ABSTRACT
This chapter explores some implications of the use of an underlying maritime nautical image as a framing metaphor in the early Buddhist narrative tradition of the Jatakas, the birth stories recounting the lives of the Bodhisatta as he develops the attributes he will need as the Buddha. In these tales, which date from the third century BCE to the fifth century CE, the finding of liberation from suffering and rebirth is described not only by the famous Buddhist image of the boat that crosses a river but also by oceangoing vessels. Against this background, the topos of the wreck at sea is employed as expressive of the apparently inexplicable and various catastrophes that threaten all beings, whilst the one who survives or behaves honourably in disaster is regarded as alert in finding the Buddhist path. In this way, Buddhist maritime stories involve a radical departure from the preoccupations of traditional Indian narrative, posing an implicit critique of brahminic religious practice.
