Читать книгу Garland of the Buddha's Past Lives (Volume 2) - Aryashura - Страница 31

of a tree, illuminating it like a deity with the power of her beauty, focusing on a meditation practice taught by her husband.”

16 See 22.19–33.

17 Royal hunts in forests also provide a means for animals or ascetics to encounter human beings. See, for example, story 25.

18 This similarity is conveyed by ‘The Birth-Story of Suta·soma’ (31), in which the idyllic description of a royal park closely resembles that of forests in other stories (31.10–12 [5]). In this story, there is a reversal of the normal contrast between the serene harmony of the forest and the desire-based violence of human society. Here a king’s pleasure trip in his gardens is invaded by the attack of a forest cannibal, thereby conveying a contrast between the civilized pleasures of royal gardens and the unruly wilderness of the forest. The garden-forest motif can therefore vary its significance and function depending on the context. Parks or forests can also take on a divine significance through their association with Nandana, the garden of the gods (28.13 [5]).

19 The invasive nature of the king’s actions is highlighted by the fact that his drums terrify the animals living in the forest as he approaches the tree (27.19).

20 These are: stories 21–27, 32. Story 28 is an exception in that the king who assaults the Bodhi·sattva is swallowed up into hell after refusing to lessen his hostility despite hearing the Bodhi·sattva’s instruction. Here it is karma that provides a resolution to the conflict. However, a different resolution between the Bodhi·sattva and human beings is achieved at the end of the story when the Bodhi·sattva preaches to the king’s ministers, who become his “disciples of virtue” (28.110 [69]). In story 30, the animal realm is again depicted as an idyllic sphere separate from human society, but here the Bodhi·sattva willingly sacrifices himself for a group of starving people and there is no conflict between him and human beings. The stories in which ascetics or animals directly come into contact with kings are: 21–23, 25–28, 32 (while in stories 24 and 30, the Bodhi·sattva as an animal encounters human characters ________