Tales Of The Buddha
Tibet
Tibetan religious legends include moral tales, hagiographies - lives of holy beings who may or may not have existed historically - and stories about the miraculous foundation of holy places. The moral legends derive ultimately from the religious tales of story-tellers in India before the introduction of Buddhism to Tibet. Among them the Tibetan translations of the so-called Jataka tales, legendary accounts of the 550 previous lives of the Buddha, which were originally told to illustrate Buddhist moral precepts. A few Sanskrit collections of these tales were translated into Tibetan and included in the Kanjur (the Tibetan Buddhist scriptures). One of the principles they inculcate is tenderness for all living beings, exemplified by the very popular legends of the Buddha's self-sacrifice. As a prince he killed himself to feed a starving tigress, as a hare he offered his body to appease the hunger of an ascetic, and as a monkey or a deer he saved his herb by giving up his own life. Although the tales came originally from India and drew abundantly on the rich heritage of Indian folklore and literature, they are presented as incidents in the previous lives of the historical Buddha and Tibetans regard them as actual events, though in fact they were deliberately created to serve a religious purpose.
The same thing is true of the romantic biography of the Buddha himself (Lalita-vistara), which is also included in the Kanjur. Like all versions of the life of the Buddha, this legendary account assumes that he was the son of a king, a detail now generally accepted as being unhistorical. The legend says that he was born miraculously from the side of Queen Maya of the Sakyas, after having entered her womb with the appearance of an elephant. The child then took seven steps in the direction of each cardinal point and declared that he would reach the highest Nirvana, that he would be the first of all living beings, that this would be his last rebirth, and that he would cross the ocean of existence. A stream of cold water and a stream of warm water fell on his head and washed him, while on the spot where he had been born a spring appeared, in which his mother washed. Other legendary episodes refer to the Buddha's extraordinary strength and power: as a child, still in his nurse's arms, with one finger he pulled a golden bowl which 500 elephants could not move from its place; the statue of a god bowed down at his feet; after staying three months in the realm of the gods he returned to the earth down a staircase of lapis lazuli, followed by Hindu deities. Brahma with his godly retinue descended a golden stair to the Buddha's right, and Indra with his own suite of gods descended a crystal stair on the Buddha's left.
Legends Of The World
Edited by
Richard Cavendish
ISBN 1-56619-462-8
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