ABSTRACT
In the last chapter we saw how the two epic heroes, Rāma and Kṛṣṇa, fared in Buddhist and Jain narrative, and we began to explore what this revealed about different notions of heroism. One key theme has already emerged, namely attachment to family members. The Brahmanical epics’ tales of kingly heroes foregrounded the attachments and duties of the life of a warrior, in which grief at losing a beloved family member (or even having to kill one in battle) caused an important narrative tension. In contrast, both the Jains and Buddhists used stories of Rāma and Kṛṣṇa to demonstrate the futility of grief and the importance of detachment and renunciation. This tension, between householder duty on the one hand and the pursuit of liberation through renunciation on the other, or between pravṛtti and nivṛtti values, is probably the most important tension in early Indian religious thought and literature in our period. In this chapter we are going to explore this tension further by looking at one particular family tie: the bond of heroes with their mothers.
