Myth as Critique: Buddhist Perspectives on Divination in the Saddharmasmṛtyupasthānasūtra

Abstract

Divination holds an ambiguous position within the Buddhist tradition. On the one hand, in early Indian Buddhism, it is downplayed as a “worldly art” (tiracchānavijjā), which Buddhist monastics were prohibited from engaging in. On the other hand, numerous Buddhist divination texts – such as the Śārdūlakarṇāvadāna – have been transmitted and remain available for research today. Moreover, certain scriptural texts, such as the Vassasutta of the Aṅguttara-Nikāya, even imply that Buddhists, particularly the Buddha himself, are superior diviners compared to non-Buddhist soothsayers.

In this paper, I will introduce a unique Buddhist approach to the criticism of divination practices, as found in the Saddharmasmṛtyupasthānasūtra, a massive Buddhist scripture produced around the 2nd to 4th centuries and preserved today in a codex unicus in Sanskrit, as well as in Tibetan and Chinese translations. In this text, the two attitudes of rejection and acceptance toward divination are fused together and embedded in a special narrative of the cosmic war between the gods and the Asuras. This war myth serves as an etiology, accounting for the origin of several astrological and geological phenomena, such as solar and lunar eclipses, earthquakes, comets, meteors, and nakṣatras. Through a case study of earthquakes, I argue that this text likely engages with the Indian Jyotiṣa tradition, particularly the teachings of Kāśyapa, Garga, and Vṛddha-Garga, who are mentioned in Varāhamihira’s Bṛhatsaṃhitā.