[Buddha-l] A Different Take on Devadatta

[jkirk]

The stories about Devadatta have him becoming angry and rivalrous
with his brother because in childhood (or I'd guess teen-hood)
they were staged as rivals in contests of manly pursuits--which
Siddhartha always won. So right away you have a part of what
Freud called the "family romance"--in this instance where
children roles often get bifurcated as between the bad kid and
the good kid--the Cain/Abel syndrome.

I see that I shouldn't have accused Hocart of a causation theory.
However, his conjecture about Devadatta's behavior as perhaps
being originally a cousin-joking relationship maybe gone bad, or
miscontrued as bad in later times, doesn't cut it with me because
there is nothing in the tales of Devadatta to indicate an
original good nature of any sort. Devadatta after all tried to
kill the Buddha twice. Perhaps Hocart didn't know much about the
tales of D., so maybe he was trying to exculpate or provide a
less negative reading of D. on anthropological grounds. (I think
he was just showing off by applying kinship studies to ancient
stories. Kind of similar to what was wrong in some parts of
Fraser's The Golden Bough.)

Of course, I wasn't addressing the instance of the Buddha using
common language abuses. I was addressing whether or not their
being cousin-brothers and preferential cross-cousin marriage had
anything to do with the case. Somehow the B's abusive langyage
doesn't pose a problem for me--especially after what Devadatta
tried to do to his brother. The Buddha after all was a human.
The tales of D's behavior always present him as scheming,
cunning, hypocritical, feigning good-will, smarmy in a word--and
also murderous. Thus the Buddha already knew the true nature of
D., so when approached by D with a fake "kind offer," B.
evidently saw through it (as the story goes) and was annoyed as
well--hence the abusive language. 

In the case of D & B, based only on what we know from the Pali
canon, I don't see that traditional joking relations speculation
is germane. 

The Nepal text Joel translated, and presented as a synopsis of a
future project, was very much later than the canon, it greatly
expands and elaborates on the story of D & B beyond what's in the
canon.  It however does seem to me to provide some ammo for
Hocart's preferential marriage speculations as a motivating
factor in D.'s attitude toward the B., in that Siddhartha and not
Devadatta won the hand of their lovely and virtuous cross-cousin,
Yashodharaa (who by the way isn't even mentioned by name in the
Pali canon, as I recall from what I've read so far anyway). Thus
adding some grist to the mill for Devadatta's murderous rage. But
his desire for her, as shown in the MKA, was motivated not by
sexual lust but by his desire to become King after Shuddhodana
died. In the  MKA that Joel wrote about, D. even talked the King
into letting him become regent for a period of 21 days while the
King was having fits about his son going off into the jungle and
not coming back right away. That regency in the MKA gave D the
opportunity to attack his brother via Yashodharaa, accusing her
of adultery, faking letters from the future Buddha saying he
would not come home unless she was executed for being controlled
by demons, when in fact she was the epitome of truth in her
behavior and so supernaturally protected.  She was subjected to
trials by fire and water and came through them with flying
colors.

But it's all folklore, folks. And yes, morality tales too.

Cheers
Joanna