan Sudan (Fumivall 1925: 142-3).

Okudaira (1994: 10) raises the question whether the full Royal Coronation (Muddha Beiktheik) ceremony was known before the 18th century. Was it invented by the Konbaung kings and their legitimizers or was it, as they claimed, based on antiquity? San Shwe Bu (1917: 181-4) summarises what ‘the old chroniclers have handed down to us’ about the coronation of King Datha of Arakan (1153-65)), to show how ‘Buddhism and Brahmanism shared equal honours’ at that time. They do not mention MS; and there are four groups who administer the oath and pour the chrism, rather than three as in the Konbaung case. These groups are ‘Eight princesses . . . eight high-class Brahmans . . . eight men belonging to the middle class . . . [and finally] representatives of all the different classes of people’. The last group offer good wishes to the king, but warn him of the dire consequences which would follow if he chose to ‘give rein only to your own wicked and selfish desires’. If this account can be trusted,7 then it can be plausibly claimed that the Konbaung ceremonies were devised by injecting an increased Buddhist quotient into this Arakan template. If this adaptation took place, it would appear to have happened long before the reign of King Badon. Evidence from the dhammathats shows that the general association of MS with coronation rituals is much earlier than the Konbaung dynasty. Manugye [D12], written within ten years of the first Konbaung king’s accession, mentions that MS ‘was crowned with the three kinds of bithik anointment.’ This gives little detail and may record the new ideas of the new dynasty. A more detailed association is made by King Thalun’s Minister for Law Reform around 1630:

They named the man so elected ‘Sammata’. They undertook to pay him a tribute of one tenth of their earnings. They crowned him with the full regalia of a king. They bought water from the River Ganga and sprinkled it over his head. While the sprinkling took place, he was seated on a throne made of Thapan wood. He was decked in pearls and emeralds and a white umbrella was spread over his head.’ (Maharajathat D8: translation slightly adapted from Shwe Baw 1955 2: 1001

Wageru [D5] adds the further detail that the coronation took place beneath a fig tree:

When this universe had reached the period of firmly established continuancy, the original inhabitants of the world conjointly entreated the great king MS to become their ruler; the pouring of water (abhisekam) which inaugurated his reign took place beneath the Udumbara tree. Ring MS governed the world with righteousness.

Inflated claims have been made for the antiquity of Wager-u. At best it is evidence for the Mon culture of 13th century Martaban, just after

THE POST-CANONICAL ADVENTURES OF MAHkWMMATA 637

the fall of Pagan. But the surviving texts are all based on a Burmese translation made in 1707.

To sum up: Burmese kings have been describing their coronation ceremonies as based on MS’s since, at latest, the early 17th century. This has given Burmese ideas on kingship a more canonical slant than those found in 19th century Nan. But the sanction against the bad king was, as in Nan, expressed as a conditional self-curse. It has more affinity with the cosmological and supernatural than with the legal and constitutional.

(IV) CASTE AND SOCIAL STRATIPICATION

AS deals with the fact of social stratification not by providing a justi- fication - obviously, since it openly mocks Brahmanical concern with ‘caste’ (@ti) - but by giving an explanation of how it came about: a genealogy of the four ‘classes’ (vu~~alvar~a). But all Buddhist societies have had stratification, in Sri Lanka in the form of a caste system; so in the teeth of the Buddha’s strictures, they could use AS as their social charter. A somewhat mysterious text from 19th c. Sri Lanka, the Xti Nigha~&vu, provides our first example of this. ‘Free persons’, it says, ‘may be divided into a number of castes - whose origin is as follows’. It then recounts a version of the AS cosmology, and the election of MS (at the instigation of ‘wise men’), which brought in its train ‘prime ministers and treasurers’ also;

merchants gained a living by commerce, and were called the merchant (velanda) caste; others by cultivation, and were known as the cultivating caste (gowiya [this clearly a form of the more common goyig&za]). Hence the distinctions of the four great castes (wise men, kings, merchants and cultivators).

Of their attendants, those who worked in silver, copper and other metals were called the smith (achari) caste; the makers of coverings for the body, the tailor (hannali) caste; the removers of dust and other impurities, the washer (radawa) caste. (LeMesurier and Pannabokke 1880: 5)

The text does not locate these developments in Sri Lanka; but next, after kingship was brought to Lanka, it attributes the origin of ten gowiya’ sub-castes there to caste intermarriage, and gives ‘eighteen castes lower than the Gowiya’, before going on in the next chapter to discuss four kinds of slaves.

