Manuscript Illustrations Of Uttaradhyayana Sutra

Author(s): W Norman Brown
Publisher: American Oriental Society

Page 51

14. IŞUKĀRA The story is contained partly in the introductory section of the commentaries and partly in the Uttarādhyayana chapter itself. Six souls, who had been herdboys, were reborn as king Işukāra, his wife Kamalavati, the royal chaplain Bhrgu and his wife Yaśā, and finally the latter couple's two sons. The chaplain and his wife had been childless, until the souls of the third pair of former herdboys, then living in a heaven, took form as monks and promised the chaplain a pair of sons if he would agree not to interfere with any desire they might happen to express for religious life. When he agreed, they took form as embryos in Yaśa's womb. Once, when they were boys, they saw some Jain ascetics, and from a tree watched them eating, a sight which awakened them to the life of holiness. In their turn they awakened their parents, and when the queen Kamalavati heard what had happened she too took to religion and induced the king to do so as well. In this way all six entered the ascetic life, and reached omniscience and release from rebirth. In the Uttarādhyayana text the chief subject of interest is the substance of the various arguments with which the characters are awakened.
The paintings of JM (fig. 50) and HV (fig. 47) have six persons in three registers, clearly representing the six characters of the story. At the top are the king and the queen; below are the chaplain and his wife; and at the bottom are the latter couple's two sons shown as monks. DV (fig. 49) has the six characters in two registers of three each, all dressed as lay folk-the king, queen, and one boy in the upper register; the chaplain, his wife, and the other boy in the lower register. The painting of JP (fig. 48) is not so easy to understand. It shows, on the left-hand side of the scene, two monks seated one above the other, that at the bottom being the larger and the more important. Facing them are seven lay folk. At the top is a layman; below him in two pairs are four men, presumably the king, the chaplain, and the two boys; and at the bottom are two women, one being a nun and the other a lay woman. The monks may be those whom the two boys saw when they were hiding in the banyan tree; the two women may be the chaplain's wife as a nun-she being the first of the women to be converted-and the queen. The layman at the top I cannot identify.