As curious as the temporal significance of the small structural ruin is, its true significance is the phenomenal wealth of early Christian paintings it has yielded for historians to glean into the evolving culture, prevalent beliefs and popular motifs of early Christianity. And that in an era so tantalizingly close to the second century where the major share of canonical literature is probable to have been composed. The small church and its paintings would go on to be a foundation stone for Christian culture- art and architecture-which would later profusely develop and evolve to complexity and cathedral-esque grandeur.
We shall limit our exploration of Dura Europos to a single piece of painting. An incompletely surviving painting that once stood on the South wall. A woman drawing water from a well with a rope. No more. Most scholars have deciphered her identity as the Samaritan woman of John’s gospel. The ‘woman at the well’ at its simplest interpretation. Note the Painting below, dating back to the early 3rd century-
Let us see what the gospel tells us about her. John 4:4-26 tells us:
Jesus left Judea and departed into Galilee. He needed to pass through Samaria. So he came to a city of Samaria called Sychar, near the parcel of ground that Jacob gave to his son, Joseph. Jacob’s well was there. Jesus, therefore, being tired from his journey, sat down by the well. It was about the sixth hour.
A woman of Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.
The Samaritan woman therefore said to him, “How is it that you, being a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a Samaritan woman?” (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.) Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.”
The woman said to him, “Sir, you have nothing to draw with, and the well is deep. From where then have you that living water? Are you greater than our father, Jacob, who gave us the well, and drank of it himself, as did his children and his livestock?”
Jesus answered her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never thirst again. The water that I will give him will become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life.”
The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I don’t get thirsty, neither come all the way here to draw.”
Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come here.” The woman answered, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You said well, ‘I have no husband,’ for you have had five husbands; and he whom you now have is not your husband. This you have said truly.”
The woman said to him, “Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped in this mountain, and you Jews say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship.” Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour comes when neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. You worship that which you don’t know. We worship that which we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour comes, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such to be his worshippers. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”
The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah comes,” (he who is called Christ). “When he has come, he will declare to us all things.” Jesus said to her, “I am he, the one who speaks to you.”
At this, his disciples came. They marveled that he was speaking with a woman; yet no one said, “What are you looking for?” or, “Why do you speak with her?” So the woman left her water pot and went away into the city, and said to the people, “Come, see a man who told me everything that I did. Can this be the Christ?”
They went out of the city and were coming to him. In the meanwhile, the disciples urged him, saying, “Rabbi, eat.” But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you don’t know about.”
The disciples therefore said one to another, “Has anyone brought him something to eat?” Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me, and to accomplish his work. Don’t you say, ‘There are yet four months until the harvest?’ Behold, I tell you, lift up your eyes, and look at the fields, that they are white for harvest already. He who reaps receives wages and gathers fruit to eternal life, so that both he who sows and he who reaps may rejoice together. For in this the saying is true, ‘One sows, and another reaps.’ I sent you to reap that for which you haven’t labored. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor.”
From that city many of the Samaritans believed in him because of the word of the woman who testified, “He told me everything that I did.” So when the Samaritans came to him, they begged him to stay with them. He stayed there two days. Many more believed because of his word. They said to the woman, “Now we believe, not because of your speaking; for we have heard for ourselves, and know that this is indeed the Christ, the Savior of the world.”
We find the Indian original in multiple Buddhist sources- “Sardukalarna: Love of the Untouchable”[ Cowell and Neil, eds., Divyavadana., pp. 611-55], in the Shurangama sutra etc. Here we shall see a translation and truncation of the scene by Paul Carus [1915] who changes Prakriti to her Pali form-
Ānanda, the favorite disciple of the Buddha, having been sent by the Lord on a mission, passed by a well near a village, and seeing Pakati, a girl of the Mātanga caste, he asked her for water to drink.
Pakati said: "O Brahman, I am too humble and mean to give thee water to drink, do not ask any service of me lest thy holiness be contaminated, for I am of low caste."
And Ānanda replied: "I ask not for caste but for water;" and the Mātanga girl's heart
leaped joyfully and she gave Ānanda to drink.
Ānanda thanked her and went away; but she followed him at a distance
The Christian and Buddhist stories diverge at this point. But they converge again later. Prakriti, the outcaste girl, falls in love with Ananda and wishes to join the Buddha’s order. She is counselled out of her infatuation by the Buddha with a prolific discourse, like Jesus’ speech to the Samaritan woman, that makes her enlightened. The stories converge again when many people approach the Buddha on account of the woman, although unlike the Samaritan crowds, the upper castes of Sravasti, including the King, who approach the Buddha are displeased with her admission into the monastic order.
And the Blessed One understood the emotions of her heart and he said: "Pakati, thy heart is full of love, but thou understandest not thine own sentiments. It is not Ānanda that thou lovest, but his kindness. Accept, then, the kindness thou hast seen him practise unto thee, and in the humility of thy station practise it unto others.’’
"Blessed art thou, Pakati, for though thou art a Mātanga thou wilt be a model for
noblemen and noblewomen. Thou art of low caste, but Brahmans may learn a lesson from thee. Swerve not from the path of justice and righteousness and thou wilt outshine the royal glory of: queens on the throne."
