Devadatta

Devadatta ( Sanskrit : देवदत्त) was a prominent Buddhist monk at the time of Buddha Siddharta Gautama . He lived in the 6th century or - according to the more recent dating of the Buddha's lifetime - in the 5th or even early 4th century BC. Because of differences of opinion with the Buddha, Devadatta and his followers left the monastic community ( Sangha ) and thus brought about the first split in the Buddhist community. Therefore it is judged very negatively in the Buddhist tradition. However, modern Indological research considers a large part of the information on which this assessment is based to be inaccurate or doubtful.

Origin, youth and entry into the Sangha

Like the Buddha, Devadatta came from the Gotama clan, a noble (but not royal) lineage of the Shakya people. Gotama was not an individual name of the Buddha, but a name for the whole family, comparable to Western family names. According to one of the traditions, Devadatta's father was called Shuklodana (in the Pali language: Sukkodana) and was a brother of Shuddhodana (Pali: Suddhodana), the father of the Buddha; hence Devadatta and the Buddha were paternal cousins. According to another tradition, Devadatta's father was called Suppabuddha and was a brother of Maya, the mother of the Buddha; then the maternal Buddha was a cousin of Devadatta. Ananda , who later became one of the Buddha's most famous disciples, is believed to have been a brother of Devadatta. In addition, a sister of Devadatta named Yashodhara (according to other tradition, she was called Bhaddakaccana) was the wife of the Buddha before he went into "homelessness" (hermit existence in the wilderness); thus Devadatta was also the Buddha's brother-in-law.

The capital of the Shakyas was Kapilavastu in present-day Nepal. Devadatta spent his youth there, while the Buddha moved into homelessness and later founded the monastic community. When the Buddha was in the nearby city of Anupiya, Devadatta went there and - along with a number of other Shakyas (supposedly five hundred) - accepted into the Sangha. Reports that he did not take this step spontaneously, but at the urging of relatives, and that the Buddha initially advised him against or refused to accept him, are viewed today as tendentious falsifications of the course of events by late Buddhist legend writers. The statements of the Buddhist sources contradict each other and are partly determined by the endeavor to relieve the Buddha of the responsibility for the reception of Devadatta.

The Devadatta Legends

The accounts of Devadatta's life as a monk are legendary and contradicting the details. All of them come from his opponents. All sources portray Devadatta as a dangerous villain and depict him as a sinister antagonist of the light figure of Buddha. Hence his role in the West is often compared to that of Judas in Christianity, sometimes even to that of the devil .

The shot swan

Devadatta turns out to be an opponent of Siddhartha from an early age. For example, he shoots a swan with an arrow, which Siddhartha then nurses to health.

Success in the Sangha

The different versions of the legend consistently report that Devadatta acquired supernatural powers ( Siddhi ). According to the oldest tradition, he achieved this solely through meditation. According to later versions, he needed and requested help from the circle of experienced monks. The Buddha and most of whom he asked denied this request, but eventually found someone who could give him the necessary instruction. This success awakened in him ambition and a will to power. He used his skills to magically transform himself into a boy. In this form he appeared to Prince Ajatasattu , the heir to the throne of the Kingdom of Magadha , where the monastic community was staying. He impressed Ajatasattu with this miracle and then revealed his normal form to him. Then Ajatasattu visited him daily with 500 carts and each time he brought 500 pots full of food for Devadatta and his followers. The individual reports decorate this core of the legend with further miracles of Devadatta and other strange information. Among other things, he is said to have risen in the air and transformed into an elephant and a horse. Endowed with such power, he devised the plan to take a leadership role in the Sangha and oust the Buddha.

Conflict with the buddha

Kakudha, a monk who had come to a heavenly realm after his death, recognized the dark plans of Devadatta from there. He made sure that the Buddha knew about it. In addition, the Buddha remarked that Devadatta would soon reveal his intentions. In addition, monks told the Buddha that Devadatta was highly honored by Ajatasattu and given rich gifts every day, and that some of the gifts received were distributed to his followers. The Buddha said that honors are harmful and that there are dire consequences if one uses supernatural powers for gain. He called Devadatta's behavior foolish and compared him to an angry dog. According to one version, he predicted that the misguided would face an evil form of existence (as hell beings, animals or hunger spirits ).

In order to realize his intention, Devadatta went to the Buddha, who was already old, and asked him without further ado to hand over the leadership of the community to him - Devadatta. He argued that given his age, the Buddha should retire. The Buddha sharply rejected this suggestion, calling Devadatta a fool, a carrion, and a drool. Deeply offended by this rebuke, Devadatta began to hate the Buddha.

The Buddha caused the Sangha to distance itself from Devadatta's behavior in a public statement. He has been deprived of his authority to perform on behalf of the community. However, that did not mean his exclusion from the Sangha. As a result, there was a division in the Buddhist population between those who trusted the Buddha and devadatta followers.

