The present book provides the broadest and most systematic survey to date of the history of the transmission and transformation of the Ajātaśatru (Japanese: Ajase) narrative in the Buddhist world, tracing its two-and-a-half-millennia-long journey from ancient India, across medieval China, to pre-modern and modern Japan. The primary concern of this survey is to explore the process of how the Ajātaśatru narrative was changed, gradually and transculturally, from a patricide-regicide tragedy in its ancient Indian versions eventually into a story about mother–son psychological conflicts in its modern Japanese presentations. Michael Radich has performed an exemplary feat of synthesizing abundant textual materials coming from a wide range of historical backgrounds and composed in a variety of languages (Pāli, Sanskrit, Chinese, and Japanese). Through demonstrating the great adaptability of the Ajātaśatru narrative throughout its history, Radich argues that the modern Japanese domesticated versions, however unusual they appear to be, should be understood within and contextualized as part of the long and continuous process of transformations of this narrative. There seems to be no earlier study, so far as I am aware, that has offered us such a wide and holistic perspective on the history of the Ajātaśatru/Ajase narrative. Radich surely deserves great praise and gratitude for his remarkable contribution to our knowledge of both the historical transformations of the Ajātaśatru/Ajase narrative in particular, and the significance of Buddhist stories in the study of the history of Buddhism in general. The book comprises ten chapters, which may be introduced as follows.

Chapter 1 sets forth the rationale of the entire study. Radich begins by articulating the most radical transformation of the Ajātaśatru narrative in its history: while in traditional Buddhist sources the narrative concerns the Magadhan king Ajātaśatru's killing of his father for the sake of the throne, in modern Japan, at the hands of the psychoanalyst Kosawa Heisaku (1897–1968) and his disciple Okonogi Keigo (1930–2003), it was adapted into a story centering on internal tensions between Ajātaśatru and his mother, and used to illustrate the so-called Ajase Complex as a challenge (or rather, a supplement) to Sigmund Freud's Oedipus Complex. Unlike previous modern Buddhologists who have tended to criticize Kosawa and Okonogi for distorting the “standard” Ajātaśatru narrative, Radich questions whether such a standard really exists, and moreover suggests the need to reconsider Kosawa and Okonogi's modifications in light of a more accurate understanding of the overall narrative tradition.

Chapter 2, “Ajātaśatru in India,” serves as Radich's starting point for tracing the history of the Ajātaśatru narrative. It provides an overview of the patricide story and related events (such as Ajātaśatru's repentance and salvation) in Indian Buddhist sources, with brief mention also of Jaina sources. As Radich clarifies at the beginning of the chapter, there is “not a single story” but “a greatly ramified narrative complex” about the Ajātaśatru patricide in Indian Buddhist literature, and his interest is in “presenting a summary of Indic sources of the Ajātaśatru narrative in an artificial, synthetic form” so as to show the “overall range of versions that existed in Buddhist (and Jaina) traditions” (p. 7). Based on this synthetic form, Radich proceeds to analyze some broad trends in the development of the narrative, and demonstrates that already in its Indian homeland, before its travel to China and Japan, “great variety was the norm, not the exception, for versions of the Ajātaśatru narrative” (p. 32). Here I would like to offer one comment on the Buddhist sources used in this chapter.

In discussing the tendency of extant versions of the Śrāmaṇyaphala towards a more thorough salvation of Ajātaśatru, Radich says, “this line of development is taken even further – we might even say that it is radicalised – in MPNS B [= ‘^*Brahmacarya’ Chapter of the MPNS]” (p. 22).Footnote ² The same argument is reiterated later in Chapter 3, where, in analyzing the Ajātaśatru story in MPNS B, Radich says, “the salvation Ajātaśatru attains is by now perfect and complete” (p. 35). While it is true that the MPNS reworks the frame story of the Śrāmaṇyaphala into an extremely elaborate form, it is nevertheless not a text in which Ajātaśatru attains complete salvation, if we construe the term “salvation” in its ultimate sense referring to attainment of nirvāṇa. The MPNS shows that through visiting the Buddha Ajātaśatru conceives the aspiration for the supreme perfect awakening (^*anuttarasamyaksaṃbodhicitta). However, it does not tell us whether he will attain liberation in the future. Rather, it is the Ajātaśatrukaukṛtyavinodanā (AjKV), one of the first Mahāyāna sūtras translated into Chinese in the late second century CE, that gives a detailed prophecy of Ajātaśatru's future attainment of Buddhahood and parinirvāṇa. Thus, in the AjKV Ajātaśatru is granted complete salvation. Although in his book Radich mentions the AjKV several times, no particular emphasis is placed on this text. In fact, there are good reasons to consider the AjKV one of the most important Indian Buddhist sources on Ajātaśatru: it is the earliest extant Mahāyāna text that deals with his salvation and that has him saved in the most thorough way; moreover, it proposes a radical soteriological idea that even the most heinous deeds, such as the five ānantarya crimes,Footnote ³ can be purified through a realization of the doctrine of emptiness (śūnyatā). The AjKV, therefore, deserves more attention than it receives in the book.

Chapter 3, “Between India and China,” analyzes the versions of the narrative separately told in the MPNS (T. 374) and the Contemplation Sūtra (T. 365, hereafter Cont.). Both texts are supposed to have been at least partially composed outside India, either in China or Central Asia. Radich identifies a great number of unusual features of these two versions as compared with parallel versions in Indian Buddhist sources. He suggests that since many unusual elements in the MPNS and Cont. versions “were to become mainstays of the Kosawa/Okonogi Ajase narrative,” “the Kosawa/Okonogi versions of the Ajase narrative are thus highly modified versions of highly modified versions of the Ajātaśatru narrative” (italics in original) (p. 47).

