[Buddha-l] buddha-l Digest, Vol 56, Issue 18

[JKirkpatrick]

for a very different take on Yasodhara in the mulasarvastivada
tradition 

 see 

http://books.google.com/books?id=XcvVUAhFwQIC&pg=PA88&lpg=PA88&dq
=mulasarvastivada+yashodhara&source=bl&ots=5JRuoIMmQM&sig=2I_mvYF
Z1v-j8sP4xvtD8AwVWsM#v=onepage&q=mulasarvastivada%20yashodhara&f=
false

from 

Faces of compassion: classic Bodhisattva archetypes and their
modern expression By Taigen Daniel Leighton, p.88.

or in The Gilgit Manuscript of the Samghabhedavastu...  ed.
Raniero Gnoli

elihu

===============
Well.......with all due respect to Leighton, I don't find
convincing the idea that the prolongation of Y.'s pregnancy and
Rahula's birth, coinciding with the Buddha's awakening, indicate
the "great value of childbearing and birthing, symbolically
equated with Buddha's enlightenment itself."   
Rather, a 6 years pregnancy while Y. was undergoing rigorous
austerities simultaneously comparable to those of the Buddha,
strikes me as emphasising stupendous fidelity to the practice and
to her husband (even though technically the Buddha had not been
back home yet, but messengers had gone back with reports),
orienting the tale toward her ultimate admission to the nun's
order.  

As Joel Tatelman says in his translation of Ch. 2-9 of a Nepali
ms., the Bhadrakalpaavadaana, Buddhist Studies Review, 15:1,
1998, the "fairy-tale plot of [this ms. is] reminiscent of many
stories from many cultures in which the faithful wife, left
behind by the questing husband, undergoes her own series of
trials, more or less parallel to her hubsand's." p.4 This story
is even more fantastic than the Mulasarvastivada tale, in that
the BKA circles around a plot by Devadatta to denigrate both Y.'s
saintliness/fidelity and the legitimacy of her son, so that he
might take the throne. By "more fantastic," I refer to stories
within the frame story about Y.'s magically surviving D.'s
attempts to kill her. She becomes a prodigy of spiritual power
(aka tests that she magically surmounts), and an icon of the
bodhisattva vow to save all beings. 
But I'd agree that the avadaana literature, so far what I've
read, adds flesh to the bare bones of the primary scriptures, in
that they include quite a variety of human and ethereal beings
doing a variety of deeds-- good, bad or indifferent.
Here's a study that might shed more light on these goings-on
(Haven't seen it, only came across a citation): Popular Buddhist
Texts From Nepal : Narratives and Rituals of Newar Buddhism, by
Todd T. Lewis. SUNY, 2000. 2 avadaanas seem to be considered
here. 

Another cite: Hiraoka S. The Relation between the Divyavadana and
the Mulasarvastivada Vinaya. Journal of Indian Philosophy, Volume
26, Number 5, October 1998 , pp. 419-434(16).  
Wow--this one sounds like a must read.

Joanna