Chittadhar Hṛdaya’s “The Sweet Fragrance of the Buddha”
We regularly go to the discourses preserved in the Pāli Canon for the story of the Buddha, or the ancient mythic narratives like Aśvaghosa’s Buddhacarita (The Story of the Buddha) or the Lalītavistara (The Play in Full), both from the early centuries of the common era. But with these as our primary sources, we can overlook later material, or even think of later material as less "authentic" or useful to our path.
There is a modern version of the Buddha's story written by the Nepalese Newari Buddhist poet Chittadhar Hṛdaya in 1940-46, largely while he was in prison for writing a poem called “Hṛdaya, Motherless Child” in his native Newari language (called Nepāl Bhāṣā) after use of the language was forbidden by the Hindu rulers, the Rana. He smuggled the poem to his sister out of the harsh prison where even scraps of writing paper were forbidden, having written it on tiny scraps of trash paper hidden from the guards. He called it The Sweet Fragrance of the Buddha (Sugata Saurabha), translated into English by Todd E. Lewis and Subarna Man Tuladhar as The Epic of the Buddha.
The poem is beautiful—simultaneously ancient and modern-feeling, with Chittadhar's social politics coming through in the description of Yaśodhara's grief after Siddhartha leaves her, and lines where the Buddha is described as the best friend of the poor and needy. The poem draws on Indian romantic poetry as much as on ancient Sanskrit epic style, and was controversial for adding in Newari cultural details where the author felt description was lacking in the ancient originals. In this way, the poem is solidly modern, offering a bridge to the life of the Buddha that is postcolonial without being overtly political in a way some South Asian polemical writing of the time was.
I read and reflect on a few excerpts from the book, and feel into how the Buddha is defined and redefined as his story becomes useful to new people and communities.
