Sacred Biography in the Buddhist Traditions of South and Southeast Asia

From Prose to Poetry: The Literary Development of Samuttakote

218 From Prose to Poetry: The Literary Development of Samuttakote Thomas John Hudak While the Indic stories of the Buddha’s former lives (jâtaka) are some of the most important literary forms to have come out of India, the Panyatsaj âtaka, a group of tales that do not appear in the original Pâli canon, are an even more influential set of Buddhist birth-tales in Southeast Asia. Literary tradition holds that these fifty tales were composed in Pâli in Chiengmai by monks sometime between 1457 and 1657, although a more recent study places their composition as early as 1265 in Hariphunchay.1 Regardless of their date of composition, these tales have been major sources of inspiration in Burma, Cambodia, Laos, and Thailand, where they frequently appear as folktales or as subjects of sermons in the vernacular language. In addition, these stories have been major sources for the classical literature in the area, particularly in Thailand. One source, for example, lists sixty-three versions of twenty-one of these fifty tales in Thai classical poetry.2 As poetic versions, the tales have frequently been altered with a variety of different transformations that involve additions, deletions, and permutations. This essay examines those changes that have occurred in the Thai version of the tale Samuttakote (Pâli: Samuddaghosajataka). The poetic version of the tale, known as Samuttakote kham chan, was originally begun by the important courtier Maharatchakhru under King Narai (1656–1688). When the poem was left unfinished, probably because of Maharatchakhru’s death, Narai himself continued the composition. Again the poem was left incomplete , and it was not until the nineteenth century that the Supreme Patriarch, Prince Paramanuchit (1790–1853), a famed Indic classicist and poet, continued the story and completed it. Structure: Samuttakote as a Ja –taka Tale The traditional Indic jâtaka tales consist of seven parts that form a distinctive structural frame: (1) a number that corresponds to the number of verses found in the story; (2) a title; (3) a quotation, immediately after the title, that probably serves as a means of identification; (4) an introduction that puts the story in the context of the Buddha’s life—where he was and the circumstances that produced the story; (5) the jâtaka proper, which tells of an incident in the Buddha’s previous life; (6) Pâli verses that represent the canonical jâtaka; and (7) an identification section that lists the characters and their identities in the context of the Buddha’s life.3 The Panyatsa-jâtaka tales, in general, follow the same format, although the number refers to the order of the tale in a particular collection. In the poetic version of Samuttakote, however, this structural frame has been significantly modified. While the title remains, the number, the quotation, the introduction, and the Pâli verses have all been eliminated. The poet Maharatchakhru made these first significant deletions. In place of those deleted items, he substituted a frame that described a variety of entertainments held in honor of King Narai, entertainments which most critics interpret as an actual shadow puppet performance although they are described vividly enough to be actual seventeenth-century entertainments . These entertainments include wrestling matches, sword fights, boat races, animal fights, and a shadow puppet show for which Samuttakote was supposedly written. Whether or not the final identification section that follows the jâtaka would also have been deleted remains open to conjecture . However, in completing the poem, Prince Paramanuchit did add an identification section, which reinforced the fact that the story was indeed a jâtaka tale. Content: Samuttakote as a Tale In brief, the jâtaka version of the tale has the following plot. After Prince Samuttakote had married Princess Phinthumadi, he obtained a magic sword from a heavenly deity known as a pitthayathorn. Then he and his bride flew across the Himalayas. At Lake Chaddanta, the prince revealed his From Prose  219 to Poetry previous existence as the elephant king Chaddanta. Likewise, his bride remembered when she was born as an elephant named Subhadda and when she married him in that life. From Lake Chaddanta, the royal couple continued their journey to Suvannabhumi. After a time, they descended on an island where they fell asleep. At that point, a wicked pitthayathorn stole the magic sword and stranded them. Upon awakening and realizing their situation , the royal couple attempted to swim across the ocean with...