Whether this text is regarded as a primary source for the kingdom of Kandy, or as a secondary source composed (forged?) by an Englishman in the 1820s based on his conversations with Buddhists (see Huxley, ms.), the connection between MS and Sri Lankan caste is confirmed by earlier sources. MS appears in a story of the origins of the caste


system in a Sinhalese prose work which Nevill dated to the 13th c., called Junava@uyu (HNSM vol. 4 p. 71). This text is discussed by Nevill at Or.6606(39), by Godakumbara (1961: 75; he calls it a cosmological work), and by Wickremasinghe (1900: 86, #76c). Nevill (1886) summarises the opening cosmological section, and translates the main part on caste. Two other texts mention MS at the beginning of an account of what Nevill called ‘the castes or races of people found in Ceylon’ (HNSM vol. 4 p. 21), the Vitti Patuna, Or.6605(16) and A&i-bundhanuya Or.6606(55); cp. 6605(11). He gives no date for the former, but remarks that the latter is ‘at least three or four centuries old’.

MS marks the passage from the golden age of anarchy to that of social organization: once a king is in place he must perform his royal duty of keeping the castes separate. At a very early stage, probably before the arrival of Indian culture, Thais and Burmese had worked out their own patterns of social stratification based on irrigated land use and liability to co&e. To say that S.E. Asia does not know caste is an over-simplification. The rhetoric of vur~ and/or caste was borrowed from India, particularly to describe untouchables - ‘elephant slaves’ - and the royal family. And in both these cases persistent use of the rhetoric of caste could bring about changes in the laws of marriage. Unofficially, something like a hereditary class of untouchables exists in the lowest strata of Burmese society today. And at the other end of the social scale, when the Burmese kings of the early 19th century flirted with Sanskritization, they invented a complex of j&i or sub-castes in which they incorporated MS. This development is preserved in the Myunmu Min Okchokpun Sudan, which describes three distinct groups of khuttiyu - unwuttu, rhulhi and noktui, the first of which divides into two branches, the usumbhinu descending from MS and the sukiyu usumbinu beginning with Okkamukha, who appears in MS’s lineage six reigns before Vessantara (Aye Kyaw 1979: 145 n. 71). King Badon raised 18 of his son’s retainers to khattiya status, so the rhetoric of caste seems merely to be another of Burma’s graded honours (ROB 8-6-1803; vol. 5: 186). Ten years later Badon says that a

king’s residential city is inevitably inhabited by people distinctly divided into four castes; it is like this from the time that the world was created; the Future Buddha was elected Maha Thamada by the people . . . [but] the caste distinction . . would not be so pronounced in Paccanta - [the] outskirts; in a great center where the most powerful king resided the caste distinctions become more pronounced (ROB 8 March 1813; vol. 7: 70).

The Siamese Thai use a highly bureaucratic system of stratification known as sukdinu in which the king legislates the relative status of

THE POST-CANONICAL ADVENTURES OF MAHikWMMATA 639

each of his subjects. This found its way into the Cambodian legal literature, probably between 1750 and 1850, where it was known as the Namoeun Sakha and retrospectively foisted onto MS’s broad shoulders: ‘MS reigns in peace, practicing the ten virtues and often reading the Namoeun Sakha (the Grade of Dignitaries) and the Holy Dhammathat.’ (Leclere 1898 [vol. 11: 17) In the northern Thai regions where the Shan, Khun, Lu and Lao irrigate rice and form states in the plains and valleys, the central question of social stratification is their relationship with the non-Thai speaking montagnards. In Laos and in the Thai regions of Vietnam the mountain people can outnumber the Thais, and yet their subservient legal position was not far removed from slavery. Explaining this disparity is another job for MS, who

was a good looking young man of remarkable intelligence and facility in public affairs - he could solve the most difficult enigmas of the Atthadhammagambhira and was fit to govern. So, the Devaputa [sic: ‘junior gods’], devatti [deities] and men assembled together to consecrate the young MS as king with sacred water. . . . Throughout Jiimbiidipu [sic] he was known by the name of Mahn Samantaraja Khuttiya. . . . As for the Brahmins, half of them submitted to MS, but the others declared ‘We are descended from the Brahmas of the first kappa. This dynasty has only just begun: we will show it no respect.’ Then Phra Indra sent Visukamma [his craftsman] to show them that they were covered in black tattoos; he mocked them for looking so awful. They fled for refuge into the mountain ravines. [Chronique de Suvanna K’om Kham; Notton 1930: 91-2)

