Vedic Antecedents to Buddhist Mythology: Tvaṣṭṛ’s Cup, theṚbhus, and the Third Pressing in Comparison to the Several Myths of the Buddha’s Bowls

Vedic Antecedents to Buddhist Mythology: Tvaṣṭṛ’s Cup, theṚbhus, and the Third Pressing in Comparison to the Several Myths of the Buddha’s Bowls

Several narratives concerning the Buddha’s sacred bowls in relatively early Buddhist texts can be read against the backdrop of a set of mythological paradigms from the Vedas and its concomitant ritual practices. I connect the controversial Vedic mythology of Tvaṣṭṛ’s unique soma cup, its multiplica tion into four cups by theṚbhus, and the invention of the Third Pressing—myths that are only narrativized in the earliest Vedic texts—to two myths, already present in nuce in the oldest Buddhist texts, but then more fully narrativized in the Pāli Nidānakathā—in which the Buddha receives special bowls: one bowl from a woman called Sujātā, and one bowl (originally four) from the Lokapālas. Since the Vedic myths in question appear virtually exclusively in theṚgveda and its Aitareya Brāhmaṇa, before they appear to be forgotten along with their internal tensions regarding the democratization of sacrifi ce, I argue that the signifi cantly later Buddhist texts are in effect cutting across a set of established orthodoxies in the contemporary Brahmanical traditions, wherein, we will see, there is clear evidence that the tensions surrounding theṚbhus had long been resolved. Thus, the Buddhist authors appear to have reached back into the storehouse of recondite Vedic mythology in order to reopen an ancient set of tensions concerning the democratization of religious practices that is then adapted to give a specifi c weight to this important moment in the life of the Buddha. I will argue that they do so both to ground themselves in that ancient tradition and to also differentiate Buddhist mythology from that of its Brahmanical contemporaries. In conclude by observing that at times the Buddhist texts thus attempt to be hyper-Vedic in their negative acculturation from their contemporaries. This conclusion, and the methodological profi le of the article, invites scholars to raise broader questions about the comparative mythology of Buddhist materials to their sources—specifi cally to those sources that might otherwise seem historically out of reach, but which have left a clear imprint in the formation of stories about the life of the Buddha.