ON THE HISTORY AND PSYCHOLOGY OF THE 'DAS-LOGpower and action (as opposed to wisdom and scholarship as represented by
Sariputra) was a 'das-log of sorts.
Born to a rich and pious householder, his father dies when he is three.
When he grows up, his mother, who is as sinful as his father pious,
sickens and dies. He then takes vows and eventually becomes an
arhant. He asks the Buddha to show him where his parents have been
reborn and the Buddha tells him to meditate. He has a vision in which
he sees his father has been reborn in heaven and his mother in hell. He
travels to hell by rddhi. The Dharmaraja and his record keepers can find
no account of his mother and conclude she must be in A vlci, the
deepest hell, whose inmates are so sinful in life that they fall there
without passing before Dharmaraja's court. After long search and
inquiry, he finally confirms that she is there. He is told that only the
Dharmaraja, the Lords of the Five Paths and the Buddha can open that
particular gate of hell. He returns to the Buddha, who lends him His
staff, and with this implement Maudgalyayana cows the demons that
guard the gate and passes through. He mother is fetched, and when he
sees her, "pierced with 360 iron nails, her head as big as Mt. Meru, and
her waist as thin as a thread," he bursts into tears and tells his mother
he will dedicate food and drink to her every day. His mother says, "In
hell, there does not exist even the names 'food and drink'. How can
your giving them to me help? Only doing virtue helps." He then tells
her, "I will bear your sufferings for you". The demons who guard his
mother say, "You must experience karma personally," and they lead
her away. The Buddha sends Ananda to fetch him back, and then He
opens all the gates of hell. All the sinners are reborn in paradise, except
Maudgalyayana's mother, who continues to suffer rebirths as a preta,
in animal forms, and then as a human before she gains liberation.^12The tale of Maudgalyayana is popular in Mahayanist countries. This tradition
appears to be a Central Asian development, an elaboration of ancestor worship
assimilated to a Buddhist format, the source of which is the Avalambana-sutra
that spread in Central Asia in the third century A.D. (deVisser 1935: 8ff., 67
ff.).^13 In China, the story is found in popular rituals designed to rescue women
from Bloody Hell, whether they are consigned for the crimes of polluting the
earth with menstrual blood and by the act of childbirth. The rescue of women,
particularly one's mother, from hell is ritually accomplished by the woman's
male descendents as an act of filial piety. They invoke a Buddha-figure
(Maudgalyayana) who descends to hell and does battle with the King of the
Dead for possession of the woman's soul. Ritual performances symbolize acts of
karmic retribution, where sexual desire and envy are depicted as causes of social
conflict (Seaman 1976). These themes, as we shall see, are also prominent in the
'das-log literature. In Japan, the Maudgalyayana story has been assimilated to