So very delighted today to have Christine Scheiber,
who is professor of Religion and humanities in Reed College in Portland, Oregon, and a scholar of South Asian religions.
I've been, uh, anticipating her talk for some time, and I'm I'm sure it's going to prove to be particularly interesting.
Christine serves as chair of the religion department and read and she's co-pi for the Mellon funded Environmental Humanities
Initiative and is co-chair of the Critical Theory and Discourses on Religion Unit of the American Academy of Religion.
She received a BA in Religious Studies and Art history from Colby College, a master's in Theological Studies from Harvard Divinity School,
and a PhD from Harvard University with a dissertation for the Anxious Thrill and Serene Satisfaction of Good People.
Rethinking the Polymer banks. Her philological grounded first book, reading The Major Banks The Literary Aims of a Terracotta Buddhist History.
Columbia University Press, 2016.
Challenges standard political readings of these Buddhist texts and foregrounds instead the literary imagination of contenders.
She recently completed a co-authored volume as an homage to her mentor, John Strong, The Buddha A Storeyed Life.
Oxford University Press, 2023.
Bringing together leading scholars of South Asian Buddhism to examine the paradigmatic episodes that constitute the Buddhist biography.
She's currently working on fruitful Metaphors cultivating Faith in Hindu and Buddhist Imagination,
a book considering the Bountiful and generative metaphorical uses of plants for moral cultivation,
propagating, planting and harvesting seed, roots and fruit.
So, Christian, thank you so much for coming. It's really, uh, really a great delight to have you.
And over to you. Thank you so much for that introduction, Rob, and thanks so much for your interest in the Nagas.
I'm looking forward to your upcoming talk, uh, where you'll be looking into India's Naga,
India's Naga Nayak territory of territorial deity cosmologies, um, as models for Tibetan traditions.
Um, so today I recognise this dip into Pali textual materials may feel a bit disorienting for those of you in Tibetan and Himalayan studies,
but I look forward to our comparative conversation. And I begin here with a treasure, a palm leaf manuscript of the fifth century Pali Mahabharata.
That's what you're looking at on the screen right now. It's shown here.
Recently inducted into the Unesco memory of the World International Register.
I'm amused that while Nagas are depicted as House of horror, as hoarders and valuers of treasures, we humans hoard and value treasures as well.
What follows draws from the Naga and relic chapters of my book.
Reading the map often set the literary aims of a tour about a Buddhist history.
I assert that Nagas are not simply background characters or narrative hooks in the Pali Buddhist imagined their by stealing,
hoarding, and venerating various types of relics of the Buddha in their subterranean Naga loka, the Naga realm.
They in fact define what a treasure is. We will consider four cases in the Mahabharata,
where Nagas are used to draw attention to a variety of relic treasures that aid in establishing the Dharma on the island of Lanka.
The first two cases show Nagas in relation to Parabolica relics or relics of use.
The third case illustrates the connection of not as to chakra or bodily relics of the past upon Twitter,
and the final case demonstrates that that there are unusual powers of Nagas.
It illustrates their relationship with the Buddha during his lifetime,
combine to enable Nagas to take the form of the Buddha himself, providing access to an image or Odesza relic.
So our first case is in the opening chapter of the Maha function, which tells of the Buddha's three visits to the island of Lanka.
As an island peripheral to the Buddha's homeland, and one connecting the Naga Underworlds.
In the realms of the humans, Lanka is a liminal landscape.
In spite of this position, or perhaps because of it, Lanka becomes an ideal repository for the dumber in the Buddha's estimation.
Similar to the earlier third or fourth century DPR. Vanessa.
The Maha Vanessa narrative opens with Lanka as the home to yuccas, yuccas who must first be expelled, and the Nagas, who must then be converted.
As there are no relics in this this episode, I'm going to skip it.
But there are Nagas in the next. The Buddha returns to Lanka in the fifth year of his Buddhahood.
Moved by his compassion for the Nagas and quote.
