In the much later Mahyna stra, which existed at least as early as the fifth century CE, Satyavaca is actually a manifestation of the Buddha, and the text frequently states that he both is a manifestation and teaches through many manifestations. Perhaps he does not manifest in this context as a Buddhist monk or deity, because he teaches on topics, such as military tactics, which are forbidden for monks to discuss. Here, he finds himself again in a potentially deadly situation for an ascetic, an audience with a vicious king. The king’s Sanskrit name, Pradyota, means “Radiance,” a typical name for a king suggesting that he has an overabundance of rajas, dynamism, a quality kings are supposed to embody. The epithet Caa means Pradyota the Cruel, just as the great Aoka was called Caa-Aoka. He is a stock character in Buddhist lore. Zimmermann tracked him down in the Mlasarvstivda Vinaya and describes him as “a mean little bald guy” who would kill anyone “on the spot” who said the word “fat.” He was also said to have massacred 80,000 Brhmaas.15 He appears elsewhere in Sarvstivdin avadna literature in ethical tales focused on violence. In one case, he threatens to kill a Buddhist teacher, and in another, he savagely beats a young novice monk who presumes to teach the women of his court.16
Zimmermann notes that the king is described as ruling according to dharma, even though he is also seen as dangerously violent. This illustrates the usual Buddhist attitude of ambiguity toward kings. Aoka, according to Buddhist legend, slaughtered 18,000 Jains, among other atrocities, well after he became “Dharma-Aoka.”17 Some note that he renounces such violence after this pogrom takes the life of his own brother; nevertheless, Aoka continues to commit horrible acts of violence even after this episode. In the literary accounts, dangerous Buddhist kings have a disturbing tendency for mass violence against non-Buddhists. The Buddhist historian Trantha records, for instance, that the great King Hara trapped and burned alive “12,000 experts of the doctrine of the mlecchas [foreigners].”18
It is not entirely clear, but the irony and absurdity of Satyavaca’s encounter suggest a comical aspect. After Satyavaca advises him against capital punishment, the king calls for a public assembly with the Buddha and proclaims that anyone who does not show up will be executed. When Satyavaca criticizes him for being excessively wrathful, Pradyota comes very close to killing him. Satyavaca escapes execution by apologizing for criticizing the king in the presence of others. The situation is perhaps too dangerous and too commonly attested to be humorous. In the Milindapañha, the monk Ngasena tactfully tells King Milinda that he will only speak to him as a fellow scholar, because disputing with a king can result in punishment.19 In another case, kyamuni is described as avoiding directly confronting even the favorable King Pasenadi, who was fresh from impaling his enemies, for fear of alienating him.20
On Punishment
Satyavaca advises Caapradyota on criminal justice and military violence. In regard to criminal justice, the ascetic warns the king against excessive compassion. This is the point cited by ntideva in the iksamuccaya.21 Sentimental reluctance to act with harsh violence is a downfall of a king and leads to general criminal mischief. As in Buddhist thought in general, compassion should not be mistaken for sentimentality. While manifesting maitr and karu, the king should “bind, imprison, terrorize [or hurt/whip], beat, and harm uncivilized people.” Harming, terrorizing, and beating clearly fit the modern definition of torture. On the other hand, the king should not mutilate criminals, deprive them of their senses, or execute them. Although historically “Buddhist polities have nearly always maintained capital punishment,”22 capital punishment is ruled out. This is in direct contrast with the dharmastras, compendiums of Hindu ethical thought, which generally advocate all three acts of violence. Permanent physical damage should be avoided in such harsh treatment, and such violence should be done with the intention of training the victim. Violence is a tool of both prevention and rehabilitation. Likewise, in the case of tax collection, a king should discern between those who are unable to pay by no fault of their own and those who evade taxes or squander their wealth.
