Madness and Possession in Pāli Texts

BSRV 31.2 (2014) 195–214 Buddhist Studies Review ISSN (print) 0256-2897doi: 10.1558/bsrv.v31i2.195 Buddhist Studies Review ISSN (online) 1747-9681

© Equinox Publishing Ltd. 2014, Office 415, The Workstation, 15 Paternoster Row, Sheffield, S1 2BX

Madness and Possession in Pāli Texts

Steven CollinS

Department of South aSian languageS anD CivilizationS, univerSity of ChiCago

[email protected]

abStraCt

In the context of contemporary interest in the use of Buddhist meditation practices in modern psychology, psychiatry and psycho-therapy, this article offers a preliminary survey of a subject hith-erto almost completely unstudied: madness in Premodern Pāli texts. (Possession, especially but not only by Māra, who is both a deity and a phenomenological reality, is regarded by the Pāli tradition as a kind of madness.) Using story-literature as well as doctrinal and jurisprudential texts, the article aims to collect together material on three ways in which the ideas and behaviours of madness are used: (i) the literal-pathological, (ii) in comparisons (‘as if’ mad), and (iii) in the metaphorical-evaluative sense where it is alleged that every-one who is not enlightened (or at least on the Path to it) is ‘mad’. It is centered around an eightfold classification of madness given in the commentary to a Jātaka story, the Birth Story about Darīmukha (Ja III #378, III 238–246).

Keywords madness, possession, Pāli, pathology

Introduction Many religious traditions, within Buddhism and elsewhere, know of such figures as the Holy Fool, Divine Madman, Crazy-Wise One, etc. The Theravāda tradition of Pāli texts, by contrast, has none of this: literal, pathological madness is found, and is only found at the opposite end of the mental spectrum to Enlightenment. Madness is often used as a metaphorical trope, to characterize all unenlightened people as, to that extent and for that reason, mentally unwell. As the Buddha is alleged to have said:

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196 Steven Collins

Monks, there are two kinds of illness. Which two? Bodily illness and mental ill-ness [kāyiko ca rogo cetasiko ca rogo]. People are found who can claim to enjoy bodily health for one, two, three, four, and five years; for ten, twenty, thirty, forty, and fifty years; and even for a hundred years or more. But apart from those whose taints have been destroyed [aññatra khīṇāsavehi]1 it is hard to find people in the world who can claim to enjoy mental health even for a moment.

(A II 142–43, trans. Bodhi 2012, 522)

As is well-known, there has been a great deal of talk and activity in contempo-rary psychology, psychiatry and psychotherapy about Buddhist-derived practices such as mindfulness (sati) and insight meditation (vipassanā), not merely in self-help manuals and ‘pop’ psychology, but also among serious scientists. One good example of the latter is Segal, Williams and Teasdale’s Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy for Depression (2002). Opinions differ, of course, on the question of how far these practices as forms of contemporary medical treatment remain ‘Buddhist’. Two of the leading figures in this movement, in the UK and USA, Mark Williams and Jon Kabat-Zinn, recently guest-edited an issue of the academic journal Contemporary Buddhism (May 2011, vol. 12.1) where such questions were discussed by therapists and Buddhist Studies scholars, naturally without unanimity. There are very many books discussing sati and vipassanā in Pāli texts, and with the recent publication of Erik Braun’s study The Birth of Insight: Meditation, Modern Buddhism, and the Burmese Monk Ledi Sayadaw (2013) we have the beginnings of an in-depth political and cultural history of the movement also. (What is really needed here, amongst other things, is a scholarly, non-‘enthusiast’ study of Mahasi Sayadaw, who directly influenced many of the modern (Asian and Western) vipassanā teach-ers and was important in popularizing the (Mahā)Satipaṭṭhāna Suttas.2

In the context of such interests and concerns what, one might ask, does the Premodern Pāli tradition make of the concepts and realities of psychology and psychopathology? I agree with James Robson, who wrote:

There has been increasing attention paid to the relationship between Buddhism and medicine, but despite the advances in a number of subfields, there remains a paucity of studies on Buddhism and madness. What was the early Buddhist doc-trinal discourse on madness? How has the category of madness evolved within the Buddhist tradition?3

There is little academic study of traditional Pāli psychology in general beyond the obvious beginner’s level discussions of dukkha, the aggregates (khandhas), the sense-bases (āyatanas) etc., or sometimes treatments of Abhidhamma list-making, especially in relation to the psychology of action and perception4.

1. Note that here the Buddha is working with a binary opposition between the Arahant (for whom khīṇāsava is a technical term) and the unenlightened. As Peter Harvey reminds me, things can sometimes be more complex if one takes into account, as the Buddha does not do here, those on the Four Stages of the Path: the Stream-winner, Once-Returner, Non-returner and Arahant.

2. There is a helpful, if ‘enthusiast’ biography at http://www.buddhanet.net/mahabio.htm [accessed July 25, 2014]

3. From an abstract of a talk given at the University of California, Berkeley in 2012: see http://ieas.berkeley.edu/cjs/events/2012.04.06w.html [accessed July 25 2014].

4. Rupert Gethin’s magisterial and indispensable Buddhist Path to Awakening (2nd ed. 2001) does not deal with the issues I am interested in here.

http://www.buddhanet.net/mahabio.htm


197Madness and Possession in Pāli Texts

(Earlier attempts such as those of C. A. F. Rhys Davids are best regarded as prod-ucts of their time.) To my knowledge there are no contemporary books which deal systematically with Premodern Pāli accounts of what we now call psychopathol-ogy. There is one book, Buddhist Psychology: a Modern Perspective, by Edwina Pio (1988), which devotes 28 pages to a chapter on ‘Psychopathology’, and one article, by Stephen Berkwitz (2010) on ‘Madness and Gender’ in Pāli. (I shall have reason to disagree with the main thesis of this otherwise laudable piece below.) To some extent relevant are short pieces on specific topics, such as those by Maria Heim on ‘The Conceit of Self-Loathing’ (omāna) (2009), and ‘Shame and Apprehension: Notes on the Moral Value of Hiri and Ottappa’ (2012).

Words and contexts for ‘madness’ In this article I want to offer the beginnings of a study of madness in Pāli texts, of all types and periods.5 It will be seen that words for the mad and madness occur in three over-lapping ways:

1. in contexts where actual, pathological madness (in which category Pāli includes states of spirit-possession) are being discussed;

2. in contexts where someone’s behaviour is described as being ‘like’ mad-ness, or if the person is, deliberately or not, behaving ‘as if’ mad (for example, where the word viya is used);

3. in Buddhist evaluative contexts where, as in the quote from the Buddha given above, everybody apart from the Enlightened are figured as ‘mad’.