To intervene in the impending war between Naga families over a bejewelled throne in Naga Deepa,
the Naga malhotra's hordes of supporters live in his extensive sea palace.
Described as 500 yojanas in length, he is from under the sea, a different Loka world than the impending battlefield.
And on the other side of the battle his nephew Chulo Dara uh Tula Dara leads the mountain Nagas.
You can see here. Uh, he displays light, he dispels darkness, and he frightens the Nagas.
That's how he controls them. And then he reveals the light so that they can have pasada.
The calmness that comes after the sun. They go the agitation.
After this powerful display, the Buddha teaches the Donna a lights on the contested throne,
which both groups of Nagas have gladly offered to him and significantly accepts food and drink from the Nagas.
From his station on the Naga shared terrain.
The Buddha then establishes in refuges and precepts 80 counties, or about 800 million land and sea Nagas together.
And this is an important point when we look into the Nagas throughout the Maha Bank.
So we must bear in mind their long relationship to the Buddha and their status.
They have taken refuge and they follow the precepts.
Before the Buddha takes his leave to return to the job in a grove,
hence rejoining his standard biography in Meteora, Mani Akaka, uh asks the elder Mani Akaka,
a Naga Raja asks the Buddha if he might return to colony because Mani Akaka had heard the
true doctrine preached and had become established in the refuges and the moral duties.
Sheila. The Buddha then plants his Rajat in a tree parasol parasol that had accompanied him from his homeland to Sri Lanka,
um and hands over the jewelled throne that he had been using, thus constituting two relics of use.
He hands them over to the Nagas to support their continued worship.
He addresses the Nagas directly. He says.
Naga kings do homage to this memorial shrine of the objects used by me, the Parry both gut check their children.
This will be for your benefit and happiness. The Buddha thus explicitly authorises the Nagas continued attention to the relics, these relics of use.
Now, Steve Collins notes that the Buddha's use of the familiar tata, or friends or beloved, or some familiar,
familiar familial term of endearment, I translated it as children, um, that this uses paralytic and that the teka.
The commentary explains that the shrine will inspire the Nagas to feel.
And so the friendship in in the future the relics thus establish peace.
And the Buddha does return to Sri Lanka for a third time in the eighth year after his awakening.
Bear in mind the Nagas are now fitting patrons of the Buddha and his retinue of 500 monks,
as they have been worshipping his relics of use in the meantime.
This time the Buddha does not manipulate the light. In this trip, he instead highlights the landscape of Lanka,
indicating the various sites that will in the future become repositories of the Buddhist charisma through the placement of his bodily relics,
through planting of the tree, or through his association with the sites.
And place. These become places of pilgrimage and devotion.
Under a bejewelled canopy that would later mark the site of the Kalyani Chettiar.
The Naga king and his retinue served a meal to the Buddha and to the retinue of monks.
The Buddha preached the Dharma and left another relic of use, his footprint on top of Mount Sumana Kuta and proceeded to several future sacred sites,
among them the place for the future planting of the Bodie Tree and the building of the Maha,
two sites that are connected to the next two relics we're going to consider.
Within this light infused universe of the text, nagas act as signifiers to a secondary code for meaning,
making a code that deals with the individual's readiness to be transformed through contact with the dharma and the relics.
In other words, the treasures Nagas are ontologically incapable of reaping the satiric, logical benefits of proximity to the Buddha.
I'm thinking of the vinegar passage of the Naga who desires membership in the Sangha.
He shape shifts to a Brahmin boy form and joins the sangha.
Uh, but then in his sleep, he slips back into his default Naga status.
He's discovered and then rejected.
And of course, this is the base story for why novices to this day are asked at ordination if they are in fact human.
But the Nagas in our text are nevertheless effectively converted by the Buddha in Lanka and narrative.
The Nagas lure the Buddha to the island and invite him back.
They bear a crucial function in ferrying relics to Lanka.
So the second case we'll dive into is from chapter 19.
And this is the coming of this, the branch of the what are you tree, a treasure that literally transplants the Dharma in this new terrain.
