A l m o s t e v e r yo n e regards crimes such as the murder of one’s parents as ter-rible. But the Buddhist scholastic tradition goes further (as it often does, for it is nothing if not systematic), and speaks of a classifi cation of fi ve “sins of immedi-ate retribution” (ânantarya- karma): killing one’s father, mother, or an arhat, drawing the blood of a buddha, and creating a schism in the monastic commu-nity. These are crimes so heinous that their inevitable karmic result of descent into hell takes place immediately and necessarily in the next life, rather than at some unspecifi ed vague point in the future, as is usual for generic karmic re-sults.1 In other words, upon the death in this life of an individual who has com-mitted one of these crimes, his or her fate will necessarily, directly, and immediately be that of hell.2 It is for this reason that they are termed “sins of im-mediate retribution.” These are the most serious crimes cata logued and studied within Indian Buddhist literature.3
Discussions of this set of fi ve transgressions are found through the sche-matic and classifi catory Abhidharma literature, although like many such ideas, an awareness of the concept permeates the generalized Buddhist worldview and is not restricted to the realm of abstract doctrinal speculations.4 The fi ve crimes make an invariable set, though the order of their pre sen ta tion can vary.5 In the AΩguttara- Nikâya (Gradual Sayings of the Buddha), for instance, we fi nd them listed as matricide, patricide, murder of an arhat,6 drawing the blood of a buddha, and creating a schism.7 When the Abhidharmakoùa (Trea-sury of the Abhidharma) speaks of the hierarchy of severity of the items, it of-fers in ascending order:8 patricide, matricide, murder of an arhat, drawing the blood of buddha, and creating a schism. The text goes out of its way to specify that of the fi ve, patricide is the least heinous and the instigation of a schism the most severe.9 Thus, while there is general agreement that the most serious crime is the instigation of a schism—almost certainly to be understood as mo-tivated by the fact that this crime directly challenges the Buddhist monastic institution itself, rather than affecting a specifi c individual—there is less agreement over the fi rst two items. This issue is important for us, since we want to
understand how Indian Buddhist authors and audiences would have under-stood Mahâdeva’s crimes. The Manorathapûra»î (The Wish- Fulfi ller), the Cey-lonese commentary to the AΩguttara- Nikâya, explains the relative hierarchy of the two items as follows:10
If the father is principled and the mother unprincipled, or simply not [particularly] principled, patricide weighs more heavily in karmic terms.
If the mother is principled, matricide [is worse]. If both are equally principled or equally unprincipled, matricide weighs more heavily in karmic terms, for the mother is responsible for diffi cult tasks, and is very attentive to her sons.11
On the basis of this commentary, we might judge Mahâdeva’s murder of his father to be worse than the murder of his mother, since his mother’s behavior was plainly immoral. This Ceylonese opinion, however, stands in at least partial opposition to one strongly stated Indian view, which sees the murder of any woman, not just the mother, as a particularly serious offense. Already the Ùatapatha- Brâhma»a, a late Vedic text, states:12
Prajâpati created Ùrî; she was resplendent. The gods said to Prajâpati, “Let us kill her and take [all] this from her.” He said “Surely, that Ùrî is a woman, and people do not kill a woman, but rather take [anything] from her [leaving her] alive.”
