Buddhist Narrative Śārdūlakarṇa-avadāna to Dance Drama Chandalika (The Untouchable Girl)

Anti-caste Dialogue to Tagore’s Perception of ‘MĀNAVA’

Abstract

Rabindranath Tagore regarded Gautama Buddha as “the greatest man ever born on this earth” (Tagore, Buddhadeb), who acknowledged śraddhā (respect) as the best dāna (offering/gift). Among Tagore’s writings, inspired by the humanitarian approaches of the Buddhist literature, dance drama Chandalika (The Untouchable Girl) (1938) is a famous one where the central character is a chaṇḍāla girl named Prakriti. In the socio-cultural and political context of Mahatma Gandhi’s campaign against untouchability in 1930s, Tagore’s Chandalika carries an immense importance.
The source of Chandalika is the introductory story of a famous Buddhist Avadāna text entitled Śārdūlakarna-avadāna (circa 1st/ 2nd Century CE.) Tagore took the outline of the narrative from The Buddhist Sanskrit Literature of Nepal (1882) by Rajendralala Mitra which is a Descriptive Catalogue of the manuscripts collected by B.H. Hodgson from Nepal and reposited in the Asiatic Society of Bengal between 1825 and 1845.
The Śārdūlakarṇa-avadāna contains a double layered narrative structure portraying the rebirth of Buddha and his disciples. It challenges the hegemonical status of the Brahmins, and asserts some very pungent logic countering the caste discrimination and social imbalance. Tagore did not directly entre the anti-caste debate, he rather focused on the sufferings and the pain caused by the social curse ‘untouchability’ and eventually determined Prakriti’s journey towards a complete self-revelation surpassing different stages of inner conflict.
The current paper would sketch the journey of the transformation of a Sanskrit Buddhist Narrative to a Bengali Dance Drama that diffuses the message of equality integrating Tagore’s concept of MĀNAVA (human). The political scenario of the British India of 1930s, the caste-distribution by the Hindu Dhramaśāstric tradition, and the Buddhist ideology of equality would also be discussed in the paper to decode the two analogous axioms - “ekamidaṃ sarvamidam eka” [This is one, all are this one] (Śārdūlakarṇa-avadāna) and “ye mānava ami, sei mānava tumi” [As I am human being, so you are] (Chandalika).