But first, a little bit of background. In chapter 17, we see my gender at the behest of the tiara mogul,
who put that of India at the end of the Third Council sent forth to convert people in the adjacent countries,
the borderlands as an envoy, an envoy to a Lanka now populated by humans who have yet to be made aware of the Buddhist way of life.
Mahinda laments the absence of the Buddha, whom we might see and venerate.
Remember the relics of use the Buddha himself left behind in Lanka were intended for and functional only for ritual use by the Nagas, not the humans.
The curious and historical uh third century BCE King MP sympathiser asks Mahinda, how can he see the Buddha who is already passed into Nibbana?
Mahendra explains. When you see the relics, you see the conqueror.
Uh. This recalls the Buddha's didactic but reproachful formula.
He who sees the Dharma sees me. He who sees me sees the Dharma that was used.
Uh, it was uttered to virtually a monk exceedingly desirous of the Buddha's image from the summit in Achaia.
In other words, to experience emotional satisfaction and the quelling of agitation, one must have some imagination.
It's a mental condition that an adept and experienced senior Tera uh, such as Mahinda, cultivated the imaginative process necessary for the work.
Likewise for the audience of the. And the good to us people called forth in refrain that chapter.
They too must cultivate the ability to equate the relics with the Buddha.
I'll skip the story of the bowtie tree sectioning off its own southern branch,
miraculously plotting itself in a golden vase with the potted branch rising in the air and staying for seven days,
invisible in the region of this house that might pertain to the and studies folks.
All of this miraculous,
uh horticulture fulfils one of the Buddha's five great in nibbana bed so not deathbed party nibbana bed prognostications as narrated in chapter 17.
But then in chapter 19, the Navajos were among the various classes of.
Self watch over Woody Tree Branch prior to a voyage to Lanka.
It has a supernatural sea voyage to Lanka. The sea stands still for surrounding yojana while flowers and music envelop it.
Even though some Nagas are among the beings charged with protection of the body during its
travels up Nagas in which and are overwhelmed with the desire to possess and worship it,
and they seem to take some magic. That's that's the power of the tokens historically that ensured here inspired uh, that.
You know. But.
Tried to scare off kids. Terrify the darkness first.
The. He referenced.
Seven days, seven nights for my son.
And. This is a case of a relic.
Uh. Of the Buddha actually being taken by force to the Naga loka for worship, before it becomes an active site for veneration in Lanka.
As the Maha answer explains, quote, it's up on the screen trembling.
The great snakes begged the Terry the Great Terry to stop scaring them.
Thereupon they carried away the great Bodhi tree to the snake realm, having worshipped it with manifold very veneration,
and with the kingship of the Nagas for seven days, they brought it back to the ship, and had it set up there.
Thus, on the same day the great booty came here to jumbo colour.
The stalling of the relic serves to heighten the suspense. In some ways,
perhaps this interlude is included precisely to change the pace of the chronicle and add some emotional effect for
the audience by being part of the textual community that is sustained by the relic veneration narrated by the text.
The audience already knows the outcome of the Maha Vance's suspenseful relic procurement stories,
even before they're told they can in fact visit the boat trees transplanted around the island.
The story of the Nagas taking the boti tree to their abode attests to the value and temptation of the relics, and for the audience outside the text,
it instantiates a instantiates a certain gratitude that the relics described therein are so readily accessible.
I note that in this painting you'll see in the bottom right hand corner the, uh, outstretched arms of David Pisa.
Uh, Devin on Piazza, the king who greets the ship as it enters, uh, the waters close to Lanka.
And I can't help but think it evokes a sense of the Nagas petitioning, uh, for the branch to come down to the Naga.
Lucas. So for the third case we're going to examine today, we're switching from relics of use the parabolica to the shot era,
the bodily relics of the Buddha, and the story of the procurement of doughnut relics, or Drona in Sanskrit for the second century BCE.
King to the Khamenei's Great Stupa, as told in chapter 31 of the Maha function.
