Claudio Cicuzza
International Ph.D. Program in Buddhist Studies, Mahidol University, Bangkok, Thailand
The literary genre of the Jātaka is based on the faith in the perennial cycle of existence (saṃsara) and in the inescapable consequences of actions (karman). In India, such faith imbues life itself and provides a ground for the philosophical and religious ideas of most of the Hindū, Jaina and Buddhist schools. All voluntary good actions or evil deeds entail compensation or retribution respectively. The effects of actions do not need to have their fruition in the present life but also may cause and influence subsequent existences of those who made them.
The worldly existence of the Buddha was regarded as the last of an endless series of more and more advanced births that lead him to the realization of the universal laws governing the existence of living beings, and to his complete extinction of transmigration. After the disappearance of the historical Buddha, the literary genre of the Jātakas (stories of [former] births) was invented. The Jātakas, which actually derive from the ancient Indian lore of fables and tales, describe the moral virtues of the Bodhisatta, the future Buddha, in his many former lives and point, thus, to the ideal spiritual path to awakening.
The Pāli redaction of the Jātakas in verse and prose called Jātakaṭṭhavaṇṇanā represents the current canonical texts of the Jātakas, contained in the “Group of small texts” (Khuddhakanikāya).
The Vessantarajātaka – the story of the birth [of the Bodhisatta] as Prince Vessantara, the perfect model of generosity who is traditionally considered as the last worldly appearance of the Bodhisatta before his final birth as the Buddha – closes the collection. It is for this reason, too, that the Vessantarajātaka has been considered one of the most important jātaka of the whole collection. The translations of the Vessantarajātaka in the literary languages of Asia often display a lofty style and a good balance between verse and prose.
In my paper I will offer some notes about the Thai commentarial tradition on Vessantarajātaka. Besides the Vessantarajātakaṭīkā and the Vessantaradīpanī, a special emphasis will be given to Vessantaravivaraṇā, an anonymous Pāli commentary that was composed in North of the present-day Thailand around the 16th century. It is preserved in a single manuscript and is still unpublished.
(Presented in the International Conference – Buddhist Narrative in Asia and Beyond, 9-11 August 2010, Imperial Queen's Park Hotel, Bangkok, organized by Institute of Thai Studies, Chulalongkorn University with support from The Thailand Research Fund (TRF), in co-operation with Faculty of Arts, Faculty of Fine and Applied Arts, Institute of Asian Studies, The Confucius Institute, Chulalongkorn University and l’École française d'Extrême-Orient (EFEO))