Let us not miss out the other obvious similarities-
-Jeta’s vana and Jacob’s well: Buddha and his entourage is staying in Sravasti while Jesus is in the city of ‘Synchar’.The Matanga’s well, naturally, would be outside the city limits. John also alludes to such an out-skirting location in 4.5 “ near the field which Jacob gave to his son..” The Jeta-vana arama grove with its great monastery and quarters was built for the Buddha and his sangha by the rich merchant Anandapindika who bought the garden from Prince Jeta of Kosala. While the well in the gospel (called Jacob’s well, Greek Fréar tou Iakóv) was drawn from the allusions in the Book of genesis 33.18-20 where Jacob is said to have built his tent and sacrificial altar to god. This innovative sentence by the author of John seems to have superimposed the Jeta’s vana motif onto the hints of Jacob’s building activity. It is interesting to note that this well is not mentioned even in the old testament. It is not a recorded Jewish artefact. It is a Gospel innovation. Yet now, in no small part due to John, the site has become contentiously sacred to Judaism and Islam also. Literally, with puns, one might say, John created a problem out of nothing. Was the choice of the name ‘Synchar’ and the allusion to the legend of construction by Jacob a literary ploy to match the role of Sravasti and Jeta-vana ?
-In both cases, the disciples are concerned with food. Ananda and the others are on their routine alms begging ritual. The disciples of Jesus return and ask “Hath any man brought him aught to eat?”
- The name of the Matangi girl is ‘Prakrti” which means “matter/nature”. John, while he has gone far, has not gone far enough to name the Samaritan woman. But Eastern orthodox Christian tradition has. She is today a hallowed figure of orthodoxy known as Saint “Photini” which means “light”. A deep gnostic undertone may lie beneath this doubt provoking choice of name but as great as Mount Gnosis of historical trouble is, it will have to be surmounted later.
-The Samaritans and Jews may have issues, but nothing of the seriousness of untouchability. This plot element is alien to Jewish society, an obvious sign of plagiarism, stage shift and innovation.
-The most clinching detail showing source dependence is that Jesus reveals that the Samaritan Woman had FIVE previous husbands. In the Buddhist originals like the Surangamasutra we learn that Ananda was the husband of Prakriti in FIVE HUNDRED previous lives. The conservative Greek author has simply truncated the outrageous number.
We can be certain that the Buddhist story is older than the Gospel of John version because there exist Gandharan sculptures depicting the scene dating to the 1st to 2nd centuries or earlier-
[Ananda and the Matangi girl, Kushan era Gandhara Art, Sikri]
Fast forward to 2004 the present author stumbled upon an interesting poem in his grandfather’s library while he was looking for a piece to recite at a school competition. Little did he know that would send him into a rabbit hole that eventually culminated in this book [Will of the Tathagata]. A poem by Kumaranasan(1874-1924), honoured as one of the Ādhunika kavitrayam (modern triumvirate) of Malayalam poetry. The poem was Chandalabhikshuki. He was a disciple of Narayana Guru who led the iconic and effectual social equality movement in Kerala. A reformer and poet in an era forcing its way through the birth pangs of enlightenment, in an old cob webbed society emerging anew from its rigid webs of caste and cleansing itself of the unethical excesses of untouchability. His lyrical masterpieces capture the emotions of the era in a most stirring manner. It is no wonder that he drew inspiration from an ancient class of literature that shared comparable motivations. One that was faced with the same challenges and desire for change as the modern poet. Yet another example of ‘literature begets literature’. In 1933, Rabindranath Tagore retold the story again in 'Chandalika'.
Every era and its literary output depend on one or many previous layers that suits the demands of contemporary circumstance. Any layer claiming absolute originality is most certainly hiding its sources. As with the Gospels, as with the philosophical outpouring of the Age of Enlightenment but unlike their pretensions to independent origination, Kumaranasan too depended on ancient Mahayana literature for inspiration. A highly varied class of texts whose contents suited not just the religious needs of the Mediterranean world in the early common era but also the philosophical needs of 18th and 19th century Germanic world and lastly the ethical needs of 20th century India and Kerala.
But we restrict our interest in Kumaranasan to this specific poem he wrote in 1922. The Chandalabhikshuki. The untouchable female monk. The first pattern between the gospels and the sutras was thus noticed by the present author thanks to this early poetic intervention by the wise Kumaranasan. A few relevant lines are here translated:
Her daintly hands pulled rope
To vessel plunged for water
As the beauty strove thereon
Great bhikshu came and sought
“I bear thirst, young lady
Be kind and offer thine water”
On hearing stood she struck
voiced then her fearful mind
‘How but this you ask me?
Have you forgotten caste?’
‘To drink from lowborn woman
Wont the Aryas scorn to know?’
‘Be not angry, if water I give
This sinful me this chandali’
‘His who lives outside towns
That lowly outcaste’s child’
Spake bhikshu, ‘I ask not caste
Sister,
I asked but water’
As the Buddha promised Prakriti, she has indeed outshone the glory of queens, across geographies and generations…She is remembered and veneered both east and west, though in different names. Well, he kept his word.
But for modern inquirers and critical thinkers, there are difficult questions- Who is responsible for this transliteration of an Indian story into Greek? What were his true intentions? Is this the only Indian story that has been transformed into Greek? What has been the effect of this phenomenon and behavior on the collective psyche of humanity? What should Indian philosophers, and honest ones abroad, do going forward?
On this, Tagore wrote the dance drama "CHANDALIKA".
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