But first, a reminder of why the Nagas relate to the dono relics at all.
So this image here, which is in, uh, I see John Guy is out there, this phenomenal book that came out from the met,
uh, Tree and Serpent that collect that, that is the catalogue of their recent show.
Um, this particular image illustrates Drona here.
Um, it's this this image is from Nagarjuna Konda, a site about 160km from Amravati in Andhra Pradesh.
And here we see a panel. We see Drona in the centre, and he's holding two relic caskets before Nagas on either side.
This is after the, um, the the relics have been, um, uh, processed the eight drone, um, measures according to the Maha pa nibbana sutta,
after the Buddhist corporeal relics were divided into eight dona portions after his cremation,
the portion that was enshrined on the banks of the Ganges at the Rama Gama, uh, washed out to sea in a flood.
The last lines here in Tanis Arabic translation remark that eight portions where the relics of the one with vision the highest,
the foremost of men, seven honoured in Jambu Jambu dripper and one in Rama Gama honoured by the kings of the Nagas.
Uh, it goes on to say that, uh, the Buddha's relics are worshipped by David kings,
Naga kings, human kings, and likewise worshipped by the most excellent people.
So pay homage to him with a hands palm to palm over the heart, for the awakened are rarely encountered in the course of 100 aeons.
Buddha ghost is commentary on the Mahayana Nibbana. Sita, however,
refuses to address the final verses dealing with the Buddha's prediction that this final one eighth portion of his relics will be enshrined in Lanka,
probably because it was assumed at the time, uh, that the commentary was produced.
Um, at the time the commentary was produced, that this material was in accretion, uh, sumo angular velocity.
Um, uh, it's closing versus it says that the closing verses of the Maha nibbana suta were quote spoken by the elders of Tamba pani,
thus not original Buddha. Virginia. Here we see the Rama Rama Relics stupa.
Uh, at, uh, this is at Amravati.
Um, anything that haphazardly finds its way into the sea becomes fair game, uh, for the poaching, hoarding ways of the Nagas who inhabit the water.
And the relics come into their possession. This story serves the later, relic centred Sri Lankan tradition.
Ever concerned to preserve the impression of its status as preordained by the Buddha himself in that it allows for a significant portion,
a full eighth of Sri Lanka relics to be brought to the island in the time of death ignominy two centuries before the Common era.
This cache of corporeal relics is entrusted to the Nagas guardianship here seen in this panel.
You see the Rama Gama relics being worshipped and protected by the Nagas in a net like security over the top.
Uh, this image is also interesting, as it illustrates the range of Naga forms,
from the fully anthropomorphic sporting palace Cephalus headdresses to the left and the right, uh,
worshipping the relics to the naturalised, albeit multi-headed,
nagas knotted around the top of the stupa to the stylised etchings on the side of the stupa depicted within the frame.
According to them, I have onsa.
This cache of relics reveals that Nagas also maintain a relationship with the corporeal relics of the Buddha, the Shara.
As the story goes, this is our case. King Domini prepares the pre-ordained site for the Buddha's corporeal relics.
The Maha at ruin. Willy with great pomp and circumstance, the stupa is built.
The crowds have gathered, the ceremony is already underway and the music is even playing before anyone seeks to retrieve the one eighth portion
of the Buddha's corporeal relics that had been in storage in the Naga Loka for this very legitimising reason.
The king depends on the specialised skills of the Sangha to procure this most essential treasure to enliven his stupa.
The Nagas, however, had grown quite attached to the relics in the intervening centuries and are reluctant to part with their charge.
The novice monk Sonu Thara, on account of his highly developed eating or meditative powers, is dispatched to recover the relics from the Nagas.
He enters into meditative states conducive to this sort of inter intra world travel,
and when he hears the music in the city indicating the ceremony has already begun by means of his I.D.,
he enters the earth to reach the Naga, Loka says in chapter 31.
After being greeted respectfully, Sunita explains to the Naga Raja the purpose for his visit.