The Milindapañha, a highly authoritative Theravdin text framed as a dialogue between a king and a monk, offers an interesting contrast by arguing that punitive violence should be understood as the fruition of the victim’s own karma. How, the monk Ngasena is asked, is a king to reconcile the Buddha’s apparently contradictory injunctions not to harm anyone, on the one hand, and to punish those who deserve it, on the other? King Milinda pointedly reminds him that punishment includes amputation, mutilation, torture, and execution. Ngasena affirms both teachings. If a robber deserves death, he should be put to death. Is, then, the execution of criminals part of the dharma laid down by the Tathgatas? No, it is the robber’s own karma that causes the execution, not the Buddhadharma.23 The king merely facilitates this fruition. This concept of the king facilitating the fruition of negative karma is also prominent in the Hindu dharmastras, which are based more on the logic of ascetic expiation of karma. In Hindu sources, the king functions as Yama, lord of death and dispenser of karmic outcomes.24 Even the death penalty can be seen as a benefit from this perspective. The victim is benefited through relief of a karmic burden. The Satyakaparivarta argues instead that compassionate torture that does not result in permanent physical damage may have a beneficial influence on the character of the victim. The death penalty is not allowed, perhaps partly because it disallows the possibility of reform. Although the royal use of deadly force in battle is not explicitly described as an enactment of karmic outcomes, the stra says that weapons cannot harm a warrior protected by good karma. The unstated implications are that one’s victims must be ripe for their own destruction, and losing suggests moral failure on the part of the loser.
The domination of vassals is spoken of in much the same terms as controlling criminals, and the stra’s arguments for the benevolent treatment of vassals are more pragmatic than naïvely idealistic. Compassion is generally understood in Buddhism as having a magical power to protect. The common description of bodhisattvas putting on the armor of compassion is more than metaphorical. One can cite many cases of saints being protected from assassins or vicious animals by manifesting compassion. Even today, the Mett Sutta is recited to protect from snakebite and other dangers. The Milindapañha tells of a prince, renowned for his compassion, who was struck by an arrow only precisely when he allowed his concentration on compassion to lapse.25
The Seyya Jtaka, a story about one of the Buddha’s previous rebirths, portrays an extreme example of a king who refuses to fight to protect his kingdom, because it will require him to do harm. While imprisoned by the victor, he pities his conqueror for the karmic outcomes of his actions. His captor is then attacked by great physical pain through the power of his victim’s compassion. As a result, the king is released and his kingdom is returned (Jtaka 282). The implication is that compassion magically serves to sustain a king’s power. Similarly, it is believed in this stra that the weather, public health, and agricultural productivity are enhanced by the power of compassion.26 When we consider the rhetorical and political value of what may be regarded as merely magical perspectives, it must be remembered that in their cultural context these were not supernatural, but reflected concrete concerns for the forces at work in their world. It is also true that sometimes what initially appear to be mere formulations of magical thinking may be informed by practical insight. In a 2008 presentation on the moral reasoning of avadna literature, Rotman showed how Buddhists viewed moral qualities and karmic merit as quantifiable forms of capital.27 This is a somewhat magical form of what we would characterize in terms of intangible qualities such as political capital, moral bankruptcy, or the value of consumer confidence, institutional morale, work ethics, or creativity. There is a sense that the benefits of moral values may be entrepreneurially accumulated and developed. The store of those values is a fundamental source of the well-being of a people. The concern with karmic merit goes beyond the impact of ascetic values on popular culture to a highly pragmatic and self-interested c
oncern for community well-being. In the same way, the Buddhist ethics of violence represents more than a simple allegiance to the values of ascetics. They are part of a comprehensive view of human thriving that values worldly abundance.
But in this stra, as even in the brutally pragmatic Hindu Arthastra, there are also practical arguments for the protective power of justice and benevolence that go beyond the usual magical sense. A king must recognize that his own policies are a substantial cause of hostile relations and that his own virtue is his first defense, reasoning that has currently been used in regard to the rise of terrorism. In an argument reminiscent of the Aggañña Sutta’s claim that crime arises from poverty, it is stated here that enemy attacks and insurrections arise from unhappiness and dissatisfaction. A king is therefore indirectly protected by his benevolent cultivation of the well-being of his subjects, vassals, and neighbors. It is emphasized that, if they are happy and secure then, instead of becoming enemies, they will be allies when enemies do arise. In the same way, a benevolent king will successfully enrich his treasury through gifts and the general prosperity of his realm, while a rapacious and exploitive king will fail.28 Compassion serves the purposes of domination, pacification, security, and enrichment.