(V) RITUALS OF PURIFICATION AND EXORCISM IN SRI LANKA

The most unexpected of MS’s adventures involve stories about him and his wife, normally named MBlnikpala, in Sinhala texts used in rituals of purification after a girl’s first menstruation, and of exorcism. A summary account of these texts is given in Barnett (1916), S.V. Kofahalu, Mahasammata, Manikpala and Oddisa (cf. Hallisey’s Glossary to HNSM, vol. VII); Wit-z (1954: 7Off., 243-4) described some of the rituals ethnographically; and for readers of German there is a brief reference in Bechert (1984: 610-11). In the case of purification, the texts - which sometimes incorporate parts or all of the AS story - speak of MS’s betrothal and marriage to M%nikpala,8 and tell the story of the queen’s ritual purification after her first menstruation, which sometimes involves celestial cloth brought by her brother. In these texts, and others, details are given as to the ancestry of both MS and his wife: some texts make him the son of the Sun; others, such as the Mahc?sammata-mula patuna (Or.6604[155], 6611[75]) speak of generations of ancestors. In view of the association between MS and the figure of Manu it is


interesting to note that in what is clearly one version of this story (Or.661 1[263] III), though without the cosmological part, Nevill tells us (vol. V, p. 278) that ‘the king is called Manu-rada-sinha naravara [v. 11, or the lion king Manu-raja, son of Dina-rada [v. 11, the Sun or day-king. He marries Sarasvi [v. 11, which is a form of Sarasvati’ (a name which appears in other texts dealing with MS’s wife and sister).

Exorcism rituals involve telling the story of the enchanting of either MS himself or his wife (sometimes both). Texts dealing with these stories are particularly numerous in Nevill’s collection (Deriyanagala’s collection seems to contain more than does HNSM); Barnett (op. tit) gives a full account. The exorcising of spells put on both MS and his wife is usually effected by a character called Oddisa, who is summoned from the forest (in Or.6615[438] he and MS are said to have been associated in former lives). Texts dealing with MS are on occasion only a small part of a larger cycle of Oddisa stories. There seems to be little narrative elaboration of why MS was enchanted; descriptions of these texts simply refer to ‘the illness of MS through sorcery’. The story of M%nikpala is richer. MS goes on a visit to heaven, leaving his wife in a celestial bower made by Vissakamma, the divine craftsman. Mara, the usual Buddhist god of death and desire, comes disguised as MS to try to seduce her; Manikpala (in some versions a servant) recognizes him by his bad breath, and she refuses him. He then enchants her. MS returns, tries to get rid of the spell, and finally Oddisa succeeds in doing so. Wirz (1954: 7Off.), describing contemporary rituals, gives two versions of the MS story, without citing his sources (they may have been oral tales picked up in his fieldwork, or versions taken from texts such as those we are considering). The first gives an AS-style cosmology, with a different (feminist?) account of monarchy:

When the number of people had become very great, they resolved to elect one as their king. They assembled and chose a woman for their queen who should from then on reign over them. She was called Mlnikpala-devinanse and afterwards married a man, named Mahasammata-rajjuruvo, who became their king.

(VI) ETIOLOGICAL MYTHS

Of course, from the very beginning of MS’s career, in AS, he was a figure used for etiology: how kingship arose, how law began, etc. Almost all of the examples we have cited in this paper have this function to some degree. Specific aspects of kingship are also traced to him, in addition to kingship per se. When King Thalun asks Kaingza whether he knows of any precedent for employing spies: ‘Do the old books of

THE POST-CANONICAL ADVENTURE3 OF MAHiiSAMMATA 641

law mention the words . . . thet-the [a person who gives evidence of what he has heard or seen]?‘, Kaingza replies by citing a Mon account of MS: To this question I Kaingza Manuraja, reply: “. . . A Mon dhammathat . . . says that in the beginning of the world King MS adopted the practice of sending out messengers to listen to what the people talked about in all the four watches of the night and day . . . ” (Maharajathat [D8] Shwe Baw 2: 18)