Later literatures, the Indian epics the Mahâbhârata and the Râmâya»a, as well as law books and proverbial literature, stress the sinfulness of killing a woman. “Women are not to be slain!” both epics repeatedly and categorically rule, comparing the killer of a woman even to the killer of a brahmin, the worst criminal (from the point of view of the elite brahmins, of course).13 The murder of a woman is one of the four transgressions for which there is no expiation, and such a crime leads to horrible retribution in hell and subsequent rebirth as a worm.14 The mother is a very special case for all Indians, Buddhists included, and in this regard the story of Maitrakanyaka is most instructive.15 This ex-tremely pop u lar tale, known in Southern Pâli and Northern Sanskrit Buddhist sources alike, recounts the events that lead the protagonist to bear upon his head a blazing wheel of iron, a punishment which, it turns out, is undergone by sons who have struck their mothers. The notions of fi liality that underlie this story clearly imply that actually killing one’s mother is hardly imaginable, although, as we shall see, a number of episodes in Indian Buddhist literature do explicitly depict just such an act. In sum, the special status accorded women in general,
and the mother in par tic u lar, in ancient Indian culture at large plainly informed Buddhist scholastics and led them almost uniformly to rank the murder of a mother more severely than that of a father.16
What have the fi ve sins of immediate retribution to do with the case of Mahâdeva? Our central source, the Vibhâ∂â, is above all a dogmatic scholastic treatise, and in the course of its narration of Mahâdeva’s story it explicitly item-izes those three of the fi ve sins of immediate retribution that Mahâdeva com-mits, namely, the murder of his father, of an arhat, and of his mother. After mentioning each crime, the text says, “Thus did he commit his fi rst/second/
third sin of immediate retribution.” This pattern appears consistently in those texts that address the issue in this context. The Vibhâ∂â and other texts do not accuse Mahâdeva of creating a schism in the monastic community, the most se-rious of the fi ve sins of immediate retribution. Instead, referring to the royal de-cision to provide sponsorship for the schismatic group, the Vibhâ∂â relates:17
“The king followed the majority and supported Mahâdeva’s group. . . . After-wards, according to their different views [those at the Kukkuπârâma monastery]
split into two groups, Sthaviras and Mahâsâ±ghikas.” The bisection of the com-munity is described here impersonally, without implication of an agent of this sepa-ration. Why is Mahâdeva not accused of this fourth sin of immediate retribution?
It is possible, although not certain, that the Vibhâ∂â fails to do so, despite a detailed description of his schismatic activities, because it was technically im-possible for him to actually cause a schism, as legally defi ned in this tradition.
The key lies in the determination of who is legally qualifi ed to motivate a schism.
According to a number of central Sthavira lineage texts, including both the Pâli Theravâda Vinaya and the Sarvâstivâda Abhidharmakoùabhâ∂ya (Commentary on the Trea sury of Abhidharma), a monastic community can be split only by one who is a genuine monk in good standing within a regular monastic community.
The Pâli Cullavagga (Lesser Division of the Vinaya) tells us, for instance, “Only a regular monk in good standing,18 belonging to the same community, dwelling together within the same monastic boundary, splits a monastic community.”19 The Abhidharmakoùa’s idea is quite similar:20
Who is the one who splits a monastic community?
A monk who acts virtuously based on his discernment splits [the monastic community].
A monk splits [the monastic community], not a layman, a nun or any other. And he is one whose acts are based on his discernment, not one whose acts are based on his impulses. He is one who is virtuous, not one
whose virtue is compromised, since the utterances of such a person are inadmissible.
The same idea is found in other Abhidharma treatises, including, impor-tantly, the Vibhâ∂â itself.21 The principle appears to be rather simple: Buddhist technical literature acknowledges the possibility that schism may occur within a monastic community. In fact, it seems to accept this as an inevitability. It in-sists, however, that any action to instigate such a schism must be brought about by a legitimate, indeed a respected and honorable, member of the community in question, and only upon refl ection, never impulsively. This cannot but strike us as peculiar, since the same literature that sets these conditions holds the in-stigation of a schism to be the most serious of the fi ve sins of immediate retribu-tion. Be this as it may, since the Vibhâ∂â and, as we shall see, a number of other texts suggest that Mahâdeva’s ordination was irregular, and since he was thus according to the legal criteria most emphatically not a genuine monk in good standing, Mahâdeva cannot be accused of this crime, at least formally.22
Finally, Mahâdeva is not accused of the remaining transgression, drawing the blood of a buddha, but this time for a different reason. Without the presence of a buddha one cannot do him any injury, and thus one cannot accuse anyone in the period after the lifetime of the Buddha of this par tic u lar offense, regard-less of his or her degree of depravity.23 Eighty years after his birth the Buddha died and was thenceforth no longer present. Practically no one disputes this, and even those who might reject it on the essentially docetic ground that the Buddha is thoroughly transcendent and transmundane would correspondingly be con-strained to admit the impossibility of harm coming to such a transcendent be-ing.24 Traditional Buddhist scholars, nonetheless, can always fi nd a way to preserve every category and every list inherited from the tradition, even if it means transforming and modifying the inherited material in ways that may look to us suspiciously like innovation.