Madness, in all its forms and levels of intensity (from pathology to lack of Enlightenment), is expressed in Pāli in three main ways, which parallel and over-lap with the three levels just distinguished:

1. the words ummāda and ummattaka, a noun (‘madness’) and adjective (‘mad’) from the root √mad; 6

2. in the concept of mada, from the same root, often translated less strongly as ‘conceit’, ‘pride’, ‘vanity’, or ‘intoxication’, of which there are many varieties;

3. and the use of words derived from √mad to indicate very basic and gen-eral factors in Buddhist psychology: pamāda and appamāda, often trans-lated simply ‘negligence’ and ‘diligence’ respectively. The root √mad has the basic meanings in Sanskrit and Pāli of: to be drunk or intoxicated, to revel or delight in, to be glad or rejoicing, to be mad;7 the prefix ud (→ un before m, so Sanskrit unmāda → Pali ummāda, etc.) can indicate intensification, and probably does in this context.

There are also words derived from the verb √kṣip, to throw (often with the pre-fix vi-, which can indicate dispersal), with citta, ‘mind’: thus citta-vikkhitta, ‘thrown in mind’, ‘deranged’, citta-vikkhepa, ‘derangement’. The concept of normality is

5. I do not claim to have found every reference in every Pāli text. But a reasonably clear picture emerges from what I have found.

6. According to OED the English ‘mad’ is from Old English gemædan, ‘to madden’.7. Apt (2004 [1965]), s.v.


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often expressed with the term pakati: after the madness of grief, for example, people return to their ‘normal mind’ (pakati-citta) after a period of madness or suspension from the monastic Order monks and nuns return to being their ‘nor-mal self’ (pakatatta).

Eight kinds of madness I start with the only classification of forms of madness I have come across, from the commentary to a jātaka story, the Birth Story about Darīmukha (Ja III #378, III 238–246). In its list, as will be seen, numbers 1–4 are what one might call metaphorical madness, by which I mean that all those not on the path to Enlightenment suffer from them, by definition, while numbers 5–8 are what we would recognize as, actually or potentially, pathological. In this story the future Buddha, unusually but not uniquely, is not cast in the role of the hero; he is a king who is mad by sense-pleasure (kāmummattaka) and, initially at least, is unable to leave his kingship for the life of an ascetic renouncer. The story is as follows.

In a previous life the future Buddha was born a prince, called Brahmadatta, and on the same day a son, called Darīmukha, was born to the king’s chief priest. They grew up together, studied together and wandered around North India together learning local arts and crafts. One day they were in the garden of the king of Benares; the king had died and a carriage had been sent out to find a succes-sor. Darīmukha heard it coming, and knew that Brahmadatta, who was at the time asleep, would be king; he decided himself to become an ascetic, and with-out waking Brahmadatta he stood to one side, concealed. The carriage arrived, Brahmadatta awoke, and he was consecrated king there in the garden: ‘in the greatness of his glory he forgot Darīmukha’. He left for the palace, and Darīmukha, alone in the empty garden, saw a yellow leaf falling. He understood that all things decay, and attained the Enlightenment of a Solitary Buddha. Immediately the robe and bowl of a Buddha fell from the sky. He flew off to a cave in the Himalayas.

Brahmadatta ruled his kingdom righteously, but ‘in the greatness of his glory, maddened by his glory’ (yasena pamatto), he forgot Darīmukha. Forty years later he remembered him, and looked everywhere, from the harem to the assembly-hall. Ten more years passed, during which he remembered Darīmukha repeatedly. Darīmukha then returned, with the intention of persuading the king to become an ascetic. He sat in a garden on a stone seat ‘like a golden statue’. Brahmadatta came to see him, and Darīmukkha said ‘Brahmadatta, you are old, it is time to put away sense-pleasure (and its objects)’. He taught him Dhamma, and spoke a verse:

Sense-pleasure (and its objects) are mud, they are filth.This is a danger: (pleasure and its objects) are known to have the three roots [ofpassion, hatred and delusion]I declare them to be dust and smoke;Brahmadatta, give them up and become an ascetic.

But the king replies:In sense-pleasures I am bound, I am excited, I am infatuated,I (see their) terrifying nature,(but) I cannot give them up, wanting life;(Instead) I will do many meritorious deeds.



Darīmukha exhorted him some more, and then left for the Himalayas. Brahmadatta had a change of heart: consecrating his son king he became an ascetic in the Himalayas also. At the end of his life he was reborn in a heaven of the Brahma-world.

The commentary on Brahmadatta’s verse in which he claims he cannot renounce lay life states that:

in this world, it seems, there are eight kinds of madman (ummattakā), as the ancients said, eight people who come to have a consciousness that is mad (ummattakasaññaṃ paṭilabhanti). He/she is:

1. maddened by sense-pleasure (kāmummattako), in the power of greed (lobha-vāsagato)

2. maddened by anger (kodhummattako), in the power of vexation (vihesa-)3. maddened by views (diṭṭhummattako), in the power of distortion (vipallāsa-)4. maddened by delusion (mohummattako), in the power of ignorance (aññaṇa-)5. maddened by spirits (yakkhummattako), in the power of spirits (yakkha-)6. maddened by bile (pittummattako), in the power of bile (pitta-)7. maddened by alcohol (surummattako), in the power of drink (pāna-)8. maddened by misfortune (vyasanummattako), in the power of grief (soka-).

In this Birth-Story among these eight kinds of madman the Future Buddha was maddened by sense-pleasure, in the power of greed, and did not understand the virtues of asceticism.

In Buddhist evaluation, all forms of numbers 1–4, sense-pleasure, anger, views and delusion, are to be abandoned if Enlightenment is to be reached. In an eve-ryday sense they can certainly be exaggerated to an ‘insane’ level: but they are not intrinsically negative, whereas from a Buddhist perspective, they are always, to some degree, akusala, ‘unwholesome’, whoever they occur in. The escape from them by one attained to the goal of Buddhism is definitive and, for most Buddhists anyway, without relapse. (The Kathāvatthu [I.2] does record the views of some who thought that an Arahant could relapse.) The last four kinds of madness, num-bers 5–8, are negative, actually or potentially pathological states from which a return to normality is possible, without that return being definitive, and always with the possibility of relapse. The understanding of certain forms of madness as caused by spirit-possession is ubiquitous, at least in the Premodern world, and remains in the modern world as a metaphor (‘his demons have returned’, we might say of someone in relapse).8 The madness of bile we can understand as a pre-scientific version of the common modern opinion that psychopathology is very often, if not always, physiologically based, and, at least in some cases, not curable but only manageable with medication. The madness of alcohol is all too well-known in the non-Buddhist world, as is the madness of misfortune, grief and other forms of depression.

8. Early Christian monastic literature abounds in cases where what a modern person would see as an inner psychological conflict is treated as a battle with one of more demons. Inter alia multa see Brakke 2009.


