Toh 345Chuyện Kể Gương Mẫu Về Con Heo Nái (Toh 345)

Summary

In The Exemplary Tale About a Sow, the
Buddha recounts the earlier events surrounding a god in Trāyastriṃśa heaven who
foresaw that he would be reborn as a pig in Rājagṛha. At the encouragement of
Śakra, this god, in the final moments of agony before his death, took refuge in
the Three Jewels and thereby attained rebirth in the even higher Tuṣita heaven.
The story thus illustrates the liberative power of taking refuge in the Three
Jewels, as befittingly expressed in the concluding verses of this short
avadāna.

Acknowledgements

Translated by the Bodhinidhi Translation Group. The Tibetan text was
translated into English and compared with the Sanskrit and Chinese versions by
Thomas Cruijsen. Khenpo Chowang checked the translation with the Tibetan.

The translator would like to thank the staff at the Namgyal Institute of
Tibetology, Gangtok, for generously providing access to their precious library
collections.

The translation was completed under the patronage and supervision of
84000: Translating the Words of the Buddha.

Introduction

The Exemplary Tale About a Sow belongs
to a genre of the Buddha’s teaching known as avadāna, “exemplary tale,” which consist of
narratives aimed at illustrating the workings of karma and instilling the
principles of generosity and virtuous conduct. In this case, the story is
about a god who succeeds in averting a particularly wretched state of
rebirth by taking refuge in the Three Jewels.

It is one of the few separate avadāna texts in the Kangyur. For the
most part, texts of this type are found scattered throughout the vast
Mūlasarvāstivāda Vinaya or grouped together in the didactic anthologies of
the Avadānaśataka and the Karmaśataka. This avadāna, however, occurs by
itself and this is probably due to the esteem in which it was held when it
was translated into Tibetan around the turn of the ninth century ce.

One of the likely reasons for its renown was that Śāntideva (late
seventh–early eighth century ce), who rose to
prominence in Nālandā after composing the Bodhicaryāvatāra (Toh 3871),
quotes this avadāna in his older training compendium, the Śikṣāsamuccaya (Toh 3940).
In the eighth chapter of this work, where Śāntideva explains how to purify
oneself from past wrongdoings (pāpaviśodhana), he explicitly mentions The Exemplary Tale About a Sow in order to affirm the potency
of taking refuge in the Three Jewels, “the power of support” (āśrayabala), as it is put in the
Caturdharmanirdeśasūtra. The verse that he cites is the first verse that
is exclaimed by Indra, the lord of Trāyastriṃśa
heaven, in The Exemplary Tale About a Sow:

ye buddhaṃ śaraṇaṃ yānti na
te gacchanti durgatiṃ /

prahāya mānuṣān kāyān divyān
kāyāṃ labhanti te //

Those who take refuge in the Buddha

Do not go to an unfortunate state;

Leaving behind the human body,

They obtain a divine body.

It is the only avadāna that Śāntideva refers to in the Śikṣāsamuccaya, which is largely comprised of
textual citations of Mahāyāna sūtras, and its mention must have carried
significant weight. It was not long after Śāntideva had passed away that the
Tibetan translator Yeshé Dé, who was responsible for the translation of the
Śikṣāsamuccaya, also undertook the
translation of The Exemplary Tale About a Sow,
together with the Kashmiri scholar-monk Jinamitra. This prolific lotsawa
also included a short summary of the story in his mnemonic treatise on the
Bhadracarīpraṇidhāna called bzang spyod kyi ’grel pa bzhi’i don bsdus nas brjed
byang, and the avadāna is further mentioned
by Paltsek, another important Tibetan translator at the time, in his
treatise called gsung rab rin po che’i gtam rgyud
dang shakya’i rabs rgyud. It seems, in fact, that Yeshé Dé’s
summary is derived from the synopsis of this avadāna in the Bhadracarīpraṇidhānarājaṭīkā, a commentary by the Indian master
Bhadrapaṇa that was translated into Tibetan by Jñānagarbha and Paltsek
during the same period. In this commentary, Bhadrapaṇa, who also lived in
the eighth century, similarly refers to The Exemplary
Tale About a Sow to illustrate “the power of support,” as
Śāntideva does in the Śikṣāsamuccaya.

