Possible Indic precursors of canonical text and early history The Indian ancient classic epic, the
Mahabharata, includes the story of an ascetic,
Jaratkaru who sees his ancestors hanging upside down in purgatory because he has not married. His parents begged him to get married so they could be reborn in Heaven. This is based on the Tang Dynasty Sanskrit etymology of the Chinese word 'Yulanpen' said to be derived from Sanskrit 'avalambana' or 'hanging upside down'. Recent studies by Karashima has cast doubts on this and other old etymologies and have affirmed the connection of the Yulanpen holiday with the
Pravarana holiday. The
Petavatthu No. 14 – The Story of the Mother of Sariputta, a
Theravadan
scripture in the
Pali Canon, contains an account of the
disciple Sāriputta rescuing his deceased mother from his previous fifth life as an act of filial piety. Like other accounts in the Petavatthu, it also records the reasons for her rebirth into the preta world. The first reference to the Petavatthu is in the Mahavamsa's account of
Venerable Mahinda using it to teach Sri Lankans ca. 3rd century BCE. This may be the earliest Indic precursor to the Yulanpen Sutra. Another canonical account can be found in
Avadanasataka which is also very similar to the Yulanpen Sutra, Maudgalyayana communicates on the behalf of five hundred pretas with their respective relatives who in turn make offerings on the pretas' behalf to the monastic community. Once the transference of merit is completed, the former pretas are reborn and release from their suffering. The Yulanpen Sutra or Ullambana Sutra is an Indic text translated into Chinese in the 3rd to 4th century CE, which records the time when Maudgalyayana achieves
abhijñā and uses his newfound powers to search for his deceased parents. Maudgalyayana discovers that his deceased mother was reborn into the preta or hungry ghost realm. She was in a wasted condition and Maudgalyayana tried to help her by offering her a bowl of rice. Unfortunately as a preta, she was unable to eat the rice as it was transformed into burning coal. Maudgalyayana then asks the Buddha to help him; whereupon Buddha explains how one is able to assist one's current parents and deceased parents in this life and in one's past seven lives by willingly offering food, etc., to the sangha or monastic community during Pravarana (the end of the monsoon season or vassa), which usually occurs on the 15th day of the seventh month whereby the monastic community transfers the merits to the deceased parents, etc., The earliest attested celebration of the festival appears in much later sources, such as the early 7th-century
Record of the Seasons of Jingchu (which is a revision of an earlier text with same title from the mid 6th century CE that is no longer extant); however based on references in various literary sources, it may have been celebrated even as early as the late 5th century CE. The sutra was in part translated and promoted to help reconcile Buddhism with the Confucian ideals of filial piety;however there was already a concept of filial piety within Indian Buddhism which had a large overlap with the Chinese version but also significant differences. (cf.
Anantarika-karma).
Tang dynasty tales of karmic punishment and redemption In the Tang dynasty, Mulian was a popular topic of
sutra lectures by monks. They often used pictures and songs to amuse their audiences, enriching the Mulian story with many variations and making it thoroughly Chinese. The story-tellers shaped their stories to meet the charge that Buddhism undermined filial piety because it took believers away from their families and prevented them from attending to their ancestors. The written versions of these stories were
bianwen, of which a large number were preserved in the library cave at
Dunhuang, and was not rediscovered until the twentieth century. The fullest and most important of these Dunhuang texts is "Maudgalyāyana: Transformation Text on Mahamaudgalyāyana Rescuing His Mother from the Underworld, With Pictures, One Scroll, With Preface." In this text, Mulian's original name is "Radish", or "Turnip," typical Chinese nicknames, and his mother is Liu Qingti. Before Radish became a Buddhist, he went abroad on business and gave his mother money for feeding monks and beggars. She stingily hides it away, and soon after Radish returns, dies and the
Jade Emperor judges that she should be turned over to
Yama, ruler of the underworld, and dropped to the lowest order of hell for her selfish deception. Mulian becomes a Buddhist and uses his new powers to travel to heaven. There his father informs him that his mother is suffering extremely in the
Avīci Hell, the cruelest of the purgatories. Mulian descends and meets ox-headed devils who force sinners to cross the river to hell and to embrace hot copper pillars that burn away their chests. But by the time Mulian locates his mother she has been nailed down with forty-nine iron spikes. He seeks Buddha's help and is given a rod to smash prison walls and release the prisoners of hell to a higher reincarnation, but his mother is not released. Mulian's mother is reborn as a hungry ghost who can never eat her fill because her neck is too thin. Mulian tries to send her food by placing it on the ancestral altar, but the food bursts into flame just as it reaches her mouth. To rescue her from this torture, the Buddha instructs Mulian and all filial sons to provide a grand feast of "yülan bowls" on the fifteenth day of the seventh month, the time when monks emerge from their summer retreat. When his mother reincarnates as a black dog, Mulian recites
sutras for seven days and seven nights, and his mother is reborn as a human again. In the end she is reborn and can attain the joys of heaven. Filial emotion is vivid in this version. Mulian's mother calls him "my filial and obedient son," while Mulian "chokes and sobs with his tears falling like rain." As in the
Yulanpen Sutra, she only can be redeemed by group action of all the monks, not any one monk. Mulian, a good Chinese son, exclaims that the most important thing is "the affection of one's parents and their kindness most profound." As Guo puts it, by the late Tang, "the Buddhist embrace of filial piety seems to have been taken for granted..." and the way was opened for further synthesis in later dynasties". The stories sometimes use earthy characterization. When Mulian's mother is reincarnated as a black dog, Mulian seeks her out and she concedes that she is better off than she had been as a hungry ghost. As a dog, she says: :"I can go or stay, sit or lie as I choose. If I am hungry I can always eat human excrement in the privy; if I am thirsty, I can always quench my thirst in the gutter. In the morning I hear my master invoking the protection of the
Three Treasures [Buddha, the Religion, and the Community]; in the evening I hear his wife reciting the noble scriptures. To be a dog and have to accept the whole realm of impurities is a small price to pay for never so much as hearing the word 'Hell' said in my ear." In another version, "The Mulian Legend," Mulian's mother, Liu Qingti, had been pious but after her husband died took up sacrificing animals to eat meat, resorted to violence, and cursed. When she dies, the
Jade Emperor judges that she should be sent to the underworld.
Yama, ruler of the underworld, dispatches demons to take her, and she lies to them and to her son, saying that she has not eaten meat or done wrong things. The demons then take her away. == Operas ==