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In the next few paragraphs I will expand on each of these forms of madness from various points of view in Pāli texts.

1. The person maddened by sense-pleasure, in the power of greedWomen possess men like rakkhasas do (It 114 with It-a 170).The nun Subhā exclaims ‘sense-pleasures (kāmā) are maddening (ummādanā), deceitful, agitat-ing the mind, a net spread out by Māra for the defilement of beings’. The com-mentary explains that they are maddening either because they bring about the madness of grief (sokummāda) through separation from things that change, or because they bring increasingly large attacks of madness (uparūparimāda-vāhā).9

In The Questions of King Milinda (Milinda-pañha), the king repeatedly con-fronts the monk Nāgasena with two apparently contradictory statements, both of which are attributed to the Buddha, defying him to resolve the apparent con-tradiction. In one case the two statements are (i) ‘When I was a human being in the past I was in the habit of not harming beings’; (ii) in the birth story of Lomasakassapa, the future Buddha is said to have performed a great animal sacri-fice, killing hundreds of creatures (Mil 219–220, referring to D III 166 and Ja #433, III 514–19). Nāgasena resolves the problem by stating that in the birth btory, the future Buddha was ‘in the power of passion [rāgavasa – in this kind of context rāga is a synonym for the emotion of sensual desire, kāma], unaware (visaññī), without intention (na sañcetana)’, and so not responsible; he explains that Lomasakassapa suffered these things at the sight of a beautiful princess, which made him men-tally deranged (khittacitta) and passionate (ratta, like rāga from √ram); he was like a madman (ummattako viya) who walks on hot coals, handles poisonous snakes, and the like. The king agrees that there should be no punishment (daṇḍa) for a madman. At the end of the story Lomasakassapa regains his normal mind (paka-ticitta) and mindful self-awareness (paṭiladdha-sati), becomes a renouncer, and as a result of his ascetic practices is reborn in a Brahma-world.

2. The person maddened by anger, in the power of vexationThe idea that anger can become so out of control as to demand therapy has become something of a cliché in the modern world, with even a popular comedy film about ‘Anger Management’. As the commentary to the Cariyāpiṭaka puts it (Cp-a 299) ‘a being in the power of anger is mad and deranged with anger’ (kod-havasiko satto kodhena ummatto vikkhittacitto). In Pāli texts the restraint or getting rid of anger can go from the most ordinary of states to heights of calmness and self-control way beyond the norms and aspirations of normal life. A sutta of the Aṅguttara-nikāya (A IV 94–98) lists seven things which happen to a woman or a man who is angry, seven things which their enemies would wish on them — they are ugly despite fine clothing, sleep badly despite good beds, lose their wealth, etc. Verses given after the list describe these as the misfortunes of a person who is overwhelmed by anger (kodhābhibhūta) and maddened by the madness of anger (kodha-sammada-samatto). Exhortations to avoid repaying anger or harm by anger or harm, and either to remain detached or instead to win over the enemy by kindness are legion: ‘One who repays an angry man with anger thereby makes things worse for himself. Not repaying an angry man with anger, one wins a battle

9. Thī 357, trans. K.R. Norman, 2007, with Thī-a 227.



hard to win.’10 ‘One should conquer anger by non-anger; one should conquer bad by good; one should conquer miserliness by giving, and one speaking falsehood by truth.’11 When the Dhammapada says ‘there is no seizer like hatred’ the com-mentary explains that seizures by yakkhas (spirits), large snakes and crocodiles can only take hold of one in one lifetime, whereas seizure by hatred gets hold of one absolutely (ekantaṃ) (Dhp 251 with Dhp-a III 362–363). But how far is this to go? In the Sutta on the Simile of the Saw (Kakacūpama-sutta, Majjhima-nikāya #21, M I 122–129, citations from pp. 126–127 and 129), the Buddha gives five ways of speaking which people might use to address monks: their speech may be timely or untimely, true or untrue, gentle or harsh, beneficial or harmful, said from loving-kindness or hatred. However they are spoken to, monks are to react thus:

our minds will remain unchanged, we will not give voice to anything bad, we will live compassionate for their welfare with minds of loving-kindness and not with inner hatred, we shall live diffusing a mind imbued with loving-kindness to that person, and starting with that person we will live diffusing to the entire world a mind imbued with loving-kindness, abundant and exalted, immeasurable, with-out loathing or ill-will.

The sutta culminates with the simile which gives it its name: ‘even if bandits or robbers were to cut someone limb from limb with a saw with a handle at both ends, if that person were to give rise to thoughts of anger (or: hatred, yo mano padusseyya) he/she is not carrying out my teaching’. This is a high price to pay for sanity.

3. The person maddened by views, in the power of distortion‘Someone with a view is (just) like a madman’ (ummattakasadiso, Spk II 30). ‘Views’, here as elsewhere, can mean two things: either Wrong Views, to which Buddhist Right View is opposed; or it can mean any views, when they are held to with attachment, as opposed to the perspective of the Buddhist sage, who is beyond all such views.12 From one perspective everyone except someone who has reached the first stage of the Path have such distortions (vipallāsa) of mind (the word vipallāsa is from √vi-pari-as, to turn over, reverse, be in error): the ‘four distortions of perception (saññā), of mind (citta) and of view’ are to see permanence in what is impermanent, happiness in what is suffering, self in what is not-self and beauty in what is foul: ‘(such) beings with wrong views are mentally disrupted (khittacitta), unaware (visaññī), yoked to the yoke of Māra’, and will continue in the round of rebirth.13 These views and distortions are only got rid of finally and completely at Enlightenment, but the path to Enlightenment has four stages: the Stream-winner has sufficiently got rid of views, and has attained Right View such that he or she will only be reborn a maximum of seven more times before Enlightenment; then there is the Once-returner, who has one more life as a human being or lower god to go; the Non-returner who will be reborn in one or more of the ‘pure abode’

10. S I 222, trans. Bhikkhu Bodhi, Vol. 1, 2012, 322.11. Dhp 223, trans. K.R. Norman, 1997.12. See Collins 1982, chapters 3 and 4.13. A II 52 (which has adukkhe dukkhan ti in place of dukkhe sukhan ti), Paṭis 80, 81, Vism XXII 53 =

683, Sv-ṭ II 192.


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heavens and be enlightened from there; and finally the enlightened Arahant. Everyone else is called an ‘ordinary person’, and this is why the ordinary person can be said to be ‘like a madman’ (ummattako viya puthujjano, Vism XVII 261 = 573, Vibh-a 186). One famously non-enlightened person during the Buddha’s lifetime was his attendant Ānanda (though he was a Stream-winner), who was allegedly the subject of some criticism after the Buddha’s death, inter alia because he failed to ask the Buddha to extend his lifetime so that it would last for the whole of the present eon. In a common trope (see below on Visākhā’s women friends and alco-hol) it was because of his not having got rid of all the Distortions that Māra was able to possess him. The Buddha gives him what is called a broad and obvious hint that he could so extend his life; but Ānanda failed to take the hint, because his mind was possessed by Māra. The word ‘possessed’ here is pariyuṭṭhita, from √pari-ut-sthā, to stand around, encircle; the commentaries gloss by abhibhūta, ‘overcome’ and synonyms. Ānanda had got rid of the Distortion of View, but not all the others.

