ДВОРЕЦ НЕБЕСНЫЙ И ДВОРЕЦ ЗЕМНОЙ: СИТУАЦИЯ «ПЕРЕХОДА» В БУДДИЙСКОЙ АГИОГРАФИИ

Вестник Института востоковедения РАН. 2024. № 4. С. 108–117.

Alexandrova N.

One of the most characteristic features of the Lalitavistara, which belongs to the early monuments of Buddhist hagiography (IV–IX centuries in Sanskritand Chinese versions), is theabundance of “embellishments”. Thetext is filled with repetitiveformulas, praisesand formulaic descriptivefragments. Theseformulaic fragments, however, are of interest in themselves and give some signals to the researcher about certain processes inherent in Buddhist culture. Entire chapters can consist of this kind of text—forexample, chapters IIand XIII, being almost eventless,arefilled only with repetitiveformulas. At thesametime, both chaptersare very closein the whole composition and the content of their separate parts. They are based on an identical design, which includes a description of the palaceand theso-called “motivating gathas”—the Bodhisattvais in his palace, the godsappear to him and encourage him to leave the palace, reminding him of his destiny and all his exploits in previous births. The description of the palaceisextremely stereotyped and uniform, the gathas in both chaptersarealso built on a similar principle. The construction of these chapters of the Lalitavistara offersa template on which the protagonist’s transition from onestateto another is built. This transition involves both a transition in theliteral sense(a movement)and a transformation into a differentappearance. Theintroduction of theseintermediate chapters into the sutra is connected with the general concept of Lalitavistara, according to which the Buddha is a supermundane being who has only taken on an earthly form and actsaccording to theidea of lokanuvartana—“imitation of the customs of the world.” Thus, the “design” parts of the hagiographic text puts it in a certain place in the development of Buddhism.

Keywords: агиография, буддизм, буддийская литература, mahayana, махаяна, Buddhist literature, Buddhism, Buddhist hagiography, формульный текст, formulaic expressions