동북아시아의 대승불교경전에서 인도불교 나가(nāga)전설의 재구성

Abstract

Nāga (meaning a snake (dragon) or especially a serpent) is a recurrent theme in the literature of Mahāyana Buddhism, which was written in the region of Eastern Asia, and seems to show that some motifs of Indian Buddhist mythology are reinterpreted as new version of stories. In the book Myths and Symbols in Indian Art and Civilization, Heinrich Zimmer, a scholar of Indian mythology, introduces three different narratives about nāga as if they constitute one consistent epic: the first story is about a nāga who embraces Buddhism through his physical transformation; the second story is about a nāga who for the first time conceives Buddha's teaching; the third story is about a nāga who preserves, transmits and propagates Buddha's teaching to mankind. Through these mythologized narratives that come from different sources, Zimmer seems to point out that nāga plays a pivotal role in terms of recognition, preservation and transmission of the Buddha and his teaching. With the subject of transformation, the first narrative illustrates Mucalinda, who protects the Buddha and converts to his teaching, which is analogous to the story of Sāgara in the Lotus sutra (『法華經』). The third narrative presents the story of Nāgārjuna, who preserves and transmits Buddha's Dharma to mankind, which later is potentially developed into a chronicle illustrating transmission of Mahāyāna scriptures, especially of the Hua-Yen-jing (『華嚴經』). The second narrative, while connecting the other two narratives in terms of time sequence, describes a scene in which a nāga sympathizes with the Buddha, who is reluctant to initiate the deliverance of his teaching because he is skeptical about the capacity of ordinary people to understand the profound meaning of his teaching. As with folk tales, the mythical themes appeared in the literature of Mahāyāna Buddhism are generally what ordinary people can somewhat easily understand and enjoy. Thus, it seems that, for the purpose of edification of the public, existing and well-known themes of Indian myths were borrowed, reinterpreted, and reconstructed in the Mahāyāna texts so that they were developed into the narratives that could give ordinary people easy access to Buddhism. Eventually, the reinterpreted myths of Mahāyāna literature were disseminated to the Buddhism of Eastern Asia where some monks often, but fragmentarily, made references to them in their writings, and in this way these myths have been passed down into Korean Buddhism and its liturgical scriptures.