In the monastic code it is regularly said that no offence is committed if the person is mad (see below). In one case, making truthful claims to advanced spir-itual attainments (making false ones is grounds for dismissal from the Order) is held to be an offence requiring expiation (pācittiya) when made to a layperson (Vin IV 25). In the list of those to whom the rule does not apply (as, standardly, the first offenders), madness is here not mentioned. The case involves otherwise well-behaved monks, and the commentary asks why madness is not mentioned, and answers by saying that in people who have right view (diṭṭhi-sampanna) there is no madness or mental disruption (citta-kkhepa) (Vin IV 30 with Sp 752).

4. The person maddened by delusion, in the power of ignoranceHere again, obviously, the only people who do not suffer from this kind of mad-ness are the fully enlightened. ‘Delusion’, moha, is from √muh, to be confused, deluded; aññāṇa is from √jñā, to know; both can be synonyms of avijjā, from √vid, to know); the latter, along with taṇhā, ‘craving’, are the ubiquitous causes of everything bad in the Buddhist worldview: ‘it is the root of everything unskill-ful’ (Vism XIV 163 = 468).

‘Delusion’ is one of a list of ten ‘defilements’ (kilesa); Enlightenment during a lifetime (as opposed to the final nirvana at the death of the enlightened person) is defined as ‘the nirvana of the defilements’ (Mp IV 207). In verses attributed to the thera Upāli (Ap 41 vv. 56–59, Ap-a 279), existence in saṃsāra, caused by the defilements is likened to possession by a spirit (bhūta):

just as someone distressed by a spirit, oppressed by a spirit-possession, might seek an exorcist in order to be freed from the spirit, and, seeking, might see someone skilled in exorcism who would remove the spirit and root it out, so I, oppressed by being possessed by darkness, seek out the light of knowledge in order to be freed from the darkness. Then I saw Sakyamuni (the Buddha) who gets rid of the darkness of the Defilements and he removed the darkness from me like an exor-cist removes a spirit.



5. The person maddened by spirits, in the power of spiritsJust as the existence of various kinds of supernatural being is simply presupposed by all Pāli texts, so the phenomenon of spirit-possession is a taken-for-granted possibility. The most common verbs for ‘to possess’ are: √viś , anu-viś, ā-viś, upa-viś, to enter; or √gṛh to take, seize, grasp. Very common is the prima facie odd phrase sarīre √adhi-muc; √muc means to free, but the word has a variety of senses in Pāli, including: to be sure, to decide on something, to change something magically, and, as in this phrase, to latch on to something, or someone (see D III 205 with Sv 970 and Sv-ṭ III 209). I do not know of any commentarial exegeses of the term. One way that various supernaturals possess people is this: the possessor creates a frightening visual spectacle or a frightening noise; the person to be possessed opens his or her mouth in surprise and fear; then the possessor reaches his or her hand down into the mouth of the person to be possessed, and ‘kneads their heart’ (e.g. Sp 269–270, Sp-ṭ (Be) II 94, Sv 555). ‘Kneads’ is from √mṛd, majjati.

The word yakkha (Sanskrit yakṣa) denotes a particular class of spirit; but pos-session is also possible by a demon called a rakkhasa (Sanskrit rākṣasa), by a god or goddess (deva, devī), or in both cases a devatā, a deity. Often such deities live on the earth rather than above the earth in the heavens, and are called bhumma-devatā, deities of the earth: they live in trees, umbrellas and in many other spe-cific locations. The king of the gods of the heaven of the thirty-three, Sakka, can possess people (Ja IV 272), as can Vissakamma (Thūp 238) and nāgas (Sv 540). One major god, or class of gods, who is/are said to possess people is Māra (dealt with below). Surprisingly the category of unhappy ghosts (peta), a category in the mod-ern world associated with malevolent spirits called phi, etc., and who are said in ethnographies to possess people, do not do so in Pāli texts, despite a whole text (Petavatthu) and extensive commentary devoted to them. Sometimes the general term ‘non-human’ (amanussa) is used: for example if one practises the meditation on loving-kindness, any non-human being who thinks it possible to disrupt one’s mind will fail (S II 265). The science of spirits (exorcism) is called bhūta-vijjā, and a practitioner of this is a bhūta-vejjā; the word bhūta applies to non-humans in general (Pj I 166, avisesato amanussesu).

A monk called Pārāpariya puts together as a simile the idea of psychological and supernatural causes of madness: ‘the defilements, increasing, enter (pos-sess) many people; they play with fools like demons (rakkhasā) with the mad’. The verb ‘enter’ is √ā-viś: the commentary explains that defilements overpower the blind foolish person who is given to much unmindfulness and who does not have a ‘good friend’ (kalyāṇa-mitta) and make him or her powerless (a-vasaṃ), by entering their mental continuum (santāna), just as demons possess the mad who are without a doctor (Th 931 with Th-a III 77).

On one occasion, when a female yakkha possesses a novice, twists his throat, and throws him to the ground, so that he writhes on the ground with eyes roll-ing and foaming at the mouth, it would seem that she induces in him an epilep-tic fit.14 This is the standard translation for the word apamāra (also spelt as in Sanskrit apasmāra), which seems to derive from √smṛ, to remember, from which is derived sati, mindfulness or self-awareness, so that the condition is charac-

14. S I 208–09 with Spk I 305–308, Dhp-a IV 20–21. Almost exactly the same words are used when a goddess (devī) possesses a young man at Dhp-a 170. Cf. also the story of Sānu, Dhp-a IV 20.


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terized, as is epilepsy, by a lack of consciousness and memory. Apamāra is given in a list of five diseases which prevent a person from being ordained into the Monastic Order (Vin I 93, II 271); the commentary says that it can mean madness (ummāda) caused by bile or madness caused by a yakkha.15 In the latter case the person is possessed (the verb is √gṛh, to seize or grasp) by a non-human who has some previous hostility. This text says that such seizure is difficult to heal; when epilepsy is listed elsewhere as an incurable disease this may be because the text is referring here to the disease with a physical cause.16 In the Birth Story about Ghata, the future Buddha is born as Ghatapaṇḍita, Wise Ghata. His eldest brother King Vāsudeva has a son die, and becomes inconsolably grief-stricken. In a motif found elsewhere (see below), Ghata feigns madness, to show the king the (real) madness of his pointlessly excessive grief: he wanders around looking at the sky and crying for the hare in the moon. A verse has someone tell Vāsudeva about him, saying that ‘winds’ have overpowered his heart: the commentary says these are the winds of epilepsy (Ja IV 84). Here the question of whether recovery is pos-sible or not does not arise since the illness is feigned.

