Myrobolans. Du dialogue à la botanique
«Le seigneur d'une moitié de myrobolan» et autres histoires
Jeudi 5 janvier 2012
L'histoire naturelle, religieuse et sociale du myrobolan est monumentale. Le myrobolan emblique, une espèce de prune dont le nom sanskrit le plus courant est āmalaka et le nom latin Emblica officinalis, est l'une des «choses de l'Inde» (things Indian) les plus emblématiques. Ce fruit est un personnage de légende au sens où par métonymie des personnages comme Aśoka lui sont identifiés; l'image de ce fruit dans la paume de la main suscite, dans les dialogues philosophiques hindous et bouddhiques, la cristallisation de l'intuition par laquelle le disciple en quête de la vérité a la Révélation du Soi ou de la non-narrativité du Soi, voyant alors la vérité karāmalakavat sākṣāt, «directement [de ses propres yeux] comme un myrobolan dans [le creux de] la main»; ce fruit est aussi la panacée par excellence dans la médecine ayurvédique et il entre dans la composition d'innombrables remèdes; ce fruit fut enfin à la Renaissance en Europe l'un des plus précieux articles importés d'Orient dans l'épicerie et la pharmacie.
Mes recherches portent sur les Noms du myrobolan, āmalaka et ses synonymes en sanskrit ou ses traductions dans les langues vernaculaires, sur le statut linguistique, logique et ethnobotanique de ces Noms qui sont simultanément des Noms propres et des Noms d'espèces naturelles. C'est un parfait exemple sur lequel développer les problématiques de la philosophie analytique contemporaine. Je m'inspire donc de Kripke en considérant d'abord les occurrences du myrobolan dans la littérature philosophique et religieuse, puisque c'est là qu'on peut retracer les enchaînements de causes et d'événements par lesquels le myrobolan a d'abord acquis les saillances cognitives que l'on trouve ensuite exploitées dans la médecine et la pharmacie ayurvédiques.
Première lecture sur ses occurrences légendaires.
JOHN S. STRONG
The Legend of King Asoka
A Study and Translation of the Asokâvadâna
1983 PRINCETON UNlVERSITY PRESS[Asoka veut donner 100 kotis au monastère de Kukkutârâma.]
(97) Asoka would like to equal that sum, but unfortunately he is old and ill and he soon becomes despondent because he will not be able to fulfill his intention. He resolves to try, however, and starts drawing on the state treasury in order to make donations to the Kukkutârâma Monastery. His ministers become worried immediately for this goes against the established pañcavârsika ritual of reserving state funds, and for the first time threatens, in a real way, the kingship itself. Thus, claiming that "the power of kings lies in their treasury," they convince Asoka's grandson, the heir-apparent Sampadin, to countermand his grandfather's orders and prohibit the treasurer from further disbursing state funds to the sangha.
This essentially amounts to a coup d'état, at least on a limited scale. But Asoka is not to be thwarted. He starts sending the gold dishes on which his meals are served to the monks at the Kukkutârâma. Soon, however, his ministers have his meals brought on silver dishes. He then gives these away too, and they serve him on copper plates. When he sends these to the sangha as well, his food is brought in on clay plates. Finally, after thus continuing t0 give away all his personal /98/ possessions, Asoka is left only with half of a myrobalan fruit. From having been a great king, ruler of the whole world, vying to be the greatest Buddhist donor of all time, he has suddenly become seemingly powerless and more destitute than the poorest Buddhist layman. And yet he does not hesitate to do what he can; he holds the myrobalan in his hand, contemplates it for a while, and then sends it to the Kukkutârâma where it is cut up, put in the monks' soup, and so distributed to the whole sangha. [Note.— The deed became famous; eventually a stûpa… called the Âmalaka stûpa, marked the spot where the gift was supposed to have been made… The story was also retold later by the poet Ksemendra.]
