Нарративные аспекты прошлой жизни (전생) в буддийских историях республики Корея и Шри-Ланки

4. Contextualizing of past-birth motif

4.1 Example stories

Story (1) "Hyetong brought the evil dragon to its knees (惠通降龍)"-Samgukyusa (1) Hyetong, before he put on the robe of a monk, killed an otter and threw its bones onto a hill. After he found the bones squatting down and embracing five young otters, he renounced the world and entered the priesthood.

(2) Monk Hyetong went to the Tang Empire and asked an Indian monk named Wuwei Tripitaka (無畏三藏) to be his teacher. Wuwei Tripitaka initiates Hyetong into the secrets of telepathy after hard ascetic practice.

(3) Hyetong defeated an evil dragon which harmed the daughter of a monarch of the Tang Empire fell sick, and finally persuaded the dragon to stop vicious things, giving the precept of Ahimsa, meaning 'do not destroy life' in Shilla.

(4) Hyetong cured a tumor of the King Sinmun by chanting a spell, and he `said` to the king. "Your Majesty, you held the high position of the prime minister in your previous existence and by mistake employed a good law-abiding person named Sinchung as a slave... you ought to build a temple and pray for the repose of his soul." The king followed Hyetong's advice.

Story (2) "Silence-Keeping Sabok (蛇福不言)"- Samgukyusa

(1) A widow conceived without sleeping with a man and gave birth to a son.

(2) He was named Sadong (or Sabok, means Snake Boy) because he neither spoke nor walked a step until the age of twelve.

(3) When his mother died, Sabok visited the Master Wonhyo and said. "The cow on which you and I once loaded the Buddhist scriptures is now dead. Why do we not go together to hold a funeral service for her?"

(4) They carried the coffin to a slope of a mount. Sabok composed and chanted a verse of praise to Buddha: "Sakyamuni Buddha once entered nirvana under the Sal Trees. His kindred is now about to go to the lotus land of perfect bliss."

(5) Sabok took the dead body on his back and entered the ground, the earth closed above his head. Story (3) "The Monk Tissa, the Fat"- Saddharmaratna valiya

(1) The monk Tissa pretended a senior monk in a high place in the temple.

(2) One young monk scolded him, but the monk Tissa argued that they should show respect for his standing because he was a relative of the Budhha.

(3) The Buddha preached on the monk Tissa's previous existence. The monk Tissa was a disobedient ascetic named Devala.

(4) The Buddha finished telling the story of Tissa's past life and continued a sermon on how to stop one's own karma.

(5) Later the monk Tissa abandoned his disobedient ways, and became eligible for future Enlightenment. Story (4) "The Demoness Kali“- Saddharmaratna valiya

(1) A young man was arranged a marriage by his widow mother, but his wife was barren.

(2) The barren wife killed three babies conceived by the new young wife and her too.

(3) The young wife was reborn as a cat and three times ate the eggs laid by the hen the rebirth of the barren wife. Finally, the cat ate the hen. The hen was reborn as a tigress and the cat was reborn as a doe. Three times the tigress ate the young of the doe, and ate the doe. The doe was reborn as a demoness; the tigress was reborn as the daughter of a noble man. The demoness ate twice babies of the noble man's daughter, but at the third times, the baby and mother ran to the temple, where the Buddha was preaching.