What drawing the blood of a buddha is thus understood to mean, in a bud-dhaless world, is the destruction or damaging of a stûpa, the memorial mound that encases relics of a buddha.25 This makes perfect sense from the perspective of Buddhist doctrine, once one understands the stûpa as equivalent, legally and otherwise, to the absent Buddha, as recent scholarship has demonstrated is the case.26 Commentaries and inscriptional references make clear that the destruc-tion of a stûpa is not, itself, exactly a sin of immediate retribudestruc-tion, but rather
“resembles” such a sin, or is functionally equivalent to it.27 Now, our texts never raise against Mahâdeva the charge of the destruction of a stûpa. The scholastic tradition, however, extends the entire list of fi ve sins of immediate retribution by means of a new set of equivalences. Conforming to its systemic and systematizing
nature, immediately following its discussion of the fi ve sins of immediate retribu-tion the Abhidharmakoùabhâ∂ya asks:28
Is it only through [one of] the sins of immediate retribution that one is necessarily reborn in the hells? [No,] one is necessarily reborn [there] also through sins of the same category as the sins of immediate retribution (ânantaryasabhâga). Others say: But just not immediately. What are they?
Defi lement of one’s mother [when she is] an arhat; murder of one certain [to become a buddha]; murder of a practitioner who has not yet reached the stage of becoming an arhat; theft of the wealth of the monastic community; and the destruction of a stûpa as the fi fth: [these are] the sins of the same category as the sins of immediate retribution.
These fi ve belong to the same category as the fi ve sins of immediate retribution, in corresponding order. One defiles one’s mother who is an arhat through the per for mance of unchaste acts; one murders a bodhisattva who is certain [to become a buddha]; one murders a practitioner who has not yet reached the stage of becoming an arhat; one steals the wealth of the monastic community;29 one destroys a stûpa.
Yaùomitra’s commentary to this passage makes explicit the equivalences implied by the expression “in corresponding order”: defi lement of one’s mother who is an arhat belongs to the same category as matricide; murder of a bodhisat-tva certain to become a buddha belongs to the same category as patricide; mur-der of a practitioner who has not yet reached the stage of becoming an arhat belongs to the same category as the murder of an arhat himself; theft of the wealth of the monastic community belongs to the same category as creating a schism in that same community; and the destruction of a stûpa belongs to the same category as drawing the blood of a buddha.30 We can hardly fail to notice here that the very fi rst item refers to incest with one’s own mother, although the terms in which this text states the nature of this offense are odd.
I have translated in accord with the Sanskrit text of the Abhidharmakoùabhâ∂ya and Yaùomitra’s commentary thereon, and in agreement with the interpretation of the Chinese and Tibetan translators.31 Still, there are certain peculiarities that can-not help but draw our can-notice, and can-not only with regard to the fi rst item. Some help might come from a parallel list in the encyclopedic Yogâcârabhûmi (Stages of the Yoga Practitioner). In the list in the Abhidharmakoùabhâ∂ya, it is not clear why it should be a crime equally as serious as one meriting immediate retribution to have
sexual relations with one’s own mother only if she happens to be a saint. As far as I know, commentaries are silent on this point. This is doubly peculiar since the same literature has already made it abundantly clear that sexual relations with one’s own mother are forbidden.32 Moreover, in the Abhidharmakoùabhâ∂ya’s dis-cussion of the possibility of double culpability for the murder of one’s father who is an arhat, we read:33 “Who would kill his father, an arhat, would be [guilty of] only one sin of immediate retribution, because the bodily basis [of the act of murder] is singular.” So in this light too the text’s wording of the rape item looks odd. When we look at the parallel in the Yogâcârabhûmi, moreover, we fi nd the fi rst item of the fi ve sins of the same category as the sins of immediate retribution stated quite clearly to be sexually approaching a female arhat or one’s mother,34 which makes considerably better sense. The crime of incest with one’s mother is thus listed as the fi rst of the supplementary sins of immediate retribution. So at least within the sphere of infl uence of this doctrinal classifi cation, Mahâdeva’s incestuous relations with his mother, though evidently not viewed as seriously as his homicidal crimes in a systematic classifi catory sense, would not have been ignored. (It is nevertheless true that the Vibhâ∂â itself never invokes this category of sins similar to those of immediate retribution, either in direct relation to Mahâdeva or anywhere else.)
