The Theatre of Tibet by Antonio Attisani;

Author:Antonio Attisani;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: edigita
Published: 2024-04-05T08:44:40+00:00

Drime Künden

A Garland of Pearls: The Life and Deeds of the Dharma King Viśvantara.

(rgyal po dri med kun ldan gyi rnam thar, or History of King Drime Künden).

Drime Künden is derived from one of the Buddha’s best known previous lives, when he was born as Prince Viśvantara. The jātaka has been translated into all Asian languages and included in the Kangyur516, and also forms the ninth chapter of Aśvasghoṣa’s Garland of Past Lives. Tucci517 describes two thangkas of the Gelugpa school on this subject: the first518 tells the story of Manicuda, almost identical to the Viśvantara Jātaka, and the second519 the story of Viśvantara-Drime Künden. The plot is also echoed in one of the two Sanskrit Buddhist dramas saved from the Tibetan canon, Candragomin’s Lokānandanāṭaka (‘Jig rten kun tu dga’ ba’i zlos gar)520. According to Jacques Bacot521, the Tibetans of the time believed that Drime Künden was written by the Sixth Dalai Lama, a poet and lover of art and beauty in all its forms, including female beauty; however, this theory has not been confirmed. Bacot considers it unlikely that the same author could move from the “gallantry and impiety” of the Songs of Love to the “compassionate edification” of Drime Künden and also points out the differences between the first manuscript he translated, from a monastery in Mongolia, and the text published by Edward D. Ross522. Drime Künden is also the first Tibetan play to be published in the West, in Tibetan by Ross and in English translation by Millicent H. Morrison523.

After his first trip to Tibet from March to December 1907 and his second from May 1909 to March 1910, Jacques Bacot formalised his Tibetan vocation and interest in popular culture precisely by devoting himself to Drime Künden524. Sensitive to the religious aspect, Bacot notes that Sukyi Nyima’s “insatiability of sacrifice” also characterises prince Drime Künden, whose namthar derives in his opinion from the jātaka that tells of the little prince Sujata, the Beloved, who, finding himself with his starving parents in a desert, offers them his own flesh, up to his eyes and tongue. To the god who asks him if he wants his eyes back and if he regrets his sacrifice, he replies that he would like to have a new body to become a Buddha and thus help other sentient beings. Drime Künden is a special bodhisattva, the penultimate existence on earth of the one who would be reborn as the historical Buddha. Bacot also compares him to Sukyi Nyima because they both use terms that seem to come from ancient shamanic rituals, later taken up in chod practice: “Holocaust of flesh and blood so that the weight of their debts may free beings”525.

Initially, Western scholars struggled with the idea that the text in their possession was one of many in circulation, and it took a long time to realise that a wide-ranging reading of a single work would only be possible by comparing all available versions. Bacot partially overcame this limitation thanks to his

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