The Naga Raja mentions motions pardon me. The Nagarajan motions to his nephew Vasily Data, who takes the hint.
He swallows the relic casket and hurries off to the base of Mount Meru, where he coils up in an immense circle.
In a desperate attempt to outwit this visitor. The Nagas behave in a most Naga like way.
They steal away with the treasure. Here, the relics of the Buddha and lie at a mound here, none other than Mount Meru itself.
The very stabilising centre of the Buddhist universe. As if it were a safety zone.
But this is no ordinary snake. Vasilisa creates various other regular snakes through his own super powers.
His machete, the same type of special powers that Sony Buddha has.
The image that is conjured is that of a snake pit, a seemingly safe place to hide a treasure.
Encircled as it is by treacherous snakes. Just like this one on the Amravati bot.
Relief. Vasiliy Ortiz hiding act is far from discreet.
However, it attracts the attention of many onlooker Nagas and divas who approached the site thinking, quote, we will witness the battle of both Nagas.
The Naga Sunetra and the Naga who's hiding the relic?
Meanwhile, the Naga Raja explains to Sonu Tara that he has no relics, thinking he has outsmarted him so new.
Tara responds by recounting the story.
Literally the pedigree or visa of the relics, and explains how they are destined to be enshrined in Lanka on that very day.
The Naga Raja tries another tack. He points out the superiority of the gem encrusted, encrusted cheetah on the knot in the Naga loka,
contending that human worship is far less lavish and sumptuous than the veneration paid by the Nagas, he says.
See Bhikkhu. This chitta, adorned with various gems in various ways, and the nobly built temple for the Chettiar.
All the jewels and the whole island of Lanka are not so great worth as the moon stone slab at the foot of the steps.
What shall be said of the other treasures? He says it would not do to move the relics from such a high place to such a low place.
The logical argument that we can provide better service than you can following write upon Sinatra's recapitulation of the story of the relics,
suggests that hearing Sinatra's account only further entrenches the Nagarajan and in his proprietary position.
So Neutra then argues with the Naga Raja over who is in a better position so theologically
to benefit from the worshipping the relics and who can provide better veneration of them,
veneration that is actually conducive to bearing out the Buddha's intentions that relics can be used to help transcend samsara.
And Sinatra even charges that the Nagas don't have access to the truth.
I consider the Nagas debate with. A narrative device that engages the audience in productive tension.
The audience, just like the multitude of nagas and divas, is privy to a fundamental debate of worthiness.
And reading this provocative passage prompts the audience's imagination.
For the fifth century textual community, the winner of the debate is already known.
Due to nominees. Mahatma bears material evidence and the feeling of gratitude towards Sunetra and the Sangha of the past,
and even to the wily Nargis, who had to release the relics, May said in.
True to his trickster nature, the Naga king tells Signatera that he may have the relics if he can see them,
thinking that they are well hidden and that the novice has no chance of finding them.
But so Neutra uses his ithi empowered vision to detect the whereabouts of the hidden relics, and then causes his arm to become very skinny snakelike,
even so that he is able to slip it down into the belly of vassal data to retrieve the relic casket.
So Neutra then shouts Stay Naga and returned successfully to the ceremony already taking place in Sri Lanka.
While the Naga spectators lament the loss of the relics, the divas who had assembled there celebrate the victory of the Naga among bikers.
This could mean the novice among the ques, though Naga can also mean elephant and gesture toward a great man.
So Neutra is a Naga, a novice, but he's also a naga, an elephant among men.
And most significantly, he behaves like a naga, a snake like being.
By tricking the Naga Raja and his nephew, fashioning a snake like arm to retrieve the relic casket,
stealing the treasure, and moving between the Naga Loka and the world of the humans.
About. In a sympathetic postscript to the story, the Nagas disregard so notorious command to stay behind and instead grieving.
Complain to the Sangha about the loss of their beloved relics.
Out of compassion and in an illustration of true goodness and generosity, the Sangha gives a few relics back to the Nagas and the Nagas,
then bring treasure treasures as offerings to the enshrinement ceremony happening above.
