ABSTRACT
There is a unique dialogic moment in the court of the king of Videha, as depicted in the Mahā Ummagga Jātaka, the Buddhist ‘Birth Story of the Great Tunnel’. In a riddling contest, the Brahmin paṇḍita Senaka and Bodhisatta Mahosadha, both royal sages to the king, exchange knowing glances, and are thus able to read each other’s minds and intentions. 2 The scene provides a narrative window into the dimensions of dialogue that go unexamined; namely, the complex nonverbal and verbal factors that contribute to dialogue. One might imagine such factors merely to be a question of grammar, since the scene uses familiar ‘modes of expression halfway between direct and indirect speech’, to convey the interlocutors’ own thoughts or words. 3 I refer to another kind of ‘grammar’ at work in this communication – the grammar that underlies royal discourses and dialogues between kings and advisors in Buddhist and Brahmanical texts. This grammar is comprised of factors of relationality and trust that provide some of the conditions for dialogue to occur in the first place – knowing looks cast between sagely advisors, facial expressions, tacit appeals to social and religious authority and nonverbal performance of authoritative knowledge. Such factors all operate in and through a grammar of trust (and distrust) that make face to face communication possible and/or necessary.
