How Ajātaśatru Was Reformed: The Domestication of “Ajase” and Stories in Buddhist History by Michael Radich (review)

Ajātaśatru (Ch. Asheshi, Jp. Ajase) is the famous king of Magadha who lived during the lifetime of the historical Buddha. His name is generally associated with the figure of a young prince who killed his father (King Bimbisāra) and usurped his throne, and he is also often recalled along with his mother, Queen Vaidehī. Well-known episodes involving Ajātaśatru are, however, many and varied, his story having spread in diverse forms for two and a half millennia.

In his introductory chapter, Michael Radich explains that his aim in the book is to trace the story of a story. In fact, though, his work is much more than just an exercise in textual history. The author’s ambitious and thorough reconstruction of the history of the transformation of the Ajātaśatru narrative is paralleled by a detailed investigation of the contemporary usage of classic sources by Buddhist thinkers and others amid the globalization of Buddhist ideas and the rise of academic Buddhology. Radich sheds light on Buddhological critiques that presume to judge the legitimacy of such usage, in particular analyzing scholarly criticism of Kosawa Heisaku (1897–1968) and his disciple Okonogi Keigo for their use of the Ajātaśatru/Ajase narrative in developing a psychoanalytic theory they named the “Ajase complex.” Kosawa was among the first to introduce Freudian psychoanalysis to Japan. Radich demonstrates the irony of such negative assessments in view of the myriad ways in which the story has changed over time. He argues that the Ajātaśatru narrative has always shown extensive variation and, furthermore, that each version of the story can be seen as the mirror of an age.

The book is divided into ten short and very dense chapters with abundant footnotes and references. These are complemented by six insightful appendices, a useful bibliography, and an index. Chapter 1 introduces the study, explaining in detail what it aims to accomplish. Here, Radich explains that his study is intended to address two issues, the development of the Ajātaśatru narrative and the connection between the changes undergone by that narrative and other processes at work in Buddhist and cultural history.

In chapter 2, Radich presents a summary of Indian texts of the Ajātaśatru narrative. Synthesizing the results of his research on traditional versions of the tale in early Buddhist and Jaina sources, he identifies and summarizes fourteen main narrative incidents. The author skillfully keeps his text focused on the essence of his research, relegating the intricacies of textual analysis to lengthy footnotes. One of the chapter’s conclusions is that there has never been a version of the narrative that could be considered standard. Chapter 3 turns to the versions of the story found in the Mahāyāna scriptural traditions. Here, Radich examines in detail the well-known Ajātaśatru narratives recorded in the Mahāparinirvāṇa Sutra and the Contemplation Sutra. These two renditions contain many new episodes (most notably, the incident of Ajātaśatru threatening the life of his mother Vaidehī), new names for Ajātaśatru, and new doctrines.

Chapters 4 and 5 follow the narrative to China. In chapter 4, Radich shows that the story obtained popularity there because of various historical factors at work in the medieval Chinese Buddhist world. He suggests that six factors, including the idea of salvation in the Pure Land, are relevant to our understanding of the narrative’s transformation, and he concludes that the versions contained in the texts he presented in chapter 3 became the models for later East Asian versions that developed both in China and Japan. In chapter 5, Radich analyzes further developments of the narrative during the Sui and Tang dynasties. In some of these new versions, Ajātaśatru appears with the new name “Broken Finger,” and we also see...