In the centuries that followed, this avadāna continued to be well
known in the Buddhist world. The Chinese translation that has come down to
us was made in the Song capital Bianliang sometime between 982 and 1001 ce by the Indian scholar-monk Dharmadeva, who is
described as having received his training in Nālandā. Prajñākaramati (±950–1030), one of the famous gatekeepers
at the Vikramaśīla monastery, quotes the first verse in his commentary on
Śāntideva’s Bodhicaryāvatāra—again to
point out the potency of the Three Refuges in clearing away past
wrongdoings—with direct reference to the Śikṣāsamuccya. The same verse is cited by
Dharmakīrti of Suvarṇadvīpa, present-day Sumatra, in his commentary on the
Abhisamayālaṅkāra, which was translated into Tibetan
by Atiśa and Rinchen Zangpo around the middle of the eleventh century. The
quotation is also found at the beginning of the Ādikarmapradīpa, the bodhisattva manual compiled by
the tantric master Anupamavajra, who was influential in the Kathmandu Valley
from the twelfth century onward.

While these citations of the first verse, all with explicit
reference to the title and story of The Exemplary Tale
About a Sow, can be attributed to the lasting influence of
Śāntideva’s Śikṣāsamuccaya, the verse
itself appears to derive its authority from elsewhere. In the Mahāsamāja Sūtra, one of the old Mahāsūtras of
the Sarvāstivāda tradition, it is a god of the Brahmā group who exclaims
this verse after congregating with deities from all ten directions at the
forest in Kapilavastu when the Buddha was giving the monks a teaching on
nirvāṇa there. In a somewhat different wording, the same verse
is voiced by a god from Śuddhāvāsa heaven in the Mahāsamaya Sutta, which is the Pali counterpart to the Mahāsamāja Sūtra and likewise an important
text that was recited for protective purposes over the centuries. These attestations of the verse are considerably older than
the first citation from The Exemplary Tale About a
Sow by Śāntideva in the eighth century ce, and it seems, therefore, that the verse had a life of its own
before it was adapted to this specific avadāna.

This can also be seen in the fact that the first three verses of
The Exemplary Tale About a Sow, one for
each of the Three Jewels, occur independently, outside the setting of this
avadāna, on a single paper leaf found among the Sanskrit manuscript remains
at Turfan, in modern-day Xinjiang province, which tend to date to the fifth
to sixth centuries ce. We find the
same three verses on the Three Jewels in the Apaṇṇakajātaka, a Pali jātaka that probably dates to slightly before this
period and that, in terms of the story, bears no connection with The Exemplary Tale About a Sow. It therefore appears that these verses were widely known
and recited at one point in time, independently from any particular
story.

The same could be said for the other three verses in The Exemplary Tale About a Sow. Although the
extant Sanskrit version in the Divyāvadāna
(one of the important collections of avadānas preserved in Nepalese
manuscripts) does not contain these three verses,
they are found in both the Tibetan and the Chinese translations and
therefore must have been present in other Sanskrit versions of The Exemplary Tale About a Sow that circulated at
the time these translations were made. These verses again have an even
earlier attestation, since they occur together in the chapter on mindfulness
in the Udānavarga, the Sarvāstivāda
collection of the Buddha’s sayings that forms the Sanskrit counterpart to
the Pali Dhammapada. The
first of these verses reads:

lābhas teṣām manuṣyāṇāṃ ye
buddhaṃ śaraṇaṃ gatāḥ /

yeṣāṃ divā ca rātrau ca
nityam buddhagatā smṛtiḥ //

There is great gain for those people

Who have taken refuge in the Buddha,

Who call to mind the Buddha

At all times, day and night.

That these verses in the Udānavarga
were held in high regard is clear from the fact that they are cited by none
other than Vasubandhu at the beginning of his Gāthāsaṅgraha, the short anthology of twenty-one
verses that he compiled before he turned to the Mahāyāna. Vasubandhu lived
in the fourth to fifth century ce, showing that
these three verses had already become celebrated at that time—well before
the end of the eighth century when the Tibetan translation of The Exemplary Tale About a Sow was made on the
basis of a Sanskrit version that included these verses. The Chinese
translation, made by Dharmadeva about two centuries after the Tibetan
translation, contains another set of three verses and a concluding verse
that seem to have been added in the interval, but we have not been able to
identify their source.

