Zitationsvorschlag

Meng, Xiaoqiang: On the Sources of the Nāgakumārāvadāna of the Bodhisattvāvadānakalpalatā, in Angermeier, Vitus et al. (Hrsg.): Puṣpikā: Proceedings of the 12th International Indology Graduate Research Symposium (Vienna, 2021), Heidelberg: Heidelberg Asian Studies Publishing, 2023 (Puṣpikā – Tracing Ancient India through Texts and Traditions: Contributions to Current Research in Indology, Band 6), S. 319–362. https://doi.org/10.11588/hasp.1133.c15538

Identifier (Buch)

ISBN 978-3-948791-43-8 (PDF)
ISBN 978-3-948791-44-5 (Softcover)

Veröffentlicht

26.01.2023

Autor/innen

Xiaoqiang Meng

On the Sources of the Nāgakumārāvadāna of the Bodhisattvāvadānakalpalatā

In this paper, three kinds of Nāgakumāra narratives in the Mūlasarvāstivāda traditions are discerned: 1. vālukā (‘gravel’); 2. pravrajyā (‘going-forth’); 3. mithyāpraṇidhāna (‘wrong-wish’). The 60th chapter of the Bodhisattvāvadānakalpalatā (BAK) titled Nāgakumārāvadāna is identified as the less known vālukā story. By close reading of 11 verses in the Nāgakumārāvadāna while comparing with the parallel texts in the 55th chapter of the Karmaśataka (KŚ) titled Klu and related passages in the Mūlasarvāstivādavinaya Pravrajyāvastu (MPV), I argue that the Nāgakumāra story in the BAK is textually more akin to KŚ than MPV. Moreover, I argue that Kṣemendra fully and actively utilized available sources ranging from KŚ to Mūlasarvāstivādavinaya-vastus when producing a new tradition of Buddhist narrative literature, i.e., BAK.

Keywords Bodhisattvāvadānakalpalatā, Nāgakumārāvadāna, Karmaśataka, Mūlasarvāstivādavinaya Pravrajyāvastu