On Warfare
Although the stra allows for war, it does so only under special conditions and with special restrictions on its conduct. In a graded series of skillful means, a king must first try to befriend, then to help, and then to intimidate his potential enemy before resorting to war. This set of four stratagems diverges from an ancient and pervasive set only by substituting “intimidation” for “fomenting dissension.”29 In Hindu sources, this common argument that war should be a last resort is grounded on the practical point that battle is highly unreliable and unpredictable. So we cannot simply assume, in this Buddhist context, that using war as a last resort is a moral issue. In Hindu contexts, the preliminary techniques are often not attempts to avoid conflict, but to win by safer means. It is not clear in this stra whether wars of aggression are acceptable or not. There is no explicit rejection of campaigns of conquest. It should be remembered that, in the dharmastra literature, all of the activities of kings are regarded and referred to as “protection.” So, references to protection do not necessarily refer to defensive activity.
Should attempts to succeed without armed conflict fail, the king is then instructed in how to assemble and deploy the various divisions of an army. He is to go to war with three intentions: to care for life, to win, and to capture the enemy alive. Only Zimmermann, based on the Chinese version, correctly translated the phrase for capturing the enemy alive. This is not immediately convincing because the Chinese translation often strives to soften the impact of the violent aspects of the text. However, the Sanskrit phrase corresponding to the Tibetan srog gzung ba, jvagrham, occurs often with this meaning in the jtakas (stories about the Buddha’s previous rebirths), perhaps the most important Buddhist source for statecraft (Jtaka 23, 24, 282, 283). The jtakas frequently valorize intentions to capture the enemy alive or to win without bloodshed through intimidation (Jtaka 229, 230, 181). In comparing this stra to the Arthastra literature, which for him includes the Manusmti and the dharmastras, Zimmermann states, “There can be hardly any doubt that the main effort of the warrior must have been directed towards annihilation of the enemy.”30 However, the Arthastra, Manusmti, Dharmastras, and ntiparvan of the Mahbhrata all agree that noncombatants, or those surrendering, fallen, disarmed, fleeing, or petrified by fear, shall not be harmed.31 Bhma, the great katriya guru of the Mahbhrata, proclaims that a warrior should only fight for the sake of conquest, not out of wrath.32
The concern to care for life in the stra also includes the well-being of all innocents, including animals and the spirits that dwell in trees and water. In contrast to most Hindu dharmastras, the stra forbids burning homes or cities, destroying reservoirs or orchards, or confiscating the harvest. This condition is extended to what might be called infrastructure in general, i.e., “all things well developed and constructed.”