Assassination attempt on King Bimbisara

The various Buddhist legends unanimously report that Devadatta incited the heir to the throne Ajatasattu not to wait for the death of his father, King Bimbisara , but to force him out of the way. Then Ajatasattu, as king, could in turn help Devadatta to eliminate the Buddha and take over power in the Sangha. Various accounts of the following events circulated. They agree that the endeavor has failed. The prince was arrested either before the attack or immediately after an unsuccessful assassination attempt. During interrogation he confessed that Devadatta had incited him to regicide. Some advisors of Bimbisara advocated severe punishments, including the execution of Devadatta. However, the king did not follow this advice. He not only granted his son forgiveness, but abdicated in his favor or - as other variants say - raised him to co-ruler or left him part of the empire, and later the prince seized all power. Everyone agrees that Ajatasattu succeeded Bimbisara to rule the kingdom of Magadha, which is also historically true.

Assassination attempts on the Buddha

According to legend, after the change of the throne, Devadatta made three attempts to kill the Buddha. For the first attempt, the new king made several murderers available to him. Devadatta sent one of them against the Buddha, ordered others to kill the murderer after the crime in order to cover up the trail, and ordered others to kill the murderers of the first murderer afterwards. However, when the first murderer approached the Buddha, he was unable to complete the deed, but regretted his plan and confessed it to the Buddha. Later the other fellow murderers also came to the Buddha and revealed what they knew.

Devadatta kills the elephant, relief, Borobodur

Devadatta made the second attempt himself by climbing the top of a mountain and hurling a large boulder at the Buddha who was sitting below the top. However, the rock was distracted by a guardian spirit. Only a splinter hit the Buddha and injured his foot.

On the third attempt, Devadatta got the handler of a vicious elephant to let go of the animal on the Buddha who was in the alms corridor. However, the Buddha managed to calm the elephant.

Division of the community

Devadatta criticized the monks' housing, food and clothing rules as being too lax and called for them to be tightened. He wanted to sow strife and undermine the authority of the Buddha. The Buddha rejected the proposed changes. However, Devadatta managed to get the monks to vote. 500 monks voted for his proposal and then left the community. Later, however, two particularly respected disciples of the Buddha, Sariputta (Shariputra) and Moggalana (Maudgalyayana), went to the apostates to win them back. After Devadatta fell asleep overwhelmed by fatigue, the two succeeded in convincing the monks. Then those seduced by Devadatta returned to the Buddha's teaching and community. It was only when almost everyone had left that Devadatta was awakened by a confidante.

Death and fate in the afterlife

In part of the tradition, the Devadatta legend was further embellished. According to these accounts, after his followers repentedly returned to the Sangha, Devadatta went to the Buddha either to obtain forgiveness or, if this was refused, to poison the Buddha. But through his iniquities he had accumulated so much bad karma that he was swallowed by the earth in the presence of the Buddha. He ended up in the worst hell, the Avici hell.

In the Lotus Sutra and other Mahayana texts , it is stated that Devadatta will one day also obtain salvation. Since for Buddhists Devadatta is the archetype of an evil person, this should mean that in the end no one is excluded from salvation at all.

The historical facts

The authors of the various versions of the Devadatta legend have made little effort to present the story coherently. The chronology is confused. Most of the older versions of the legend (three out of five) report the split in the church at a time when Devadatta could no longer have been a member of the Sangha, as they said he had already attempted or instigated assassinations on the Buddha and at least in one case was convicted. Yet, according to this account, he continued to act like an influential member of the monastic community and had sufficient authority to cause the split.

According to the current state of research, essential parts of the tradition are implausible:

• It is historically correct that Ajatasattu gained the throne by overthrowing his father. The prince's action against the king is confirmed by non-Buddhist sources. Strong evidence suggests, however, that Devadatta was not involved in such endeavors and that the corresponding accusations were only slander on the part of his opponents.
• The stories about the assassination attempts on the Buddha are to be regarded as free invention. They were part of an effort to endow Devadatta with all the qualities of a villain.
• The narrative of overcoming the split is also suspect in detail. The claim that Devadatta fell asleep during a vitally important meeting was arguably an attempt by opposing propaganda to ridicule him.

Yet research does not doubt that the Devadatta legend has a true core. The following elements of the tradition can be regarded as coherent and historically credible:

• Devadatta was a prominent member of the Sangha. He did not obey the rules introduced by the Buddha, but tried to introduce changes.
• Devadatta wanted to replace the Buddha's then mild rules with stricter ones. His ideas went in the direction of an asceticism , as it was practiced at that time by Jainist and Hindu monks and forest hermits. The Buddha, however, stuck to his "middle way", which in his view kept the middle between radical severity and negligence. This difference of opinion led to the break.
• There was a group in the Sangha that felt it necessary for the Buddha to appoint a successor to be the head of the community. Devadatta was a prominent proponent of this view. However, the Buddha rejected this idea outright, not just in terms of the person of Devadatta.
• A minority of monks left the Buddha's sangha under Devadatta's leadership. But later some of them returned.