6. The person maddened by bile, in the power of bileAccording to some texts there are two kinds of bile: one with a specific location and one without (Sp 269–270). Bile without a specific location goes everywhere in the body, like blood; when it is disturbed people suffer various physical ail-ments (e.g. trembling, itching), which can be cured by medical treatment. Bile with a specific location is found in and around the liver and gall bladder; when it is disturbed beings become mad, with distorted (vipallattha) perceptions and mind, and throw aside shame and modesty in doing, saying and thinking things they should not. Medical treatment cannot cure such people. This is presumably the fate of those who are ‘born mad’ (jāti-ummattaka).17 Other texts, and inter-preters, are less precise. The phrase pittaṃ te kupitaṃ, ‘your bile is disturbed’, is cited by the Pali-English Dictionary s.v. pitta, and translated as ‘your bile is upset or out of order, i.e. you are in a bad mood’. In fact the phrase occurs in a story where a brahmin’s wife persuades him to prance in the street like a horse. The narrative voice describes him as ummattakajātiko brāhmaṇo, which the English translation renders ‘this fool of a brahmin’ (Ja II 114, transl. p. 78). When he then acts like a horse the king asks him ‘is your bile disturbed, are you mad?’, where the latter phrase is ummattako si jāto. Here the verb √jan must mean, as it often does, to become rather than to be born. At the king’s question the brahmin stops his performance, goes home and gets rid of his wife before taking another one.

7. The person maddened by alcohol, in the power of drinkThe fifth precept in Buddhist ritual and ethics is open to different interpretations. One can read it as saying that one undertakes to refrain from alcoholic drinks

15. A V 110 classes apamāra as a disease of the body (kāya-roga).16. Vin I 71 with Sp 996, A I 121 with Mp I 191 = Pp 28 and Pp-a 209; cf. Nidd I 13 with Nidd-a 61

apamāro ti amanussagāho veriyakkhabandho.17. Accounts, differing in some details, are found at Pj I 60–61, Vbh-a 65, 243–244, Vism VIII 127

= 260, XI 70 = 358. The phrase ‘born mad’ is at Vism XVII 134 = 548, which discusses different kinds of rebirth-linking (paṭisandhi).



because they are the occasion for negligence (pamāda-ṭṭhāna), or that one does so only in so far as they are an occasion for negligence, i.e. moderate drinking is allowable. However, intoxication can lay one open to possession.

On some occasions people are possessed by spirits without being at fault. On others, especially in relation to possession by Māra, the person possessed is said to have some weakness, temporary or permanent, which allows Māra an occa-sion to possess. This is true of the story of Visākhā’s women friends (Dhp-a III 100–103): their husbands have entrusted them to Visākhā’s care, thinking that they would then live with diligence, in sobriety (appamāda-vihāriniyo). But one day, after a seven-day drinking celebration in which their husbands had drunk alcohol, there is some left. The wives drink it and become drunk (mattā). Visākhā chides them, but on a second occasion when there is to be a drinking celebration, they tell Visākhā that they are going to venerate the Buddha, but secretly take jugs of alcohol with them which they drink: through the force of their intoxica-tion (mada-vega) their bodies tremble and they start to think about dancing and singing. A deity from the class of Māras (Mārakāyikā devatā) then possesses them (sarīre √adhi-muc) and they start to clap their hands and dance, in front of the Buddha. He emits a dark ray from his forehead, and all is darkness. The women, in mortal fear, immediately sober up. The Buddha goes to the summit of Mount Meru and emits a light as bright as a thousand moons. He tells the women that they should not come into his presence drunk (careless, etc., pamattā) and it was because of their drunken carelessness that the Māra-deity was able to find an opening (otāra). He agrees with Visākhā that drinking is an evil, and the story ends with the statement that the Buddha then went on to tell a Birth Story, that of Kumbha (‘the pot’) (Ja V 11–20). This story is a kind of just-so account of how alcohol was first drunk in India. Its Story of the Present, that is, the occasion on which the Buddha tells the Story of the Past, repeats the story of Visākhā’s women friends, but omits entirely the reference to the possessing deity. Alcohol in this version is enough of a demon in itself. The Story of the Past begins in a forest with a man called Sura. There is a tree which branches into three parts, at the base of which is a hole ‘as big as a wine-jar’. Rain-water collects in it, and myrobalan fruit and rice get into it. The sun’s heat ferments it and it turns red. Birds come to drink from it in the hot season, get drunk (mattā) and fall down. They sleep for a while and then fly off singing. Similar things happen to dogs and monkeys. The forester sees what happens, drinks himself and is taken with a desire to eat meat. He roasts some birds which have fallen down drunk by the tree, and spends a couple of days ‘dancing with one hand and eating meat with the other’. The he goes to an ascetic living in the forest called Varuṇa to drink and eat meat with him. That is how the words surā and vāruṇī, both terms for kinds of alcohol, arose (from the names Sura and Varuṇa). The two men take some of the alcohol to a nearby town where they sell it to the king; this lasts him for a couple of days and he asks for more. The two men fetch more from the forest, but then take note of the ingredients and start brewing it in the city. The townsmen get drunk, and it is ‘as if the town were empty’. The two men then ply their trade in the cities of Banaras and Sāketa, with the same results. Then they come to Sāvatthi and tell the king they need the ingredients and five hundred jars to brew alcohol. To guard the jars they tie a cat to each one; as it is brewing some alcohol overflows the jars, and the cats drink it, become drunk (mattā) and fall asleep. Mice come


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and bite off their ears, noses, teeth and tails. The king thinks the men must have made poison and has them beheaded. But then the cats wake up, move around and play. The king realizes it is not poison and prepares to drink it himself. At this point Sakka, the king of the gods, thinking that if the king starts to drink ‘all India will be destroyed’, comes to earth disguised as a brahmin with a jar of alco-hol in his hand. But instead of selling it to the king he gives voice to a long series of verses expounding the evils (faults, dosā) of alcohol. The king, persuaded, has the jars broken, lives a life observing the precepts and giving gifts, and becomes bound for heaven. But the story ends on a rather wry note: the last sentence is ‘But in India drinking alcohol became widespread’.