The myrobalan (âmalaka) was famous in India for its medicinal properties. In the Buddhist tradition, it came to be closely associated with the cult and iconography of Bhaisajyaguru, the "Buddha of Medicine," but it was also, as Alex Wayman has pointed out, a symbol for the "creative power of thought, which in high levels of meditative praxis can materialize the unseen worlds in the manner of the myrobalan berry concretized upon the palm of the hand." [Alex Wayman, Notes on the Three Myrobalans, Phi Theta Annual 5 (1954): 63–77.] Thus, this fruit is not just a medicine... but represents blessings from unseen realms like the healing energy radiating upon devotees in their worship.
What is marvelous about the myrobalan is that though it is very small, it goes a long way and brings about tremendous results, not only in the context of medicine, but symbolically in the context of meditation and in the context of faith and karmic action. There is a story in one of the sacred biographies of Sankara, the great Hindu philosopher and saint, which /99/ illustrates this later point well. Sankara goes begging at the home of a poor Brahmin couple. The woman of the house laments that they have absolutely nothing to give him, but then she finds a single myrobalan fruit and makes an offering of it. Sankara is impressed by this example of devotion and asks Laksmî, the goddess of wealth, to help the couple; soon their house is filled with myrobalans of solid gold.
Similarly, in the context of the Asokâvadâna, the myrobalan is symbolic of Asoka's destitution, and thus of the impermanence and vagaries of royal sovereignty and all worldly life, As the elder Yasas. at the Kukkutârâma, puts it when he accepts the gift from Asoka's envoy:
A great donor, the lord of men,
the eminent Maurya Asoka,
has gone from being lord of Jambudvîpa
to being lord of half a myrobalan.But at the same time, the gift of the myrobalan, though seemingly insignificanl and symbolic of Asoka's loss of power, is paradoxically what restores him to sovereignty. Of course, he does not suddenly acquire a fortune in gold like the woman in the story of Sankara, but he does, after giving the myrobalan, appear to have his kingship reestablished. His ministers and his own grandson have usurped his powers, but when, just after his gift of the fruit, he asks his prime minister, Râdhagupta, "Tell me, who is now lord of the earth?" the latter responds that Asoka is. Then, struggling to his feet, Asoka uses this renewed authority to make his final gift: "Except for the state treasury, I now present the whole earth, surrounded by the ocean, to the community of the Buddha's disciples." Having performed this final act, Asoka dies, leaving his ministers in a quandary; the king is dead, but the/100/ kingdom has been given away to the sangha. Before they can install a new king, therefore, they are forced to buy the Earth back again, at the going price — four kotis of gold. Thus, in the end, Asoka does achieve his goal of giving a total of one hundred kotis, and becomes posthumously the equal of Anâthapindada, a contemporary of the Buddha, and the greatest donor of all times.
CONCLUSION
The story of Asoka's gift of the half of myrobalan reflects, perhaps better than any of the other tales we have looked at in this chapter, the dual nature of Asoka's relationship to the sangha. In his reduced straits, at the end of his life, Asoka is seen as no different from any ordinary layperson, and his offering to the sangha becomes a model for even the most destitute of Buddhists. Who, after all, cannot afford to give a myrobalan? At the same time, it is the gift of this myrobalan that restores to Asoka his balacakravartinship — his sovereignty over Jambudvîpa — and that enables him to give the earth away again and to achieve the perfect, complete gift to the sangha.
Du point de vue logique et linguistique, les myrobolans, plus qu'un symbole comme le disait Wayman, sont l'exemple par excellence d'une chose à la fois matérielle et morale, d'une substance à la fois biologique (substance médicinale dont les ayurvédiques étudieront le tempérament humoral) et psychique (énergie créatrice). La notion de panacée transpose en médecine la notion d'énergie créatrice en métaphysique. Les Noms propres du myrobolan, quand on les énonce y compris dans la formulation des médicaments composés, mobilisent toutes ces propriétés, toutes ces saillances et donc toutes ces forces ostensives et illocutoires.