Forbidden Women. A Peculiar Buddhist Reference

Abstract

When dealing with allowable relations, Indian legal literature concerns itself both with restrictions on whom one may marry, and on those with whom one may have sex.While normative Indian Buddhist literature has virtually no explicit interest in the former category, it does preserve stipulations regarding the latter, at least one of which is framed in particularly interesting terms.The Da!"ku!alakarmapatha, of uncertain date (attributed apocryphally to the poet A!vagho"a, otherwise to Ati!a), 1 is available in a Sanskrit fragment, in two Tibetan translations, one in prose and one in verse, and in Chinese.Tacitly assuming, like virtually all such literature, the male standpoint, it offers a brief passage listing those whom one may not approach sexually: 2 agamy# 1 n#ma sarv# parastr$ dharmadhvaj# gotrarak"it# gr% h$tapa&y# ve!y# kr$tisambandhin$ tiryañca!ceti eva' svavanit#m 2 api sevayan k#mamithy#c#r$ bhavati 1) Lévi prints the manuscript as agamyo (similarly, a few lines above read agamy"!for agamya!). 2) Lévi reads svavatit"m.The corresponding Tibetan prose translation reads: 3 'gro bar 1 bya ba ma yin pa ni | gzhan gyi bud med thams cad dang | chos kyi 2 rgyal mtshan dang rigs kyis bsrungs pa dang | rgyal pos bsrungs pa dang | gzhan gyis blangs pa'i smad 'tshong ma dang | gnyen 'brel can dang | byol song ngo || de ltar rang gi chung ma la brten 3 nas 'dod pas log par g.yem par 'gyur ro || 1) Pek.5355 bgrod par 2) Pek.5355, D dang 3) Pek.5396 (perhaps better): la'ang bsten.1 See Cordier 1905: Mdo XXXI.21,XXXIII.19,XXXIII.39,XCIV.23.Mochizuki in Mochizuki and Kanno 1996 gives special attention to the question of authorship, tentatively concluding from a variety of evidence that the Da!"ku!alakarmapatha predates Ati!a, but cannot be the work of the poet A!vagho"a either, and thus is to be attributed to some, so far unknown, third author.2 Lévi 1929: 269.The text is translated with notes in Mochizuki and Kanno 1996. 3 Peking Tanjur 5355, dbu ma, ki 357b2-4 = 5396, dbu ma, gi 40a8-b2 = Derge Tanjur 3958, dbu ma, khi 307a7-b1.Trivial variants are ignored.