Vamsa is a dynamic genre of Buddhist history filled with otherworldly
characters and the exploits of real-life heroes. These narratives
collapse the temporal distance between Buddha and the reader, building
an emotionally resonant connection with an outsized religious figure and
a longed-for past. The fifth-century Pali text Mahavamsa is a
particularly effective example, using metaphor and other rhetorical
devices to ethically transform readers, to stimulate and then to calm
them.
Reading the Mahavamsa advocates a new, literary approach to this text
by revealing its embedded reading advice (to experience samvega and
pasada) and affective work of metaphors (the Buddha's dharma as light)
and salient characters (nagas). Kristin Scheible argues that the
Mahavamsa requires a particular kind of reading. In the text's proem,
special instructions draw readers to the metaphor of light and the
nagas, or salient snake-beings, of the first chapter. Nagas are both
model worshippers and unworthy hoarders of Buddha's relics. As nonhuman
agents, they challenge political and historicist readings of the text.
Scheible sees these slippery characters and the narrative's potent and
playful metaphors as techniques for refocusing the reader's attention on
the text's emotional aims. Her work explains the Mahavamsa's central
motivational role in contemporary Sri Lankan Buddhist and nationalist
circles. It also speaks broadly to strategies of reading religious texts
and to the internal and external cues that give such works lives beyond
the page.