It's an exchange of treasures, as it were, thus participating in the humans enshrinement ceremony.
In this story, sacred space is already primed. The enshrinement ceremony is already underway before the relics arrive as final confirmation.
The authenticity of the relic is proven by the fact that it was in the care of the Nagas,
and by the fact that the Nagas were extraordinarily reluctant to give it up.
To accommodate the traditions penchant for keeping a reserve portion of relics in the hands of Nagas for possible future use.
The narrative acquiesces to the Nagas petition for some relics to be returned to the Naga loka.
Of course, in the story, this gesture is seen to be an act of generosity and compassion on behalf of the Sangha,
not a selfish act to ensure the song gives future access to a store of relics.
It's interesting that the story is nowhere included in the earlier deep of Ossa.
So it illustrates a type of literary turn in the Mohave answer.
The story of the procurement of the relics, with the exciting battle between the Nagas,
is a particularly salient story that showcases the type of ethical lessons that arise throughout the Maha Bassa.
According to the logic of this text, the procurement of the relics by Sony is absolutely not a theft, but a legitimate act.
Simply confirming the prognostications and actualising the intentions of the Buddha himself cited in earlier chapters.
Delivering the relics from the Naga Loka to Lanka is thus seen to be a legitimate act,
and draws the audience's attention and imagination into a realisation that the Buddha has done so much that even after his passing,
he affects the world for the audience outside the text, the Maha Vances textual communities who might be looking right at the Great Stupa.
This story is it is included precisely so it will engender some vigour and passata in them.
The supernaturally gifted novice senator is himself classified as a naga, as all novices are until they've taken full ordination.
The story thus presents a Naga novice who is sent to outwit wit, a Naga super snake,
and all the transactions of value of power occur in liminal regions, regions of easy access for both kinds of Nagas.
Relic theft is a tantalising topic.
Unlike other religious traditions, such as the Roman Catholic tradition, where relic theft is confined to the human realm and human agents,
the Polish vampires maintain that thievery happens between worlds and is perpetrated primarily by non-human agents.
While all of these traditions, what all of these traditions have in common, though, is that the perpetrators here, the Nagas,
may not be motivated by greed, but rather by extreme piety and the desire to serve and worship the relics appropriately.
Following Patrick Geary's ideas about relic theft in the Catholic context,
I suggest that thievery points to the extreme value of the relics and even generates additional value.
Thievery also heightens the imaginative involvement the audience of the Maha Venza has with the story.
For the textual community, much is at stake regarding the theft of relics.
It really is no surprise to hear of the theft,
because the story is narrated expressly to attribute the pedigree Avancer an authoritative link to the Buddha himself.
Within the text. In the case of Sonu Tura, stealing relics is an essential part of the on a Dr.
One second. Uh.
It's a requisite layover before a relic can be activated in the landscape proper and enshrined for human veneration.
Thievery, as a word, might be too strong possession.
Maybe it occurs in liminal,
liminal spaces in the betwixt and between worlds that happens as relics are in transition from their original location to the island of Laga,
requiring Naga assistance. And just one further note about the story sequence with 861 verses through chapters 22 and 32.
More than a quarter of the initial instalment of the Mahabharata, the due to go epidemic.
Um, it's what Geiger called it. Um, the deep of answer doesn't even include the Torah narrative at all.
It only briefly references due to Goscinny. Even so, this shows again something of them having says literary manoeuvres.
And our final case provides a counterpoint of sorts, just as the Sarita, or corporeal and parabolica usage relics span vast swaths of time.
Nagas have exceptionally long lives,
which makes them particularly useful characters and narratives because they have been firsthand witnesses of the Buddha.
They can even be called upon to to become relics themselves by taking on the image of the Buddha.
Nagas, in essence, become the third classification of relics Odesza or image relics,
so that worshippers who are unable to view the countenance of the Buddha himself
during his lifetime might still view a glimpse of his magnificent being.