Sometimes reference is made to the canonical texts, but not always accurately, as in the following example from the Myanma Min Okchokpan Sadan. Discussing the coronation of various kings, including Anahwrata and Badon, it accurately reproduces themes from AS and CSS, mixed with other details, but in a manner inconsistent with their canonical content. If the two canonical texts are read together in a realist mode, the story recounted in AS must precede CSS chronologically, since the latter presupposes the institution of kingship, the origin of which is described by the former. Nevertheless, this text states that: It was through fear and untruth that the first king was raised to the’throne. In the period before there was a king, people put forward conflicting claims to property, and would attempt to fence off lands, distinguish their possessions, hide their valuables, and mount ceaseless guard on them. Therefore evil persons went and stole the property of other persons; when these evil thieves were captured by the good people, they were sternly rebuked and freed on the first and second occasion, but on the third occasion they were beaten and put to death. Because the taking of life had been committed, there arose the evil of lying and untruthfulness; it is thus laid down in the Cukkavarri Sutfa . . . [A] group of wise people searched for a man of penetrating intelligence to distinguish carefully the truth from lies, and a worthy person named Manu was elected as Maha Thamata. (Thaung 59: 176)

In AS and CSS, the first act of (capital) punishment - said by the Myanma Min Okchokpan Sadan to be done by ‘the good people’ - is itself seen as part of the degenerative process, ‘one bad thing leading to another’ (see ‘The Discourse on What is Primary’, notes to #19.1, 20.2, 22.1; and ‘The Lion’s Roar’ section 3).

Just as MS supplies the origin both of kingship per se and of specific aspects of it, so in the Sinhalese exorcism texts MS’s and/or Manikpala’s enchantment can be used, as in the Vina Up&a, to recount both an overall ‘origin of sorcery’ and an origin for one or another aspect of contemporary rituak9 of cutting limes with an areca-cutter (246), of arrows and fowl (326), of sprinkling rose-water (263); and of ‘charms to exorcise evil influence from cloths used as canopies’ (425, p. 562). MS appears in other etiological contexts. His is the prototypical form of any coronation, so his story is given as the origin of crowns (43), as of drums used in ceremonies of any sort (130, 245); and ‘dancing was first invented . . . at the ceremony to disenchant [MS]’ (309, vol. 6


p. 432). A number of texts involving MS are said by Nevill to give the origin of ‘purlieus’, a word which in English refers to tracts of land (of various kinds); one such text concerns a space of land, used as a labyrinth (469), but others seem to depict a building (262), or ‘a throne purlieu’ (468). Whatever space or object appears in the stories, Charles Hallisey suggests (pers. comm.), the contemporary ritual element may be magical diagrams. Finally, betel leaves, ubiquitous throughout South and Southeast Asia, were originally brought to earth from heaven for the marriage of MS, and were subsequently utilized by Oddisa in the exorcising of M%nikpala (438).

One might also mention here a case where not MS, but another part of AS, may have been used etiologically. Duroiselle (15: 1171) describes ‘the old Burmese custom, indulged in by young bachelors of the quarter, of throwing stones and brick-bats at the house where a marriage is taking place’, until they are given something or paid to go away. He traces this to AS #16, where people throw dirt, ash and cow-dung at the first human couple to have intercourse.

In section (I) on cosmology, we cited a Sinhalese text called LSku R&fju Uppiitiya (Or.6615[484], [493]) which depicted MS not as elected or appointed by the people, but as having been chosen at the age of five by the god Sakka (Indra). The second of Wirz’s exorcism stories (54: 72), mentioned in section (V), likewise contains no suggestion of an ancient democracy, and introduces other innovations along with parts of the usual AS context:”

The first human couple was created by Sakra as the ancestors of mankind. They multiplied the earth and the earth was populated by them Very soon, however, disagreement arose among them and they quarreled, for they had no sovereign or justice. Everyone wanted to rule and there was nothing but conflicts. Sakra saw how the people grew violent and flew at each other, and decided to appoint a monarch. He let a crown fall from heaven, and the person on whose head it settled should be king. This lot befell MS. . . So he was called to be sovereign and assigned the title of ‘Chakravarti’.