One supplementary note may be made on Radich's analysis of the MPNS. In examining the extended passage on Ajātaśatru's repentance and salvation in the “^*Brahmacarya” chapter of the MPNS, Radich observes that both the teachings of the six heretics related by Ajātaśatru's ministers and the discourse preached by the Buddha in this passage are highly unusual, “full of elements not seen in any other version of Ajātaśatru's story” (p. 39). Interestingly, in a recently published paper Phyllis Granoff observes that both the heretical teachings and the Buddha's discourse in this chapter of the MPNS contain arguments strikingly parallel to those found in the Śāntiparvan (Book 12) of the Mahābhārata, which are presented by brothers and wives of Yudhiṣṭhira (who is also called Ajātaśatru) to assuage his guilt over killing his own relatives.Footnote ⁴ Granoff suggests that the parallels to the Mahābhārata may indicate an Indian origin of the MPNS, “at least for this expanded treatment of the Ajātaśatru story.”Footnote ⁵ Given that Granoff's paper appeared after the publication of the present book, Radich certainly could not have known this latest study of the MPNS. Nevertheless, Granoff's observation deserves attention in any future study of the Ajātaśatru story.

Chapter 4, “The Making of the Chinese Ajātaśatru,” examines five important ideological trends in medieval China that may account for the eventual popularity of the MPNS and Cont. versions of the Ajātaśatru narrative. This chapter, together with Chapter 9 which discusses various factors in shaping Kosawa and Okonogi's versions of the Ajase narrative in modern Japan, provides an excellent case study of how to use Buddhist stories as windows into the dynamics of ideas in the historical and cultural contexts they passed through.

Chapter 5, “New Twists on Ajātaśatru in Medieval China,” investigates two further developments of the Ajātaśatru story in China during the sixth and seventh centuries: one is “the gradual emergence of a tradition that Ajātaśatru was also, somehow, named ‘Broken Finger,’” and the other is “the introduction of the ‘white rabbit’ motif into the Ajātaśatru narrative” (pp. 62, 72). The “white rabbit” motif concerns Ajātaśatru's reincarnation as a white rabbit before being reborn as Bimbisāra's son. It seems to be unprecedented in the history of the Ajātaśatru narrative. As for the first development suggested by Radich, I have some misgivings. According to Radich, the name “Broken Finger” was coined by medieval Chinese commentators. However, it should be noted that in Jaina literature Ajātaśatru is called Kūṇika (Prākrit Kūṇia, Koṇia), a word probably etymologically derived from the Sanskrit root √kūṇ (“sich zusammenziehen” [to contract]) and thus having a meaning similar to the Sanskrit kūṇi (“lahm am Arm” [crippled in the arm] or “Nagelgeschwür” [a nail sore]).Footnote ⁶ According to the Jaina narrative tradition, Ajātaśatru is given this name because immediately after his birth he is abandoned by his mother in a grove, where one of his fingers is injured by the feather of a cock's tail.Footnote ⁷ It is clear that Ajātaśatru already got the name “Broken Finger” in India, although it does not appear in extant Indian Buddhist texts.

Chapters 6–9 as a whole provide a close examination of various interpretations and adaptations of the Ajātaśatru narrative in pre-modern and modern Japan. These four chapters, the central part of the book, certainly deserve a detailed review by someone more competent in Japanese religious studies than I am. The content of each chapter may be summarized as follows. Chapter 6, “Shinran and the ‘Rootless Faith,’” introduces how the Pure Land patriarch Shinran (1173–1262) placed the Ajātaśatru narrative at the center of his monumental work Kyōgyōshinshō and moreover used the narrative to expound his radical doctrine of “akunin shōki (‘It is precisely the evildoer who is the object [of salvific action]’)” (p. 82). Chapter 7, “Ajātaśatru Meets Snow White,” discusses some further developments of the Ajātaśatru between Shinran and the Meiji period, particularly “its strong association in Japanese folklore with the story of Chūjōhime” (p. 85). Chapter 8, “Ajātaśatru Meets Freud,” examines different versions of the Ajase narrative composed by Kosawa and Okonogi “in the context of a wave of interest in Ajātaśatru and Vaidehī that ran from the Meiji through the Shōwa eras” (p. 103). Chapter 9, “The Making of the Japanese ‘Ajase,’” introduces a wide range of ideological and cultural factors at play at the time of Kosawa and Okonogi, which may account for the eventual shape of their Ajase story.

Chapter 10 offers concluding thoughts on the entire study. Based on a recapitulation of the main changes in the Ajātaśatru narrative through its long history, Radich argues that the narrative “encapsulates in microcosm many significant aspects of the larger story of Buddhism through the same contexts,” and that its longevity may be partially explained by its “‘piggybacking’ on other ideas and systems of ideas” (p. 132).

In sum, the present book has considerably updated our knowledge about the long and varied history of transformations of the Ajātaśatru narrative over more than two thousand years. Given the enormous range and great variety of the textual materials dealt with by Radich, the systematic and synthetic discussion provided in the book is truly unprecedented and awe-inspiring. This fascinating volume will surely act as a great inspiration not only for future work on stories about Ajātaśatru, but also for the study of Buddhist narrative literature in general.