Abstract
Once encountered in Beautiful Nanda, Aśvaghoṣa’s Sundarī is unforgettable. It is easy, then, to forget that we are given to see and hear her only in two of the eighteen chapters of Aśvaghoṣa’s long, lyrical narrative of Nanda. When she is given to speak, her words and voice resonate powerfully, but the narrative reduces her at last to silence. Among the last images of her, there is the moment when she is likened to a screaming bird, bereaved of her mate, her voice transformed and eventually drowned out (Beautiful Nanda 6.30). This essay argues for a new interpretation of the salience of this figurative transformation, and of two different ways in which Sundarī is lost to view as she is forgotten or overlooked by characters in the narrative. Along with a close-reading of Sundarī?s loss of voice, this essay offers readings of the depiction of Sundarī?s grief (Beautiful Nanda 6.28-29) and Nanda?s ?disremembering? of her (Beautiful Nanda 7.5-7.9). In conclusion, I suggest that re-reading such passages recommends taking very seriously the possibility that for Aśvaghoṣa there might be a close relationship between the kind of sensitivity his poetry enables and a variety of moral attention.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Beard, M. (2015). SPQR: A history of ancient Rome. New York: W. W. Norton.
Bloom, H. (2011). The shadow of a great rock: A literary appreciation of the King James bible. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.
Bodhi, B. (2012). The numerical discourses of the Buddha: A translation of the Aṅguttara Nikāya. Boston: Wisdom Publications.
Borges, J. L. (1999). Selected non-fictions. Edited by Eliot Weinberger. New York: Viking.
Bremmer, J. N. (2002). The rise and fall of the afterlife. London: Routledge.
Carpenter, A. D. (2018). Illuminating community: Animals in classical indian thought. In P. Adamson & G. F. Edwards (Eds.), Animals: A history (pp. 63–85). New York: Oxford University Press.
Chadwick, H. (2008). Confessions. New York: Oxford University Press.
Collet, A. (2013). Beware the crocodile: Female and male nature in Aśvaghoṣa’s Saundarananda. Religions of South Asia, 7(1–3), 61–76.
Collins, S. (2006). Nirvana and other Buddhist felicities. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Covill, L. (2007). Handsome Nanda. Clay Sanskrit Library. New York: New York University Press, JFC Foundation.
Cox, W. (2017). Modes of philology in medieval South India. Leiden: Brill.
Doniger, W. (2006). Zoomorphism in ancient India: Humans more bestial than the beasts. In L. Daston & G. Mitman (Eds.), Thinking with animals: New perspectives on anthropomorphism. New York: Columbia University Press.
Doniger, W. (2009). The Hindus: An alternative history. New York: Penguin Press.
Engle, A. B. (2016). Translator. The Bodhisattva path to unsurpassed enlightenment: A complete translation of the Bodhisattvabh?mi. Boulder: Snow Lion.
Fitzgerald, J. L. (2004). The Mahābhārata: The book of the women (Book 11) and the book of peace, part one (Book 12). Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Goldman, R. P., Sutherland Goldman, S. J., & van Nooten, B. A. (2010). The Rāmāyaṇa of Vālmīki: An epic of ancient India, Volume VI: Yuddhakāṇḍa, Parts I and II. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass.
Hill, G. (2008). Collected critical writings. Edited by Kenneth Haynes. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hudson, E. (2013). Disorienting Dharma: Ethics and the aesthetics of suffering. New York: Oxford University Press.
Ingalls, D. H. H. (1965). An anthology of Sanskrit Court Poetry: Vidyākara’s Subhāṣitaratnakoṣa. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.
Iyer, N. C. (1884). (Translator.) The Brihat Samhita of Varaha Mihira. Madura: South Indian Press.
Johnston, E. H. (1937). The Buddha’s mission and last journey: Buddhacarita, XV to XXVIII. Calcutta: Punjab University Oriental Publications.
Kachru, S. (2012). The last embrace of color and leaf: Introducing Aśvaghoṣa’s disjunctive style. Almost Island. Winter, pp. 1–64. Retrieved from https://www.forum-transregionale-studien.de/fileadmin/pdf/ zukunftsphilologie/publications/Kachru-the_last_embrace_of_colour_and_leaf.pdf.