The doctrinal framework of Mahâdeva’s crimes is clearly provided by these fi ve sins of immediate retribution, the “sin” side of which we have just investi-gated. What, then, of their “immediate retribution”? The per for mance of even one of the sins leads to necessary and immediate suffering in hell. That suffer-ing, however, is inevitably temporary, and never eternal (although the term in hell may last a very long time). The punishment even for multiple occurrences of these gravest of sins is emphatically not damnation as such, although some sources suggest that multiple transgressions require correspondingly longer periods of suffering to recompense. The one possible exception to the claim that (at least Indian) Buddhism knows no idea of eternal damnation is the doctrine of the icchantika. The core concept is, however, actually quite distinct.
The icchantika, as most sources understand the idea, is either one who re-jects the truth of Buddhism or the individual who lacks the inborn, innate ca-pacity to become a buddha, a caca-pacity which, according to the so- called Tathâgatagarbha philosophical tradition, almost all beings possess. Such an in-dividual is therefore doomed to eternal rebirth in the realms of transmigration (sa±sâra), from which liberation in nirvâ»a is impossible. One fundamental difference between this concept and that of Christian eternal damnation, how-ever, is that the icchantika does not reach this state as a result of some action on his part, and most sources very clearly distinguish the icchantika even from one who commits the fi ve sins of immediate retribution. Rather, this state is, so to speak, his birthright, the way he is constructed; he lacks an essential component
from the beginning of beginningless time.35 This component, the buddha- nature (buddhagotra, buddhatva, and so on), is what allows almost all beings to eventually—and according to this doctrine, inevitably—attain awakening.
The icchantika is, on the other hand, in no way fated to rebirth in hell or any other unfavorable rebirth, as is the sinner who commits one or more of the trans-gressions of immediate retribution. The sinner must suffer in an unfavorable re-birth, which the icchantika need not do, but his ultimate liberation is quite possible, while for the icchantika the impossibility of his liberation is what defi nes him.36
To illustrate this principle, and in keeping with our focus on potentially Oedipal relations, we may notice a rather peculiar story about the eminent monk and direct disciple of the Buddha, Mahâ- Moggallâna, in which it is related that in a former life he murdered both of his parents. The story, offered in explana-tion for his murder by robbers in the present life, is found in Pâli in both the commentary to the Dhammapada (Words of the Teaching) and that to the Jâtaka (Stories of the Buddha’s Former Lives), the former version being importantly dif-ferent from the latter. The Dhammapada commentary version reads as follows:37
Once upon a time there was a young man of social status, a resident of Benares, who looked after his parents by himself, taking care of the house hold duties such as pounding rice, cooking, and so on. One day his parents said to him: “My dear, you’re exhausting yourself taking care of the house hold and outside duties all by yourself; we’ll bring a young woman for you.”
He refused them, saying: “Mom, Dad, there’s no need to do such a thing for my sake. I’ll serve you with my own hands as long as you both live.” Again and again they begged him, [and in the end] they brought him a young woman [for his wife].
She served them for only a few days, but from then on was unwilling to bear even the sight of them, telling him with annoyance “I can’t live together in the same place with your parents.”
The wife then tricks the husband into thinking that his aged, blind parents are littering the house with dirt and bits of food, which she cannot tolerate, such that
even such a one as he, who had fulfi lled the Perfections, broke off relations with his parents. “Let it be!” he said. “I’ll discover what’s to be done with them.” And having fed [his parents], he said: “Mom, Dad, in such-
even such a one as he, who had fulfi lled the Perfections, broke off relations with his parents. “Let it be!” he said. “I’ll discover what’s to be done with them.” And having fed [his parents], he said: “Mom, Dad, in such-