Yashodhara, which means “Bearer of Glory,” was the wife of Prince Siddhartha and the mother of their son, Rahula. She was born in the Sun Clan, to the daughter of King Suppabuddha and Amita. Amita was the sister of the Buddha’s father, Suddhodhana. Both families belonged to royal families who could only marry each other. Yashodhara was born on same day as Siddhartha, and after the enlightenment of her husband she followed his example and became a bhikshuni (nun). She is accepted as one of the most important women in early Buddhism who have achieved the state of arhat with extraordinary powers.
The Mahavastu, the central text of the Lokottaravada School of Early Buddhism, mentions that Buddha’s wife in his last rebirth is the same from his previous lives. There are many different stories about their encounters in the distant past. According to The Collective Sutra of the Buddha’s Past Acts, Yashodhara met Prince Siddhartha for the first time in a previous life when he was a young Brahmin named Sumedha, and she was a beautiful girl named Sumidha. Waiting for Buddha Dipankara in the city of Paduma, Sumedha tried to buy flowers and offer to him but found out that the king has bought all the flowers for his own offering. Then he saw Sumidha holding seven lotus flowers in her hands. He asked her to buy one of her flowers, and she promised to give him five of her lotuses if he would promise to become her husband in all their next lives.
According to another legend, Prince Siddhartha/Sumedha went to the city where everybody was expecting Buddha Dipankara. Then he saw a beautiful girl with lotuses in her hands and asked her for one flower. She gave him all her flowers and told him that when she saw him she realized she was ready to give him everything. They went to listen the wise words of Dipankara, along with a huge gathering of people. Sumedha threw one of the lotuses to him and it fell right at his feet. The girl asked Sumedha to throw another flower on her behalf and it also fell to his feet. Then, Dipankara summoned both of them and told them that they would be together in many lifetimes and help each other in achieving enlightenment. In their last life they were reborn again as husband and wife.
Despite her divine beauty, spiritual merit, and the superhuman powers she developed as a nun, and despite giving birth to Buddha’s only son, Yasodhara remains in the shadow of her great husband. In his last rebirth, after attaining enlightenment, Buddha Shakyamuni predicted that in the future his wife would also attain this state. The numerous relationships between Buddha and Yashodhara show that his beautiful wife gained tremendous merits in her past lives to be re-elected as his beloved. Thus the Buddhist belief in numerous rebirths is complemented by the notion that when a couple shares strong mutual love and spiritual qualities, they can remain connected in their succeeding lifetimes until both attain the eternal peace of nirvana.
One the most famous images of Yashodhara can be seen at the murals of Ajanta Caves in Aurangabad district of Maharashtra State, India. Cave 17 shows the Buddha begging for food at his former home, standing in front of his wife and his son Rahula. The body of the Buddha is shown to be much larger, emphasizes the supremacy of his spiritual status.
Yaśodharā was the daughter of King Suppabuddha,[6][7] and Amita. She was born on same day in the month of Vaishaka as prince Siddhartha. Her grandfather was Añjana a Koliya[8] chief, her father was Suppabuddha and her mother, Amitā, came from a Shakya family. The Shakya and the Koliya were branches of the Ādicca (Sanskrit: Aditya) or Ikshvaku dynasty. There were no other families considered equal to them in the region and therefore members of these two royal families married only among themselves.[9]
She was wedded to the Shakya prince Siddhartha, when they were both 16. At the age of 29, she gave birth to their only child, a boy named Rāhula. On the night of his birth, the prince left the palace. Yaśodharā was devastated and overcome with grief. Once prince Siddhartha left his home at night for enlightenment, the next day, everyone was surprised by the absence of the prince. The famous Indian Hindi poet Maithili Sharan Gupt (1886–1964) tried to gather the emotions of Yaśodharā in his poem:
Oh dear, if he would have told me,
Would he still have found me a roadblock?
He gave me lot of respect,
But did he recognize my existence in true sense?