A text which Nevill called the ‘Blessing of Mahasammata’, the Mahiisammata Sihdla (Kuvi) (Or.6615[277], unlike both the LOka Rtiju Uppiitiya and AS, recounts the origin of language.’ ’ Where the cosmology of the L&z RZiju Upptitiya, apart from its account of the first king, followed AS reasonably closely, this text by contrast

contains a notice of the great flood at the commencement of the present kalpa, when the waters covered the earth, and mankind was destroyed. All was then dark. Afterwards the sun and moon began to shine, and the days were formed; afterwards the Sapta-ktita or seven peaks appeared, and the seven lakes and the Anottata lake [in the Himalayas]. The Sakra world was formed above Maha-Meru, and the Asura world beneath it. The king MS was created by the gods, and the languages known as

THE POST-CANONICAL ADVENTURE3 OF MAtiSAMMATA 643

Makata-pali, Abhaya-pali, Madikkaya, Telinga and Grantha began to exist, and both grammar and writing, and Demala (Tamil). There were eighteen languages, eighteen races and eighteen kings. The king MS manied Queen MCkpala . . .

In Southeast Asia it is often said that humanity is divided up into 101 different peoples. Than Tun (1984-90, X: 22) suggests plausibly that this number derives from the references to 101 kings in the Sona- Nanda, Mahiisutasoma and Mahii-Ummagga Jiitaka-s [#532,537 5461. But the number is also found in a non-Buddhist context, so here we have another example of the need to look into how themes from the Pali tradition were blended with or juxtaposed to indigenous themes. Archaimbault (1959: 385) cites a Laotian romance in which Khun Bulom and 6 others climb down the vine from heaven to earth, but drop their 7 gourds, from which spring 101 couples who disperse in all directions to form the 101 races of the world. He compares this (p. 406) to a passage near the start of the Siamese Three Seals Code which describes the 101 races in the world as led by 101 descendants of MS. One of the Mon dhammathats published by Nai Pan Hla (1992: 593-4) gives a lengthy account of this legend. At first, MS reigned over all four continents, flying to each to exercise his rule. When he grew old he assigned each continent to one of his four sons. They too flew around all four continents until they grew old, when they stayed on their own. The king of Jambudipa divided it into ten regions for his ten sons. Gradually, in the course of the generations, although at first all the princes of Jambudipa ‘knew that they were kin and belonged to one nation’, later: the people forgot they were kinfolk. . . . They lived apart and made no contact with each other. Therefore their languages became different from each other. Their costumes became different from each other. Today there are one hundred and one nations in the world.’

Singer (1992: 86) quotes a description from the Burmese Riijuva~sa of a grand pagoda festival staged by the Arakan king Min Phalaung [1571-931. It included some kind of pageant in which ‘the represen- tations of the 101 races of men, of scenes in the 550 jataka tales, of aquatic monsters were paraded.’ It does appear, then, that attempts were actually made to find 101 nationalities. A Burmese list from 1674 has survived (see the references in Than Tun 1990: 22).

********************

Given the variety of MS’s post-canonical adventures, we sense a problem of characterization. His exploits are so varied that it seems


difficult to put together a single, consistent person to experience them all: as a culture hero, MS suffers from a split personality. On the one hand he is the Great Elect, as perceived by Buddhist kings and Theravada monks close to the palace. This MS, whom we meet in royal epigraphy and manuscripts presented to the palace, is an emblem for abstract theories of social order (not all of which, however, conform to expectation: as well as being democratically appointed by the will of the people, this MS can also be theocratically anointed by the King of the Gods). He lives on, albeit in civilian clothes, as the First Statesman or First Democrat in the contemporary discourse of Buddhist politicians and Theravada newspaper editors. The other side of MS’s split personality would be more at home tending his rice-field or driving his ox-cart to market. He is still a great king, but a great king as seen from the village. He presides over the intimacies of puberty and marriage, is a fellow-sufferer in the fear of sorcery and the relief of exorcism, and can be celebrated in the pleasures of dancing, drumming and betel-chewing. He exists, as does the royal MS, in the long ago and far away, at the origin of human society as we know it, in all (or at least in many) of its everyday details. We can hardly call him a ‘little tradition’ MS, but we might get away with calling him a ‘folksy, down-home’ Great Elect. This folksy MS embodies nothing so grand as a social theory: as an emblem he merely suggests a diffuse feeling of deference towards a benevolent but distant king. When local conditions belie the ideal image of royalty, the blame must lie with the royal appointees: if only he knew how rapacious they were, our rajadhammic king would get rid of the lot of them.

It is twice as difficult to describe a split personality. Our suggestion that MS can be severed into a Dr Jekyll folksy personality and a Mr Hyde royal one has the unfortunate effect of doubling the difficulties of analysis. From a modern historical point of view, the folksy MS, it seems safe to say, is an unintended consequence of the Aggaiiiia Sutta. The issue which we debated in the previous articles can be restated thus: to what extent can the royal MS also be described as an unintended consequence of that text?

