Malleable Māra: Transformations of a Buddhist Symbol of Evil

Indra plays a key role in the Epics and Purāṇas depicting this tension, primarily through stories in which he fears losing his throne as king of the gods, usually to powerful ascetics, though his position tends in general to be considered precarious. The powers accrued by an ascetic, called tapas (literally “heat”), radiate through the cosmos and, as John Brockington points out, the manifestation of this energy appears throughout the Mahābhārata as a call to alarm for Indra or other gods, who must flee the heavens in order to avoid being burned by the searing heat of the tapas projected by a human. In the general structure of such narratives, Indra then intervenes to corrupt or destroy the ascetic’s practice, averting the total overthrow of the gods, or more specifically, the loss of his own throne.

Before concluding this chapter, there are a series of questions that cannot go unexamined any longer: How suitable is the term “evil” when discussing Māra? Does this concept, like a purely psychological interpretation, impose certain ideas on the figure? The terms usually translated as “evil” in Buddhist texts are pāpimā/pāpmā (Pāli/Sanskrit) or simply pāpa, all of which have dictionary meanings ranging from “evil” to “suffering,” “bad,” “wicked,” and “sinful.” So, for instance, which is meant when one encounters, as is frequent in early Pāli accounts of Māra, the phrase “Māro pāpimā”? To put it shortly now, and in greater detail below, the prevailing meaning behind evil in Indian thought, as has been noted by many commentators, is above all ignorance. Yet, if ignorance, particularly of the connection between desire and suffering, is the fundamental problem of existence from the Buddhist point of view, is it appropriate to continue referring to Māra as “evil,” even to translate (as I have already in this book) the Pāli phrase Māro pāpimā as “Māra, the Evil One”?