8. The person maddened by grief, in the power of sadnessStories of the madness caused by grief include some of the most well-known, both within Buddhism and in western scholarship on Buddhism. The tale of Kisā Gotamī and her dead child (Dhp-a II 270–275, Thī-a 169–176, Mp I 378–380) is one of Buddhism’s most famous stories. She marries into a family who treat her with contempt until she has a son, after which they treat her with respect. But her son dies, in a touching trope used elsewhere, ‘as soon as he could run around playing’. The madness of grief (sokummāda) arose in her, as did the memory that it was her son who brought the family to respect her. Taking the child on her hip she goes from house to house asking for medicine to cure the child. People mock her and turn her away as a madwoman, but one wise man, knowing that she was suffering from mental derangement (cittavikkhepa) due to grief, tells her to go to see the Buddha. She asks him if he knows a medicine for the child and he directs her to go into the town and bring a mustard seed from any house which has not known death. She tries a number of houses, where she is repeatedly told that the dead outnumber the living; her madness goes away and her normal mind (pakaticitta) is restored, as she realizes ‘this is not the norm (dhamma) [only] for a village, a town, or a family. This is the norm for the whole world: that is, impermanence’. Her heart, previously soft with the love of her son, becomes inured to her, and everyone’s, situation. She becomes a nun and attains Enlightenment. Another such story, which gets intertwined with Kisā Gotamī’s in some texts, concerns Paṭācārā (Thī-a 106–117, Dhp-a II 260–270, Mp I 356–360). She refuses an arranged marriage by her parents, as she is having an affair with a servant in the house, with whom she goes to live and with whom she has two sons, each of whom is born as they are on the road back to her parents’ house. When the second son is born, there is a great rainstorm, and she sends her man to find shelter. He is killed by a poisonous snake; she spends the night with her sons in the rain. The next day she finds her dead husband. Then, trying to cross a river swollen by the rain, she leaves the elder son on one side, crosses the river and leaves the younger on the far side. As she is in the middle of the river going back for the elder she sees a hawk swoop down to take the younger son. She shouts and waves her arms try-ing, and failing, to scare the hawk away; the elder son sees her and thinks that she is calling to him, and he falls into the river and is swept away. She then learns, from a passer-by, that her parents and brother have died because the storm made their house fall in on them. She goes mad from grief and wanders around naked. People throw things at her and call her mad. The Buddha, though seated in the middle of an assembly of monks, sees her plight and causes her to come towards



him. The monks protest that he should not allow a madwoman to come in but he tells them not to prevent her. She comes towards him and he tells her to regain her sanity (sati); by his power she does so, and being now aware of her nakedness sits squatting on the ground. Someone throws her some clothing. The Buddha tells her that in the beginningless process of rebirth the tears she and others have shed for dead kinsmen are greater that the waters of the four great oceans. At this her grief diminishes, and the Buddha, knowing that, continues with a discourse based on verses from the Dhammapada (Dhp 288–289), which declare that no fam-ily relations can be a shelter when one is in the power of death. She attains the stage of a Stream-winner. Then, later, when contemplating how water spilled on the ground goes a little way, or a little farther, or farther still, but always disap-pears into the earth, so in like manner humans die young, in middle age or in old age, but all die, she attains Enlightenment. A similar story is told more briefly of a nun called Vāsiṭṭhī, who ‘afflicted by grief for a son, mentally disrupted and unaware’, wandered naked on streets, rubbish tips and cemeteries for three years before, by the power of the Buddha, she regained her normal mind and then by practising the path attained Enlightenment (Thī 133-38, Thī-a 120–121).

It would be wrong to conclude from such stories,18 that women are more prone than men to suffer from the madness caused by grief. A number of stories have a son rescuing his father from excessive grief by themselves acting mad. The Peta-Story about an Ox, in a narrative trope found also in the Jātaka collection (e.g. Ja III 157), tells first of a man of property in Sāvatthi whose father dies. His mind burns with grief, his heart is grieving, and he wanders around like a madman (ummattako viya) asking people if they have seen his father. The Buddha realizes that he has the potential to become a Stream-winner and goes to his house. The man asks him if he knows where his father has gone, to which the Buddha replies by asking whether he is referring to his father in this life or those in the past. The man realizes ‘I have had many fathers’, and his grief is lessened and he gains some equanimity. Then the Buddha gives him a discourse on Dhamma and he attains the stage of a Stream-winner. Monks start to talk about this and the Buddha tells them that this is not the first time he has rendered such a service. He tells a story of the past: in Banaras the father of a householder died. The householder, over-whelmed by grief and lamentation, walked round and round the funeral pile (one learns later that the father had been cremated and his bones put in a memorial stūpa). His son, wise and quick-witted (being a former rebirth of the Buddha), devises a ruse to remove (the word is vinaya, ‘discipline’) his father’s grief. He goes outside the town to where a dead ox is lying on the ground, take grass and water and attempts to get the ox to eat and drink. People think him mad and go to tell his father; the father comes and asks why he is behaving madly (ummatta-rūpa). The son replies that one can still see the head, eyes, body and legs of the ox, so it is conceivable that it might rise up again; but his grandfather’s head, body and arms and legs can no longer be seen, as they have been burnt and the bones are now in a funeral pile: ‘is it not you who are the dimwit and the fool, weeping at a mound of earth with bones in it? Conditioned things are of the nature to break apart; what (is the point of) sorrowing for those who know (this)?’

18. As does Berkwitz (2010).


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Other kinds of ‘madness’ If one can translate the noun mada, from the same root √mad, as ‘madness’ – though this may be often, if not always, too strong – then there are yet more kinds of madness. A common list of three madas are the madnesses of youth, health and life. These are explained as the madness, the foolish pride, that people take in their own being in good health, young and alive, and the disgust and dismissal they show to those who are unwell, old and dead (D III 220 with Sv 1005 and Sv-ṭ III 281; A I 146–147 with Mp II 242; Thī-a 72ff. with Thī-a 77). 19 Kings and others with power can be maddened, intoxicated with power (issara/issariya-mada; S I 100; Pv 41:7 with Pv-a 263; Ja VI 357, 395). There is even a state of being mad-dened or intoxicated by poetry (kāveyya-matta) understood by commentaries as induced by composing poetry (S I 100 with Spk I 176; S I 196 with Spk I 286; Th 1253 with Th-a III 198). In one story (Dhp-a IV 37–39), two brothers, after the nir-vana of Kassapa Buddha, enter the monastic Order. One chooses to take up the ‘Burden of (meditative) Insight (vipassanā-dhura)’ and becomes enlightened; the other, thinking ‘I am young, when I am old I will take up the Burden of Insight’, took up the Burden of Texts (gantha-dhura). He learnt the entire Three Baskets of a Buddha’s teaching, and thereby obtained a large entourage and much gain (lābha): he was ‘intoxicated with the madness of learning (bahusacca-mada, liter-ally of many truths) and overwhelmed by the lust for gain’; things go from bad to worse and he is reborn in hell. The Abhidhamma work Vibhaṅga lists 27 kinds of mada, ending with the overall categories mada and pamāda: these include the madness/intoxication/ pride of birth, health, youth, life, entourage, gain, learn-ing (suta), morality (sīla), meditation (jhāna), (physical) height, and others (Vbh 345 with Vbh-a 465–468).20 This is one of the rare occasions in which anything about ‘madness’ is discussed in the Abhidhamma.