A sole example of Odessa, aka relic uh appears in a salient story embedded in the Asoka cycle in Madhavan Said chapter five.
There a Naga represents or represents the image of the Buddha, and this might remind you of similar stories elsewhere.
I'm thinking of John Strong's translation of Ashoka Vedanta,
where of course we have beings taking on the form of the Buddha for the purpose of veneration.
So in this case, King Asoka honours the image of the Buddha as if it were the Buddha himself,
which provides an interpretive community the opportunity to explore issues of the Buddha's absence and presence,
as well as the role of the Naga in negotiating or mediating the chasm between the temporally distant Buddha and future generations of Buddhists.
This story also allows for an exploration of Buddhist concepts of time and space, as the Naga here just as important, is named Maha Carla.
So great time! Um, and some of you may recognise that name from the Jataka Nandana Katara,
where Mahakali resides in the river near Ranjana and is the one to receive the bowl that the the Buddha go to my son's upstream with his progeny.
Dana. That if I am going to be enlightened in this day, may this bowl sink.
The bowl sinks, hits the bowls of all the former Buddhas, and wakes up that Naga who's also named time.
Anyway. McCullough in the Mahabharata has likewise lived to see the four Buddhas in this aeon as conceived in of out of Buddhism,
when one is spatially and temporally removed from the presence of a historical Buddha.
Nagas can function as intermediaries to bring images and relics forth for ethically motivated
connection to the Buddha and for the primed interpreter and counting encountering these Naga stories.
Uh, it just enables this, this imaginative work to happen.
Uh, imagination that's provoked by encounter results in a satisfying experience.
Pasada conducive to intensified religious practices such as continued relic veneration.
Our story of the Odessa Koa relic occurs in the midst of the account of the Third Buddhist Council in chapter five,
where we see Ahsoka's faith developing just before the story of the Naga,
Asoka is depicted increasing his contributions to the Sangha in response to his developing faith.
Everything changes when he hears about the powerful Nagarajan Mahakali,
who has lived through the errors of the previous four Buddhas and therefore has seen each of them.
So when Mahakali manifests the Buddha.
I think I have a slide.
He made by miracle the delightful form of the Buddha, endowed with the 32 major signs and blazing with the 80 minor attributes of a Buddha,
encircled by a fathom long halo and shining with a Garland of lightning beams.
The king's response after seeing him is them higher, uh, amazement and pasada, the serene satisfaction,
the same emotional qualities that the audience is expected to experience upon hearing this particular story.
Then a showcase exclaims by him by Mahakali.
This image is such like the form of the Buddha.
How much more so than the form of the to target to himself.
After viewing the Odessa, CA relic courtesy of the Nagarajan, Ashoka is increasingly struck by the emotion of joy.
This viewing lasts for seven days. Again, where the great King, uh, of great power, keeps the great festival named the acupuncture.
The veneration by the eyes. Just as the Nagas commanded the boti tree en route to Lanka and worshipped commandeered party.
Pardon me. Just as the Nagas commandeered the boat tree en route to Lanka and worshipped it for seven days,
here we see a Naga manifesting himself as the greatest treasure of all.
The Buddha worshipped for seven days, providing an image that responds to the faithful.
Ashoka's religious needs within the text. The Naga also thus offers the audience outside the text and image to provoke the right emotions.
The story reveals just how close the Nagas are to the relics of the Buddha.
They can even shapeshift and manifest the greatest treasure, the Buddha himself.
In conclusion, this story is not actually on the map.
So this is the area popped into this story. Relics.
I just like the image. Relics and relic worship are critical to the living.
Tradition instigated by the fourth and fifth century Maha Vihara monks responsible for the Mohave
answer and in the form says they produced the Nagas can be seen as model agents regarding relics.
Nagas determine or attribute value. Attribute value to the relics, as Geary suggests of the Catholic uh context in his book For to Sacra,
the value of relics can be determined by their theft,
and the relics in the vultures are habitually being stolen by the Nagas, especially when they are en route to an enshrinement, and only temporarily.