NOTES

The division of labour has been as follows: the Pali and Sinhalese material is mostly by Collins, the S.E. Asian material mostly by Huxley. We have commented ;n each other’s contributions and we both accept responsibility for the entire text.

Apart from when we cite the titles of texts, we refer to Mahasammata throughout as MS, even in citations from others. There is great variety in spelling the name in


our sources: it is often unclear whether alternative spellings are in the primary texts, or are mistakes by a modem editor or author, or are simply typographical errors. In all cases cited, we believe, we are indeed dealing with king Mahasammata, the figure from AS. But it should be noted that that Mahasamanta was a common title in South Asian inscriptions, referring to a Chief or Great Vassal - a client king granted special status by his patron - and it is obviously possible that some confusion occurred between the two. 3 Abbreviations for Pali texts follow the Critical Pali Dictionary (= CPD); references to the Visuddhimagga give the PTS page no. followed by the Harvard Oriental Series chapter/paragraph numbers (as in Nanamoli’s [75] translation); EZ = Epigraphiu Zeylunicu; EB = Epigruphiu Birmunicu; references in the form ‘ROB d-m-year to the orders of Burmese kings collected in Than Tun (1984-90); HNSM = Hugh Nevill collection of Sinhalese Manuscripts, ed. Somadasa, 6 ~01s. (87-93), from which mss. are cited by their ‘Or’ catalog number (we have followed the printed version for diacritical marks, or their absence). We are grateful to Charles Hallisey for showing us a ms. of his Glossary of Proper Names in this collection, to be published as vol. 7. There is another descripion of Nevill’s Sinhala texts, edited by Deraniyagala (54) in 3 volumes. Sometimes one can see that texts described here and in HNSM are the same; sometimes not. We have not included references to Deraniyagala’s work, but interested readers should consult it. See further note 5 on this collection. 4 The number of antarakappas in a kalpa seems confused: although the text first says that the Bodhisattva was MS 64 antarakappas after the beginning of the kalpa, it then gives the number of antarakappas between the beginning of the eon, between ihe five Buddhas of the present eon, and until the end of the eon - which total 61.

See: the L&z-su&rnayu Or.6603( 19) III; the somewhat unconventional Kup Uputu, Bumbu Uputa Ha L3casa@iinaya Or.6603(43) I; the Kulpfipattiya Or.6603(157), and KuZpGpattiyu Suhu Muhdsummuta Kuvi Or.661 l(93); other versions at Or.6603(62), (107) XII, 6606(174) (a Rtijiiivaliyu text), 6607(20), 6615(9), (II), (12), (13). In HNSM vol. 1 p. vii Somadasa describes the mss. in this collection as follows: ‘Numbering 2227 items, which Nevill had collected or had had copied during his service [in the British colonial government] in Ceylon from 1865 till near the time of his death in 1897, they include large parts of the Pali Buddhist Canon or scriptures, mostly with sunnayu or Sinhalese explanatory glosses, as well as Sinhalese Buddhist and popular secular literature, poetry, history and folk tales.’ 6 U Tin’s Myunma Min Okchokpun Sudan is one of a number of works written between 1880 and 1915 that are poised between tradition and modernity: they summarise the traditional pre-colonial culture for publication in the new colonial medium of the printed book. U Tin’s work salvaged Konbaung dynasty royal documents. The royal orders it contains are now more easily accessible in Than Tun 1984-1990. ’ Whereas the Burmese chronicles have been published and analysed, the Arakan chronicles have not. It is not at all clear what works San Shwe Bu was quoting, or phat date they were written or whether they still exist.

There is sometimes confusion over names and identities: e.g. Or.6604(103) IV, 661 l(263). ’ Or.6615[351], HNSM vol.6 p. 482: all references in this paragraph are to sub-divisions of Or.6615. D. Scott (1994) gives a modem ethnography of one such ritual. lo Wirz’s language (or that of his informants) seems suspiciously biblical, so caution F; to the representativeness of this story is advisable.

This seems to be the same text as Deriyanagala’s 371, although that is called Muhd Summuta santi.


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Steven Collins Department of South Asian Languages and Civilizations University of Chicago Chicago, Illinois, USA

and

Andrew Huxley School of Oriental and African Studies University of London London, UK

the post-canonical adventures of mahāsammata

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