Devadatta's activities were experienced by the Buddha's young community as an existence-threatening crisis and also unsettled the public who sympathized with Buddhism. An aftermath of this shock was that the Buddhist legendary literature later endowed Devadatta with demonic qualities and imaginatively attributed devilish intentions and deeds to him.

Devadatta's establishment of his own monastic community was not as unsuccessful as the Buddhist sources claim. As late as the 5th century AD, according to a Chinese pilgrimage report, there were monks in India who called themselves followers of Devadatta (which, however, is no evidence of the uninterrupted continuation of his community).

Research has suggested that there was originally only a relatively harmless antithesis between Devadatta and the Buddha, based on a custom that was widespread at the time, according to which cousins ​​rivaled each other. However, this interpretation has not been able to prevail.

Remarks

1. ↑ The Dating of the Historical Buddha - The Dating of the Historical Buddha , ed. Heinz Bechert, part 1–3, Göttingen 1991–1997, especially part 3 pp. 1–13.
2. ↑ Ryutaro Tsuchida: The Genealogy of the Buddha and His Ancestors , in: The Dating of the Historical Buddha Part 1 pp. 110-112.
3. ↑ Biswadeb Mukherjee: The tradition of Devadatta, the adversary of the Buddha, in the canonical writings , Munich 1966, pp. 107–111; André Bareau, L'histoire de Devadatta selon l'Ekottara-agama , in: Eurasie 2 (1992) pp. 68-79, here: 69f., 75; Hans Wolfgang Schumann: The historical Buddha , Kreuzlingen 2004, p. 18f .; Jotiya Dhirasekera: Devadatta , in: Encyclopaedia of Buddhism , ed. AWP Guruge / WG Weeraratne, Vol. 4, Fasc. 3 (1988), p. 418.
4. ↑ Mukherjee p. 10, 107-111.
5. ↑ Mukherjee pp. 9-20.
6. ↑ Mukherjee pp. 9-13, 16-20; see. Bareau p. 70f.
7. ↑ Devadatta was the devil in a yellow robe , quote from: Helmut Uhlig, Buddha, The Paths of the Enlightened , Bergisch Gladbach 1994 ( Memento of the original from September 27, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . 
8. ↑ Mukherjee pp. 21-27; Bareau p. 71f.
9. ↑ This is the name in the Pali language; in Sanskrit: Ayatashatru.
10. ↑ Mukherjee pp. 27-31, 40.
11. ↑ Mukherjee pp. 31-37.
12. ↑ Mukherjee pp. 37-41.
13. ↑ Mukherjee pp. 45-50; Schumann p. 265f.
14. ↑ Mukherjee pp. 50-54; Dhirasekera pp. 418-421, here: 419.
15. ↑ Mukherjee pp. 55-63; Schumann p. 266f.
16. ↑ Mukherjee pp. 63-66.
17. ↑ Mukherjee pp. 67-70.
18. ↑ Mukherjee pp. 70-74.
19. ↑ Mukherjee pp. 74-90; Schumann p. 268f.
20. ↑ Mukherjee pp. 90-94.
21. ↑ Mukherjee p. 117f .; Bareau pp. 74f .; Dhirasekera p. 420.
22. ↑ The Threefold Lotus Sutra , ed. Bunnō Katō u. a., New York 1975, pp. 207-214 (English translation, Chapter 12: Devadatta ); Edward J. Thomas: The Life of Buddha as Legend and History , 3rd edition, London 1949, p. 135; Bareau pp. 74-79; Dhirasekera p. 421.
23. ↑ Mukherjee pp. 42-44, 74f.
24. ↑ Mukherjee pp. 101-103.
25. ↑ Mukherjee p. 103f .; Hermann Oldenberg: Buddha , Stuttgart 1959, p. 168; GSPMisra: A Buddhist Legend Re-written: Devadatta and his Character , in: Bharatiya Vidya 28 (1968) pp. 22-29, here: 26.
26. ↑ Mukherjee p. 105.
27. ↑ Mukherjee p. 101.
28. ↑ Mukherjee p. 104; Misra pp. 26-28.
29. ↑ Mukherjee pp. 47-49, 104f .; Misra p. 25f.
30. ↑ Mukherjee p. 104.
31. ↑ Mukherjee pp. 51-54.
32. ↑ Mukherjee p. 104; Schumann p. 270; Thomas S. 137f .; Misra p. 29.
33. ↑ Arthur M. Hocart: Buddha and Devadatta , in: Indian Antiquary 52 (1923) pp. 267–272, online text on ccbs.ntu.edu.tw, viewed July 8, 2009 (English)
34. ↑ Kalipada Mitra: Cross-cousin relation between Buddha and Devadatta , in: Indian Antiquary 53 (1924) pp. 125–128; Misra p. 24.