On Karma
Having come to war with these preconditions and restrictions, the king still faces a problem that plagued the imagination of Indian warriors: how to reconcile the necessity of battle with the horrific karmic repercussions of killing. It is well known that the Buddha denied the idea that those who die in battle automatically go to heaven.33 However, the jtaka tales are full of stories of Buddhist warriors, often the Buddha himself in a past life, and occasionally romanticize their heroic deaths in battle (Jtaka 23, 24, 182, 226, 283, etc.). This stra gives the same answer for the warrior that is found for bodhisattvas elsewhere:
A king, who is well prepared for battle, having used skillful means in this way, even if he kills or wounds opposing troops, has little moral fault or demerit and there will certainly be no bad karmic result. Why is that? It is because that action was conjoined with intentions of compassion and not abandoning. On the basis of having sacrificed himself and his wealth to protect living things and for the sake of his family, wife and children, there is immeasurable merit; it even strongly increases.34
If he does so with compassionate intentions, a king may make great merit through warfare, so warfare becomes auspicious. The same argument was made earlier in relation to torture, and the stra now proceeds to make commonsense analogies to doctors and to parents who compassionately inflict pain in order to discipline and heal without intending harm. Zimmermann expresses surprise at the reference to compassion here and describes it as an irrelevant “sporadic addition,” out of keeping with the context. The stra, he says, fails to address the “obvious contradiction between his obligation to protect sentient beings … and his warfare activities.” He states that “the pair ‘killing with compassion’ was incompatible with the basic Buddhist ethics.”35
Based on a similar perspective, Davidson argues that Buddhists were ultimately unable to find a satisfactory answer to the conundrum of how to uncompromisingly stand by their pacifist values without alienating or disempowering the kings upon whom they depended for endowment and protection.36 He refers to a much-discussed passage from the Bodhisattvabhmi, supporting compassionate killing, as an example of the fact that Buddhism was “not unequivocal” in its pacifism.37 He sees this as an equivocation based on two assumptions which have been common to the field of Buddhist studies. The first is that this is an isolated passage representing an exceptional view. It has also been more expansively asserted, “Needless to say, this stance is particularly favored by the Consciousness-Only school and in esoteric Buddhism.”38 However, the Mdhyamika thinkers Bhviveka, Candrakrti, and ntideva all agree on the basic point that bodhisattvas may do what is ordinarily forbidden or inauspicious, including killing, and make merit as long as they remain compassionate.39 In the iksamuccaya, ntideva says that the very things that send others to hell send a bodhisattva to the heavenly Brahmalokas, a traditional result of generating compassion.40 The validation of compassionate violence made by Asaga here is found across Mahyna traditions and is common to its ethics, not an unusual exception to normative pacifism.
Second, Asaga’s passage is misread as an ethic of self-sacrifice which “allows the bodhisattva to engage in the slaughter of thieves or brigands … so that the bodhisattva could go to hell instead of the criminals”; “the bodhisattva replaces himself for the other and suffers in his stead.”41 Obviously, this would be a problematic model for a king. First, it should be noted that Asaga recommends stealing from thieves. Killing is for the purpose of preventing crimes, with similar karmic results. It is true that Asaga says that the bodhisattva killer is compassionately freeing his victim from the karmic outcome of great crimes and has the wish that he, rather than the criminal, should be born in hell. However, he goes on to explain that the result of killing with this intention, far from going to hell, is that the bodhisattva actually becomes blameless and produces great merit (Skt. anpattiko bhavati bahu ca puya prasyate) exactly as in the Satyakaparivarta.42 One could say t
hat the more willing bodhisattvas are to go to hell, the more certain it is that they will not.
Asaga’s conception of compassionate violence validates not only the prevention of terrible crimes, but also the aggressive removal of vicious rulers from power, a motivation that could be very important for kings:
Likewise, the [karmic] outcome for a bodhisattva established in compassionate intentions for benefit and happiness, who removes from power kings or ministers who are excessively fierce, merciless and solely set out to afflict others, is that they generate great merit.43
Davidson goes on to say, “This same rubric allows wide latitude in questionable behavior,” and “evidently this doctrinal basis was used to justify belligerence on the part of their favorite monarchs.”44 He gives the example of the Chinese pilgrim Hsüan-tsang’s depiction of King Hara. However, Hsüan-tsang records neither Asaga’s actual argument that Hara should invoke compassion toward his enemy, nor the argument based on the reading that he should willingly enter hell. The story depicts Hara as oppressed by a vicious anti-Buddhist enemy who killed his father. In his distress, Hara supplicates the celestial bodhisattva Avalokitevara with prayers and offerings.45 In return for a promise to overthrow the anti-Buddhist king, restore the influence of Buddhism, and rule compassionately, Avalokitevara lends his power to Hara’s campaign of military conquest. In fact, although Hara’s general motivation is compassion, the ethics in the example of Hara is far more unapologetically open to violence and free from conditions than in Asaga’s thought or in the stra. His war of conquest is not regarded as at all questionable in the legend. In fact, it has the sanction of Avalokitevara, the divine personification of compassion. This also belies the idea that Buddhist kings did not go to war to spread Buddhism.
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