The English translation of The Exemplary Tale
About a Sow that is offered here is based on the Tibetan
translation by the Kashmiri paṇḍita Jinamitra and the Tibetan lotsawa Yeshe
Dé from the end of the eighth century or the beginning of the ninth century,
at the time of the first transmission (snga dar) of the Dharma to Tibet. We have based
our translation on the text found in the Degé Kangyur, for which we have
used the modern Comparative Edition (dpe bsdur
ma), in which variant readings of several other Kangyurs of
the Tshalpa line are also recorded. We have also checked the Stok Palace
manuscript for variant readings in the Thempangma line of textual
transmission. The few such variants were found to be minor and
orthographical in nature, without any implication for the meaning of the
text.

In addition to the Tibetan text, we have also consulted the Sanskrit
version of The Exemplary Tale About a Sow that
is found in the Divyāvadāna, which shows a number of differences, some of which
derive from it belonging to a different line of textual transmission that
has continued in the Kathmandu Valley until modern times. Some differences
in the Tibetan translation, however, can be ascribed to a certain
translation choice by Jinamitra and Yeshé Dé or an omission in the
underlying Sanskrit, especially in those cases where the renderings of the
Chinese translation are in agreement with the extant Sanskrit version. In
one instance, we have adopted a phrase that is present in both the Divyāvadāna Sanskrit version and the Chinese
translation, because it makes the narrative more complete. All these
differences, including the significant variants in the Chinese translation
by Dharmadeva, have been noted in the endnotes.

Finally, a note about the title of The
Exemplary Tale About a Sow: Usually, avadānas involve a
narration of a person’s actions that took place in a distant past, to which
only the Buddha, in his omniscience, has access, as is the case in the
Buddha’s own past life stories known as jātakas. The title, in those cases, refers to that
previous existence of the person in question. In this case, however, the
narrated events occurred in a more recent past, not long before they are
here recounted by the Buddha to a gathering of monks at Śrāvastī, and the
title points not to the lifetime that once was, but to the future life that
would have been if it had not been for the Three Jewels.

The Translation

The Sūtra

The Exemplary Tale About a Sow

Homage to the Three Jewels!

Thus did I hear at one time. The Blessed One was dwelling in
Śrāvastī, in Jetavana, Anāthapiṇḍada’s Park.

The Blessed One then addressed the monks: “Monks, there are five
portents that appear to a god who is due to pass away. What are those five?
His previously untarnished clothes become tarnished, his previously
unwithered flower garlands become withered, sweat appears from both armpits,
a foul odor emerges from his body, and a god who is due to pass away finds
no satisfaction in his seat.

“Now, monks, a certain god who was due to pass away was writhing
about on the ground, beating his chest, as he cried and wailed pitifully,
‘Ah Mandākinī River! Ah lake! Ah pool! Ah
Caitraratha Grove! Ah Pāruṣyaka Grove! Ah Nandana Grove! Ah Miśrakā
Grove! Ah Pāriyātraka! Ah lovely one! Ah Pāṇḍukambala Rock! Ah assembly hall of the gods! Ah Sudarśana!’

“Śakra, lord of the gods, saw that god violently writhing
about on the ground and wailing pitifully. Seeing this, he then approached
the god and asked him, ‘My friend, why are you violently writhing about on
the ground and wailing pitifully, “Ah Mandākinī River! Ah lake! Ah pool! Ah
Caitraratha Grove! Ah Pāruṣyaka Grove! Ah Nandana Grove! Ah Miśrakā Grove!
Ah Pāriyātraka! Ah lovely one! Ah Pāṇḍukambala Rock! Ah assembly hall of the
gods! Ah Sudarśana!”?’

“At this, the god said to Śakra,
lord of the gods, ‘Kauśika, I will be bereft
of heavenly bliss, as seven days from now I will be reborn in the womb of a
sow in the city of Rājagṛha. I will then have to
feed on excrement and urine for many years. That is why I am like
this.’

“The god said, ‘Friend, I
take refuge in the Buddha, the most excellent of human beings. I take refuge
in the Dharma, the most excellent of dispassions. I take refuge in the
Saṅgha, the most excellent of communities.’

“Having embraced the Three Refuges, the god then passed away, his
time spent, and he was reborn among the Tuṣita gods.