This motif is so important that in the bombshells I'd say, um,
I would say that a trip through the hands of the Nagas or the bellies of the
Nagas is requisite before a relic is fully activated or of value for Lanka.
Um, this is an idea much more cautiously expressed by by John Strong, uh,
who observed that the Naga layover seems related to the period of provisional ordination experienced by novices in the Sangha.
He writes, uh, in relics of the Buddha.
The Naga State is thus something that needs to be abandoned, but it is also something that needs to be passed through on the way to its abandonment.
The same may perhaps be said of relics, for which enshrinement in a stupa may be a kind of ordination.
No relic can become enshrined without undergoing a rite of passage, symbolised here by passing through, or at least being in the possession of Nagas.
The bowtie tree, having been established by Ananda, is the most suitable substitute, uh, as a relic of use for the Buddha um, in his absence.
This is explained in Kalinga body Jataka. Um.
The body tree endures a baptism or consecration by Nagas, as its branch is whisked away to the Naga loka for the textual community of the Mohave.
Onset by the function. By this function of value attribution, the Nagas help to determine where the practical ritual focus should be on the relics.
Often simply, though uncritically designated by scholars as phonic deities.
Nagas serve to ground, locate and guard various kinds of relics in the Maha mansa.
Nagas guard relics of all types, the bodily relics, both bones,
the internal body parts available only after the Buddha's bodily death, and hair and teeth,
which are the dead parts of the Buddha that might be given during the Buddha's lifetime by the
Buddha himself are important because they viscerally connect the present worshipper with the Buddha.
Relics of use appear frequently in the Bom shows, such as the tree that was used as a parasol to shade him,
and the throne upon which he sat during his second visit to Lanka.
Narrated in the first chapter. Nagas also oversee the places designated by the Buddha as Chettiar in his second and
third visits to the island until they receive their intended relics in the future,
and Nagas seem to be equipped with some sort of homing device that leads them to
treasures that have been abandoned or that are not receiving adequate human attention.
Nagas are thus naturally inclined to find and guard the relics of the Buddha,
and it is a convenient trope in the Pali narrative tradition that they consider any relics
that have been buried in the ground or washed out to sea as their rightful property.
This crucial behaviour, captured in narrative form,
provides the tradition with a perpetual source of relics for future instalments that the Nagas always retain a reliable
source of relics leads the audience of the Maharana said to feel gratitude upon reading or hearing about them.
Finally, Nagas model ideal veneration of the relic treasures.
While Nagas may be of dubious, so tier a logical aptitude,
there is a productive tension in the tradition regarding the relationship of relics to Nagas.
Nagas are simultaneously cast as ideal worshippers of the Buddha and as
karmically incapable of receiving the full benefit benefit of relic veneration.
As we saw in the account of the novice monk Sonu Taro, when Nagas are outwitted by the novice and divested of their precious relics,
they argue that they are actually better equipped than humans to lavishly and appropriately worship relics.
The Nagas are located outside the social framework as non-humans,
and yet they challenge that framework as an eminently Buddhist in an eminently Buddhist way.
It was the Buddha, after all, who said that behaviour determines virtue and potential, not one's birth station.
And also bear in mind, in chapter one, they became Buddhist.
They took precepts. The Nagas are depicted as ideal worshippers of the Buddha's relics,
and yet they are thieves in direct violation of one of the five fundamental moral precepts in Buddhism, namely taking what is not given.
But as we saw in the first chapter of the Madhavan said,
the Buddha himself converts the Nagas who undertake the precepts and who are thereby bound to honour them.
They seem to provoke pity from the audience, perhaps jealousy, even insofar as they have immediate access to relics.
But they also generate gratitude insofar as their relationship to the relics affords the possibility for future caches for human worship.
Nagas, as portrayed in narrative literature of the moral answer, are especially susceptible to the power of relics,
and they are in the enviable position of having access to them in spite of their so to your illogical ineptitude.
Thank you very much for this.