King Asoka and Buddhism - Urban Dharma

monarch bested by a nāga, nor, outside of Sri Lanka at least,would it be all right for him to be outdone by Duṭṭhagāmaṇi.Some other solution had to be found. Several were.The Chinese translation of the Sanskrit Saṃyuktāgama(Pali: Saṃyutta Nikāya), for instance, tells exactly the samestory of Aśoka’s attempts to get the relics from the nāgas asthe Aśokāvadāna except that he is successful and does not goaway empty-handed. 61 Moreover, there exists another ratherdifferent tradition about Aśoka in which he is also successfulin obtaining the relics from the nāga king. This is preserved ina bewilderingly wide variety of texts such as Buddhaghosa’scommentary on the Dīgha Nikāya, the Sumangalavilāsinī; thelast section of the A-yü wang chuan (a Chinese collection ofmiscellaneous Aśoka stories); the 12 th century Burmese Palicosmology, the Lokapaññatti; the 13 th century chronicle of theGreat Stūpa of Sri Lanka, the Thūpavaṃsa; and the 16 th centuryTibetan history of Buddhism, Tāranātha’s Chos ḥbyung. 62In these sources, we are told that king Ajātaśatru longago had deposited all the Buddha relics in the Ganges wherethey were guarded by a huge revolving water wheel on whichwooden figures armed with sharp swords spun around andeffectively prevented anyone from passing. Aśoka, however,manages to stop the wheel from turning although the wayin which he does this differs from text to text. Variously, hediverts the course of the river to keep the wheel from spinning(Tāranātha); he throws prunes into the water to blockthe mechanism (A-yü wang chuan); he calls on Viśvakarman,the divine artificer, to disarm the wooden figures holding thewords (Thūpavaṃsa, Sumangalavilāsinī); and he recruits the sonof the magician-engineer from the “Land of Roma” who madethe figures in the first place (Lokapaññatti).169