BUDDHA 75
Siddhartha’s doctor. Th e historical king Bimbisara, whose appearance is that of the
villain Rock Holmes without sunglasses, retains some of Holmes’s psychological char-
acteristics of fostering ambitions and rejecting love. More importantly, Tezuka casts one
of his most recognizable and popular characters, Hosuke Sharaku, the little boy with
terrible powers in Th e Th ree-Eyed One , in the role of Assaji, the apprentice monk, still
with the bandage on his forehead that seals his third eye. While most historical charac-
ters are accurately fi gured, Tezuka’s Assaji changes from the historical character, a noble
who became one of the fi rst fi ve disciples of the Buddha, to a half-witted, snotty-nosed
child born into a poor huntsman’s family of 32 children. Tezuka also alters the historic
meeting between Assaji and Sariputta by binding Assaji’s ghost to Ananda who was
commissioned by the Buddha to search for Sariputta.
Th e character creation and shift add signifi cant narrative layers to the story; they
also help support the more philosophical themes of the manga. Th rough the humor-
ous Tatta, an untouchable street urchin, and the dramatic Chapra, a slave-born whose
only dream is to break the bond, Tezuka not only paints an accurate portrait of Indian
society at the Buddha’s time, but one can also feel Tezuka’s strong revulsion toward
India’s unjust caste system, which uses violence to oppress the poor and unfortunate.
Th is cruel state of aff airs is nevertheless counterbalanced by Tezuka’s interpretation of
Buddha’s teachings on suff ering and of his compassion for the suff ering of the strong
and the weak alike. Vicious characters such as Prince Ajatasattu and half-prince De-
vadatta are shown to suff er from loss of love just as much as Migaila, an outlaw and
untouchable woman, suff ers from an incurable illness until the Buddha, in his incom-
mensurable compassion, sucks pus out of her open sores. Th is kind of compassion
results from a true understanding of the sanctity, equality, and interconnectedness of
all life forms, be it animal or human. Th e monk Naradatta is cursed to live like a beast
because he unthinkingly causes the death of many animals in order to save one human
life. Little Tatta has the special gift of getting into animals’ minds, as the Buddha does
to a person’s soul. Th is interdependence is closely linked to the law of cause and eff ect,
as shown in the downfall of the Kosalans or the condemnation of King Bimbisara
at his own son’s hands. It is usually said that Tezuka is not a Buddhist; he nonethe-
less shows deep knowledge of Buddhism with his introduction, albeit shortened and
incomplete, of the most fundamental texts in the Pali Canon, the Th ree Cardinal Dis-
courses, namely “Th e Setting Rolling of the Wheel of Truth,” “Non-Self,” and “Th e Fire
Sermon.”
Buddhist philosophical concepts are presented solemnly but in simple language;
dramatic events are carefully balanced by hilarious details both in the text and in
the drawing: common slapstick, totally unrelated and absurd images, and humorous
comments on modern life in a story that took place more than 2,550 years ago. Th is
approach, together with the representation of women in various degrees of nudity, of-
fers shocking contrast with the seriousness of the subject matter, namely the life of a
holy person. While the humor of anachronism lightens dark moments of Indian history
and provides the necessary relief in a very long story, the nudity can certainly be deemed