Māra Earlier in this article I made the passing remark, in a footnote, that ‘Early Christian monastic literature abounds in cases where what a modern would see as an inner psychological conflict is treated as a battle with one of more demons’. One exam-ple is acedia (accidie, from Greek akēdia, literally a state of uncaring) which was a kind of depression and lack of motivation that was both identified with the fourth deadly sin, sloth or sluggishness, and also known as ‘the noonday demon’. The etymology, history and usage of the English word possession shows a simi-lar polysemy, a similar blending of the supernatural with the psychological: the meanings ‘the action of an idea or feeling possessing a person’ and ‘the fact of a demon possessing a person’ are equally old (OED s.v.).

Now I wish to return to the issue in more detail: the best analogy to this in the case of Pāli texts is the supernatural and phenomenological ‘demon’ known most simply as Māra. This is not merely a case of pre-scientific literalism versus mod-ern scientific psychologization, for the multi-level and multi-dimensional figure of Māra is already known as such in Pāli texts. There are a number of good stud-

19. At Pv-a 261 the madness of youth causes kings to commit adultery.20. See Ñāṇamoli 1991, 220–224.



ies of Māra, who in his developed form is a supernatural specific to Buddhism.21 Historically he appears to have been an amalgamation of two Vedic/Hindu gods, Mṛtyu (in Pali Maccu), death, and Kāma, sensual-pleasure. Māra as death and also delusion is often called Kaṇha, black; the sight of him disappearing from a scene is said to look like black smoke (S I 122). As Sensual Pleasure, the god of love, he has flowers (Dhp 46). There are said to be several types of māra, up to five, for each of which many earlier texts can be cited. These are (as listed in the order given at Vism VII 59 = 211; other texts give them in different orders):1. māra as the defilements (kilesa)22

2. māra as the aggregates (khandha)3. māra as mental formations (abhisaṅkhāra)4. Māra as a junior god (devaputta)5. māra as death (maccu).

To illustrate māra as defilements, aggregates, mental formations and death would amount to an introduction to Buddhist psychology, which this article can-not aim to be. Māra as a deity is frequently said to possess people, individually and en masse: sometimes he possesses whole villages (S I 114). He is sometimes called a yakkha, and his mode of possession is often said to be the same – via the mouth en route to squeezing the heart. But there is more to Māra than being just another supernatural who possesses people. No other supernatural, with perhaps the exception of Sakka (Indra) the king of the gods, appears so often in Pāli texts: since he can personify everything about the inner life of unenlightened people and the universe of time and space, that is not surprising.

The Discourse with a Rebuke to Māra (Māratajjanīya Sutta) is a striking text for more than one reason. It, and the commentaries on it, combine a vividly physi-cal sense of possession with a subtle sense of the psychology involved, including reflections on the nature of responsibility in cases of possession (M I 332–338 with Ps II 416–423 and Ps-ṭ (Be) II 319–323). The story combines an incident in the life of Moggallāna, one of the Buddha’s two chief disciples, with a story he tells about a past life (in which he was a Māra). It thus resembles a jātaka story in having a story of the present introduce a story of the past. In the story of the present, Moggallāna is outside doing walking meditation when Māra enters his belly. The sub-commentary says that Māra made his own body extremely small in order to do this. Moggallāna feels the weight as if his belly were full of undi-gested beans, and goes indoors. He concentrates on himself, recognizes Māra and orders him to come out, which Māra does, via his mouth (presumably the way he came in), and then stands against a door. Moggallāna again recognizes him and says so. He then tells a story of the past in which he, Moggallāna, was a Māra and the present Māra was his nephew, his sister’s son. It is a common trope for indi-vidual monks and nuns to ‘recognize’ Māra and so render him harmless. Perhaps the point here is that he not only recognizes Māra for what he is now, but knows him so well that he sees his past also.

Moggallāna in that past life was Dūsī Māra. Pāli has no indefinite or definite article, so that this may be taken either as ‘the Māra (called) Corrupted’ or ‘a

21. DPPN s.v., Ling, 1962.22. At Ap 41 vv. 56ff. (with Ap-a 279) the defilements are compared to spirits and the monk who

gets rid of them is like an exorcist (bhūtavejja).


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corrupted one, a Māra’. The figure of the god Māra, like other named deities in Buddhism, is not a unique individual but a status, like Prime Minister or President, which is occupied by various individuals, for specific lengths of time. The story is about how that Māra tried but failed to ‘get an opportunity’ with monk disci-ples of the then-Buddha Kakusandha. His mode of doing so was to possess some brahmins and householders so that they might first insult the monks and then praise them, the idea being that blame or praise would bring about an alteration (aññathatta, an otherness) in the monks’ minds, in which case Māra would have his opportunity. Māra succeeds in getting brahmins and householders to blame and praise the monks, as a result of which they are reborn in hell and heaven respectively. (The monks avoid being moved to action by the blame, thus not giving Māra an opportunity, by practising, on Kakusandha’s advice, meditation on loving-kindness, and they avoid being moved to unwholesome action by the praise by practising meditation on the foulness of the body, repulsiveness of food, disaffection for the entire world and reflection on the impermanence of all condi-tioned things.) The commentary is precise on the possession of the brahmins and householders. If, it says, Māra had simply possessed them and given the blame or praise himself, there would have been no demerit or merit for them; rather it would have been Māra’s own. But he did not possess them in this way: he sug-gested to their minds various images of monks misbehaving and behaving well, and it was the brahmins’ and householders’ own reflections on these images, and then their acts according to them, which made them karmically responsible.

The story ends with another incident of possession, which leads into a series of verses in which Dūsī Māra later reflects on his experiences in hell. In the clos-ing incident, Dūsī Māra again possesses someone, a young boy. He (that is, Māra as both grammatical subject of the sentence and as the relevant karmic agent) picks up a stone and throws it at one of Kakusandha’s two chief disciples. The com-mentary explains that unlike in the case of the brahmins and householders, Māra did this himself: sahatthā, with his own hand, having himself the desire to attack (upakkamitukāma) the chief disciple. Kakusandha is walking in front of the chief disci-ple; he turns to look at him and at that very moment Dūsī Māra dies and goes to hell.23

Māra also has three daughters, who tempt rather than attack or possess peo-ple. They are Craving (taṇhā), Discontent (arati - usually taken as finding no pleas-ure in monastic life) and Passion (rāga). In one scene, sometimes dated to the fifth week after the Buddha’s Enlightenment, they see their father unhappy and ask why. He replies that the Buddha has gone beyond Māra’s realm which makes him grieve. They try to help, first by simply offering their services to the Buddha, who declines. They reflect ‘men’s desires are various’, and magically create hundreds of replicas of themselves as women of different ages, virgins, women without children, women with children, middle-aged and older women, etc. The Buddha remains uninterested. They reflect ‘if we had attacked an ascetic who was not beyond passion, his heart would have broken, hot blood would have come from his mouth, or he would have gone mad or become mentally deranged’ (ummādaṃ vā pāpuṇeyya cittavikkhepaṃ vā, S I 125–126).

