The Multi-life Stories of Gautama Buddha and Vardhamana Mahavira
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/bsrv.v29i1.5Keywords:
Buddha, Buddhism, Mahāvīra, Jainism, biographyAbstract
Like Buddhist traditions, Jain traditions preserve many stories about people’s past lives. Unlike Buddhist traditions, relatively few of these stories narrate the past lives of the tradition’s central figure, the jina. In Jainism there is no equivalent path to the bodhisatt(v)a path; the karma that guarantees jinahood is bound a mere two births before that attainment, and the person who attracts that karma cannot do so willfully, nor is he aware of it being bound. There is therefore no Jain equivalent to the ubiquitous jataka literature. In this paper I will explore what the absence of a jataka genre in Jain traditions tells us about the genre’s role in Buddhism. Focusing upon the multi-life stories of Gautama Buddha and Vardhamana Mahavira, I will ask how these two strikingly similar narratives betray some fundamental differences between Buddhist and Jain understandings of the ultimate religious goal and the method of its attainment.
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