Kachru, S. (2015). What is it like to be a likeness of oneself? Gestures of light, motion and mind at the surfaces of representation. Monograph. Essays of the Forum Transregionale Studien: 1. Berlin.
Kachru, S. (Forthcoming). Of doctors, poets, and the minds of men: Aesthetics and wisdom in Aśvaghoṣa’s Beautiful Nanda. In R. Stepien (Ed.), Buddhist literature as philosophy, Buddhist philosophy as literature. New York: State University of New York Press.
Kapstein, M. T. (2001). Reason’s traces. Somerville, MA: Wisdom Publications.
Kern, H. (1865). The Bṛhatsañhita of Varaha-Mihira. Calcutta: Baptist Mission Press.
Kragh, U. T. (2010). Of similes and metaphors in Buddhist philosophical literature: Poetic semblance through mythic allusion. Journal of the School of Oriental and African Studies., 73(3), 479–502.
Leslie, J. (1998). A bird bereaved: The identity and significance of Vālmīki’s Krauñca. Journal of Indian Philosophy, 26/5, 455–487.
Lincoln, B. (1999). Theorizing myth: Narrative, ideology, and scholarship. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Malamoud, C. (1998). Cooking the world: Ritual and thought in ancient India. Translated by David White. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Milosz, C. (1983). The witness of poetry. The Charles Eliot Norton Lectures 1981–82. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.
Ohnuma, R. (2016). Animal doubles of the Buddha. Humanimalia, 7(2). Spring. Retrieved September 4, 2018, from https://www.depauw.edu/humanimalia/issue%2014/ohnuma.html.
Olivelle, P. (2008). Life of the Buddha., Clay Sanskrit Library New York University Press, JFC Foundation: New York.
Passi, A. (1982). Some preliminary considerations on Aśvaghoṣa’s Saundarananda. East and West, 32(1/4), 65–74.
Patterson, L. (1991). Chaucer and the subject of history. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
Payne, M. (2010). The animal part: Human and other animals in the poetic imagination. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Pine-Coffin, R. S. (1961). Confessions. London: Penguin Classics.
Pollock, S. (2007). The Rāmāyaṇa of Vālmīki: An epic of ancient India: Volume II: Ayodhyākāṇḍa. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass. [Reprint. Princeton University Press, 1984.]
Quagliotti, A. M. (2000). The ‘Parting of the Hair’: A Gandharan relief with two scenes from Buddha’s life. Annali dell’Istituto Universitario Orientale di Napoli, 60, 233–245.
Roebuck, V. J. (2010). The Dhammapada. London: Penguin Classics.
Salomon, R. (1983). The Buddhist Sanskrit of Aśvaghoṣa’s Saundarananda. Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde Sud Asiens, XXVII, 97–112.
Sawhney, S. (2009). The modernity of Sanskrit. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Scarry, E. (1985). The body in pain: The making and unmaking of the world. New York: Oxford University Press.
Schlingloff, D. (1975). Aśvaghoṣa’s Saundarananda in Ajanta. Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde Südasiens, 19, 85–102.
Stauffer, J. (2015). Ethical loneliness: The injustice of not being heard. New York: Columbia University Press.
Thanissaro, B. (1996). The wings to awakening. Barre, MA: Dhamma Dana Publications.
Vogel, J. P. (1962). The goose in indian literature and art. Memoirs of the Kern Institute no. 2. Leiden: E. J. Brill.
Vogler, C. (2007). The moral of the story. Critical Inquiry, 34(1), 5--35.
Williams, M. (1876). Śakuntalā: A Sanskrit Drama, in seven acts, by Kālidāsa. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Williams, B. (1981). Moral luck: Philosophical papers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Zin, M. (2006). The story of the conversion of Nanda in Borobudur. In Vanamālā, Festschrift A. J. Gail (pp. 205–275). Edited by Gerd J. R. Mevissen and Klaus Bruhn. Berlin: Weidler Buchverlag.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Kachru, S. After the Unsilence of the Birds: Remembering Aśvaghoṣa’s Sundarī. J Indian Philos 47, 289–312 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10781-019-09392-3
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10781-019-09392-3