“Then Śakra, lord of the gods, looked
whether the god had been reborn in the womb of a sow, but he had not been
reborn there. He looked whether the god had been reborn among hell beings or
among animals, but he had not been reborn there either. For it is in the nature of things that gods can know and
see what is below them, but not what is above them.

“Puzzled, Śakra, lord of the
gods, then went to the Blessed One. Having approached him, he prostrated at
the Blessed One’s feet and sat down to one side. Once seated, Śakra, lord of the gods, said to the Blessed One:

“ ‘Lord, I
saw a certain god who was due to pass away, and he was writhing about in fear and wailing
pitifully, “Ah Mandākinī River! Ah lake! Ah pool! Ah Caitraratha Grove! Ah
Pāruṣyaka Grove! Ah Nandana Grove! Ah Miśrakā Grove! Ah Pāriyātraka! Ah
lovely one! Ah Pāṇḍukambala Rock! Ah assembly hall of the gods! Ah
Sudarśana!” I went to him and said, “My friend, why are you beating your
chest and crying, lamenting, and wailing?” He said, “ I
will be bereft of heavenly bliss, as seven days from now I will be born in
the womb of a sow in the city of Rājagṛha. I will then have to feed on
excrement and urine for many years. That is why I am like this.” I said to
him, “Come, my friend.
Take refuge in the Buddha, the most excellent of human beings. Take refuge
in the Dharma, the most excellent of dispassions. Take refuge in the Saṅgha,
the most excellent of communities.” Terrified of being born in the womb of
an animal and terrified of dying, that god then said, “Friend, I take refuge in the Buddha, the most excellent of human
beings. I take refuge in the Dharma, the most excellent of dispassions. I
take refuge in the Saṅgha, the most excellent of communities.” Having
embraced the Three Refuges, that god then passed away, his time spent. Lord,
where was he reborn?’

“The Blessed One replied, ‘Kauśika, that god was reborn among the
Tuṣita gods, and all his heavenly desires are fulfilled.’

“ ‘Those who take refuge in the Buddha

Do not go to an unfortunate state.

Leaving behind the human body,

They obtain a divine body.

“ ‘Those who take refuge in the Dharma

Do not go to an unfortunate state.

Leaving behind the human body,

They obtain a divine body.

“ ‘Those who take refuge in the Saṅgha

Do not go to an unfortunate state.

Leaving behind the human body,

They obtain a divine body.

“ ‘There is great gain for those people

Who have taken refuge in the Buddha,

Who call to mind the Buddha

At all times, day and night.

“ ‘There is great gain for those people

Who have taken refuge in the Dharma,

Who call to mind the Dharma

At all times, day and night.

“ ‘There is great gain for those people

Who have taken refuge in the Saṅgha,

Who call to mind the Saṅgha

At all times, day and night.’

“Thereupon, in approval of Śakra, lord of
the gods, the Blessed One spoke the verses, ‘So it is, Kauśika, so it is:

“ ‘Those who take refuge in the Buddha

Do not go to an unfortunate state.

Leaving behind the human body,

They obtain a divine body.

“ ‘Those who take refuge in the Dharma

Do not go to an unfortunate state.

Leaving behind the human body,

They obtain a divine body.

“ ‘Those who take refuge in the Saṅgha

Do not go to an unfortunate state.

Leaving behind the human body,

They obtain a divine body.’

“Then, rejoicing in what the Blessed One had spoken, Śakra, lord of the gods, prostrated at the Blessed One’s
feet, circumambulated the Blessed One three times with folded hands, and
disappeared right there.”

This is what the Blessed One said. Elated, the monks rejoiced at
what the Blessed One had spoken.

This concludes the sūtra called “The
Exemplary Tale About a Sow.”

Colophon

Translated, edited, and finalized by the Indian preceptor Jinamitra
and the chief editor and translator, Venerable Yeshé Dé.

Notes

Abbreviations

Dhp
Dhammapada

DN
Dīrhanikāya. The Pāli Text Society edition.

Iti
Itivuttaka. The Pāli Text Society edition.

Jāt
Jātaka. The Pāli Text Society edition.

SN
Saṃyuttanikāya. The Pāli Text Society edition.

Taishō

Bibliography

Canonical Texts

Secondary Sources

Yeshé Dé