23. At Vin 202–203 the Buddha allows a monk suffering from a ‘non-human disease’ (amanussikabādha) to eat raw meat and drink raw blood; the commentary (Sp 1090) explains that it was the non-human who ate and drank before leaving.



Madness in the Vinaya24

Standardly in the Pāli Vinaya, a punishment does not apply to someone if they are mad or deranged (anāpatti … ummattakassa khittacitassa, Vin I 33 et freq.). There is a special Vinaya rule, the ‘verdict of past insanity’ (amūỊha-vinaya) which absolves a monk from offences committed while mad after he has recovered sanity. The best-known case is that of the monk called (appropriately enough, in English) Gagga (Vin II 80–82; cp. Vin I 123, M II 248). He was mad (ummattaka), with dis-torted mind (citta-viparyāsa-kata; viparyāsa = vipallāsa) and both did and said much which was inappropriate for a monk. When asked about his deeds and words he replied that he was mad, etc., and did not remember the time when he was thus deluded (mūỊha). The case is brought before the Buddha, who rules that the ver-dict of past insanity be given. He adds some riders, which show that although the verdict depends on the statement of the accused that he did not remember, this is in fact, objectively, valid only in certain circumstances. There are three cases in which such a verdict is ‘not in accordance with what is right’: when the accused in fact remembers but denies remembering; when the accused remem-bers but says that it was ‘as if in a dream’; when the accused, not being mad, makes a show (in this case a pretense) of still being so. Conversely, three cases in which such a verdict is in accordance with what is right are: when the accused does not remember and says so; when he or she does not remember and says that it seems ‘as if in a dream’; and when he or she is still mad and shows this by his action.

There can be too much of a good thing Pāli texts are full of exhortations to think about things carefully (yoniso manasikāra), to penetrate and understand things; verbs of knowing and seeing abound. But the Buddha says that there are four things which are unthinkable (acinteyya), and which should not be reflected on; anyone reflecting on them will suffer madness and distress (ummāda, vighāta). They are: the range of a Buddha’s mind (Buddhavisayo), the range of the meditation level attained by someone medi-tating, the results of karma, and ‘thoughts about the world’, the latter being, according to commentarial exegeses, questions such as ‘who made the sun and moon, the earth, the great ocean, the mountains?’, who made beings arise?’ (A II 80 with Mp III 108–109; cp. S V 446–447).25 Other texts say the same thing of a Buddha’s magic powers and splendor (iddhi, ānubhāva); the workings of karma are only known to Buddhas: his disciples can only know a part (Vism XIX 17).

In the Visuddhimagga, Buddhaghosa distinguishes between meditation sub-jects which are generally useful and those which are specifically useful for cer-tain temperaments. He states that the only two which are generally useful are those on loving-kindness and death; but he records another opinion: ‘some say that the perception of foulness (in corpses)’ is also generally useful. This was presumably the view of a more ascetic wing of the monastic Order. The percep-

24. I am sure there is much relevant material in the extensive commentarial literature on the Vinaya, but I have not yet had time to investigate it.

25. The four unthinkable things are repeated in a passage found in a number of texts: ‘someone who is badly trained in the Abhidhamma goes beyond thinking about Dhamma (or perhaps dhammas, existents: the word is dhammacintā) and reflects on the unthinkable things’ (Sv 22, Sp 26, As 24).


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tion of the foul (asubha) concentrates on corpses in ten stages of decomposition. At the first stage, of a bloated corpse, care must be taken: if a person goes to a cemetery at the wrong time, for example in the evening when the light is dim, it may seem as if a bloated corpse is standing up and threatening the person. At this he might become ‘like a madman, mentally deranged, and his concentration is lost’ (Vism VI 56 = 186–187).

Conclusion At the outset of this article I quoted James Robson on the paucity of studies on madness in Buddhism. The article remains an exploratory survey rather than a complete and definitive study. I hope nonetheless to have achieved in it, as well as perhaps inspiring others to work further on the subject, the modest aim of per-suading readers of at least two things: first, that there is indeed material on mad-ness, and psychopathology, in Pāli texts if one looks hard enough for it. No doubt there is more than I have found. Second, I hope to have exemplified the fact that the relevant texts in which to find such material are not only the doctrinal texts of the Suttas, the jurisprudential literature of the Vinaya and its commentaries, the Abhidhamma and its commentarial literature — but also stories such as those in the Jātaka collection, the Dhammapada and Petavatthu commentary, and others of that kind. And this, I think, is a general truth of the practice of Buddhist intel-lectual historiography: narrative thinking is as important as systematic thinking as a repository for ‘Buddhist ideas’.

AcknowledgementsI am grateful to two anonymous reviewers of an earlier version of this article, and to Peter Harvey, whose comments have helped improve it.

Abbreviations

A Aṅguttara-nikāya

Ap Apadāna

Ap-a Commentary on Ap

As Atthasālinī

D Dīgha-nikāya

Dhp Dhammapada

Dhp-a Commentary on Dhp

DPPN Dictionary of Pali Proper Names, G.P.Malalasekera, London, Pali Text Society, 1938

It Itivuttaka

It-a Commentary on It

Ja Jātaka with commentary

M Majjhima-nikāya

Mil Milindapañha



Mp Manoratha-pūraṇī: commentary on A

Nidd Niddesa

Nidd-a Commentary on Nidd

OED Oxford English Dictionary

Paṭis Paṭisambhidāmagga

Pj I Paramatthajotikā I: commentary on Khuddakapāṭha

Pp Puggalapaññatti

Pp-a Commentary on Pp Ps Papañcasūdanī: commentary on M

Ps-ṭ (Be) Sub-commentary on Ps, Burmese edition

Pv Petavatthu

Pv-a Commentary on Pv

S Saṃyutta-nikāya

Sp Samantapāsādikā, commentary on Vin

Sp-ṭ (Be) Sub-commentary on Sp, Burmese edition

Spk Sāratthappakāsinī: commentary on S

Sv Sumaṅgalavilāsinī: commentary on D

Sv-ṭ Sub-commentary on Sv

Th Theragāthā

Th-a Commentary on Th

Thī Therīgāthā

Thī-a Commentary on Thī

Thūp Thūpavaṃsa

Vibh Vibhaṅga

Vibh-a Commentary on Vibh

Vin Vinaya

Vism Visuddhimagga

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Documents

Madness and Possession in Pāli Texts