I recognized him,
If he had this thought in his heart
Oh dear, if he would have told me. (Translated by Gurmeet Kaur)[10]
Later, when she realised that he had left, Yaśodharā decided to lead a simple life.[11] Although relatives sent her messages to say that they would maintain her, she did not take up those offers. Several princes sought her hand but she rejected the proposals. Throughout his six-year absence, Princess Yaśodharā followed the news of his actions closely .
When the Buddha visited Kapilavastu after enlightenment, Yaśodharā did not go to see her former husband but asked Rāhula to go to the Buddha to seek inheritance. For herself, she thought: "Surely if I have gained any virtue at all the Lord will come to my presence." In order to fulfill her wish, Buddha came into her presence and admired her patience and sacrifice. King Suddhodana told Buddha how his daughter-in-law, Yasodhara, had spent her life in grief, without her husband.
Some time after her son Rāhula became a monk, Yaśodharā also entered the Order of Monks and Nuns and within time attained the state of an arhat. She was ordained as bhikkhuni with the five hundred women following Mahapajapati Gotami that first established the bhikkhuni order. She died at 78, two years before Buddha's parinirvana (death).[12]
Legends
In the Chinese: 佛本行集經, The Collective Sutra of the Buddha's Past Acts, Yashodharā meets Siddhārtha Gautama for the first time in a previous life, when as the young Brahmin (ancient Indian priest) Sumedha, he is formally identified as a future Buddha by the buddha of that era, Dīpankara Buddha. Waiting in the city of Paduma for Dīpankara Buddha, he tries to buy flowers as an offering but soon learns that the king already bought all the flowers for his own offering. Yet, as Dipankara is approaching, Sumedha spots a girl named Sumithra (or Bhadra) holding seven lotus flowers in her hands. He speaks to her with the intention of buying one of her flowers, but she recognises at once his potential and offers him five of the lotuses if he would promise that they would become husband and wife in all their next existences.[13]
In the thirteenth chapter of the Lotus Sutra, Yaśodharā receives a prediction of future buddhahood from Gautama Buddha as does Mahapajapati.[14
Names
The meaning of the name Yaśodhara (Sanskrit) [from yaśas "glory, splendour" + dhara "bearing" from the verbal root dhri "to bear, support"] is Bearer of glory. The names she has been called besides Yaśodharā are: Yaśodharā Theri (doyenne Yaśodharā), Bimbādevī, Bhaddakaccānā and Rāhulamātā (mother of Rahula).[15] In the Pali Canon, the name Yaśodharā is not found; there are two references to Bhaddakaccānā.[16]
Several other names are identified as wives of the Buddha in different Buddhist traditions, including Gopā or Gopī, Mṛgajā, and Manodharā; according to the Mulasarvastivada Vinaya and several other sources, the Buddha in fact had three wives, and a Jataka story quoted by Nagarjuna specifies two.[17] Thomas Rhys Davids offered the interpretation that the Buddha had a single wife who acquired various titles and epithets over the years, eventually leading to the creation of origin stories for multiple wives.[17] Noel Peri was the first scholar to treat the issue at length, examining the Chinese and Tibetan sources as well as the Pali. He observed that early sources (translated before the 5th Century) seemed to consistently identify the Buddha's wife as 'Gopī', and that after a period of inconsistency 'Yaśodhara' emerged as the favored name for texts translated in the latter half of the 5th Century and later.[17] In addition to Rhys David's theory, he suggests other interpretations that included the possibility of multiple marriages, which in some cases better fit with the different variations in stories of the Buddha's life, suggesting that these inconsistencies emerged when multiple distinct stories were combined into a single narrative.[17] He also suggested that the preference in later interpretations for a single wife may reflect an accommodation of changing social mores that preferred monogamy over other forms of traditional marriage.[17]
അഭിപ്രായങ്ങളൊന്നുമില്ല:
ഒരു അഭിപ്രായം പോസ്റ്റ് ചെയ്യൂ