Buddha in the ‘Wild West’

Abstract

The starting point of this article is the observation that three Jataka narratives, the Visvantara-jataka, the Syama-jataka and the Ekasrnga-/Rsyasrnga-jataka, localized in the ancient northwest Indian region of Gandhara by the Chinese Buddhist travellers Faxian, Song Yun and Xuanzang, have parallels in the epic Ramayana (and the latter two in the Mahabharata). The article analyses the different version of these narratives in the Buddhist and Hindu sources and their possible relation, and reaches the cautious conclusion that the localization of the Buddhist Jatakas in the northwest may have been a reaction to the popularization of the Ramayana in a full and mature form which included the narratives corresponding to the Buddhist Syama-jataka and Rsyasrnga-jataka in the more central parts of India in the Gupta period.