of Stories). The early Buddhists, however, were proba-
bly even more partial to memorable narratives than
adherents of other Indian religious traditions; witness
the mammoth assemblage of JATAKAs (birth-stories)
and the skillfully elaborated tales of causation in the
DIVYAVADANA. Through the very telling of such
AVADANAand nidana(stories about causation), so-
phisticated Buddhist concepts are not only made ap-
prehensible and palatable, they become enjoyable and
memorable.
The exuberant Indian affection for unforgettable
tales also traveled with Buddhism to Central Asia and
Southeast Asia. A splendid example of Buddhist tales
may be found in Xianyu jing(The Sutra of the Wise and
Foolish), which consists of hundreds of long and short
stories recorded by Buddhist monks from China, who
heard them in 445 C.E. in the oasis city of Khotan in
eastern Central Asia (Xinjiang). While The Sutra of the
Wise and Foolishhas not been successfully traced to a
single Sanskrit source, it is full of delightfully edifying
stories and also exists in a Tibetan recension.
Another noteworthy medieval Buddhist text from
Central Asia, but of a quite different nature than The
Sutra of the Wise and Foolish,is Maitreyasamitinataka
(Dance-Drama of the Encounter with MAITREYA[the
Buddha of the Future]). It is one of the few manu-
scripts written in the extinct language known as
Tocharian. Among all the extant fragments, the
Maitreyasamitinatakais by far the longest. Linguisti-
cally, Tocharian, which was rediscovered only in the
early part of the twentieth century, is extremely im-
portant because it is the easternmost representative of
the Indo-European family. Also discovered in the
early years of the twentieth century was a translation
of the Maitreyasamitinatakawritten in Old Uyghur,
an extinct Turkic language. Thus, there is good pri-
mary evidence for a once flourishing tradition of Bud-
dhist dance-drama in Central Asia. Judging from the
stage directions in the extant texts, it must have been
quite a spectacle.
The tradition of Buddhist drama goes back even ear-
lier than the Maitreyasamitinataka,which dates to
around the eighth century. Indeed, the earliest au-
thenticated Sanskrit dramas are three plays written by
Buddhists. Fragmentary manuscripts of these plays
have been recovered from the sands of the Turfan basin
in Eastern Central Asia. Among these plays is the nine-
act S ́ariputraprakarana(The Matter of S ́ariputra) by the
renowned Mahayana scholar and poet AS ́VAGHOSA(ca.
100 C.E.). A full exposition of the elaborate dramatur-
gical theory embodied in these plays may be found in
the Natyas ́astraof Bharatamuni, which dates to around
the beginning of the common era.
So proficient in thaumaturgy were many Indian and
Central Asian Buddhist monks who came to China that
some of them relied on their wonder-working skills
not only to attract enormous groups of disciples but
even to gain favor with the ruler. Perhaps the most fa-
mous of these was Fotudeng (d. 349), but many oth-
ers were noted in historical and anecdotal literature.
Buddhist monks were so renowned for their spell-
binding powers of narration and prestidigitation that,
by the Song dynasty (960–1279), there were various
categories of professional storytellers and entertainers
who masqueraded as monks. Already in the preceding
centuries, the power of Buddhist narrators (of both lay
and monastic status) to gather crowds was so great that
government recruiters who wished to conscript hun-
dreds of new soldiers would intentionally seek out aENTERTAINMENT ANDPERFORMANCEA masked Dge lugs monk dances during the Hemis Festival in
Hemis, Ladakh, India, 2001. © Paula Bronstein/Getty Images.
Reproduced by permission.