Unfortunate Destiny

This book focuses on the imagery and roles of nonhuman animals in premodern South Asian Buddhist literature. Part I examines the animal realm of rebirth in Buddhist doctrine and cosmology and shows that early Buddhist literature depicts the animal rebirth as a most “unfortunate destiny” (Skt. durgati), won through negative karma and characterized by violence, fear, suffering, and a lack of wisdom, moral agency, or spiritual potential. It also shows that although animals are capable of being reborn in heaven, the means by which this occurs are passive in nature, highly dependent upon the physical presence of a buddha, and categorically inferior to the spiritual cultivation unique to human beings alone. In contrast, Part II looks at the thinking, speaking, and highly anthropomorphized animals that populate many previous-life stories of the Buddha (jātakas). Not only do these animals exhibit wisdom and moral agency, they also use their powers of speech to condemn humanity for its moral shortcomings and expose humanity’s rampant abuse and exploitation of the animal world. Part III examines the roles played by major animal characters within the life-story of the Buddha, arguing that certain animal characters can be seen as “doubles” of the Buddha, illuminating the Buddha’s character through comparison with an animal “other.” Throughout the book, the author shows that humanity’s relationship to the animal is forever characterized by a simultaneous kinship and otherness, identity and difference, attraction and repulsion—and that discourse surrounding animals is primarily aimed at illuminating the nature of the human.