John Mock & Kimberley O'Neil

Shri Badat The Cannibal King:
A Buddhist Jataka from Gilgit

Abstract

In proposing a new interpretation of a legend from the town of Gilgit in northernPakistan, this paper makes three central points. First, positing a historical specificity for legendsis often neither relevant nor valid. Second, the reasons why folklore is meaningful to people in aspecific locale should be sought within the local context. Third, analysis of the morphology ofsuch material provides a methodology for opening it to a broader interpretation. Interpreting theShri Badat legend as folklore enables us to ask a new and interesting set of questions aboutGilgit and Hunza, both past and present. Further, seeking a historical identity for the cannibalking obscures the interesting relations between the legend and remarkably similar folklore inwide circulation throughout the mountain regions of South and Central Asia.

Shri Badat The Cannibal King

A few weeks ago, I was sitting with some Hunzakutz friends in Gilgit. We werecommiserating about the irregularity of PIA plane service to Gilgit, when one of them said, "Youknow, it is because of Shri Badat that the runway is not being lengthened for jet service". Startled to hear Shri Badat's name invoked in this context, I asked him to please explain. "Well,you see," he replied, "The land at the end of the runway, on the other side of the Jutial road, isthe site of Shri Badat's fort. He does not want the runway to pave over his home, so it is becauseof this that the runway cannot be extended".

So the legend of Shri Badat, the Cannibal King of Gilgit, is alive even today. Who is or wasShri Badat? Why is his legend important in Gilgit and Hunza?

Dr. G.W. Leitner, in 1866, was the first European to record the story of Shri Badat, which hepublished in 1877 as "The Historical Legend of the Origin of Ghilghit". He noted that, "thelegend … which chronicles the … rise of Ghilghit … is not devoid of interesteither from an historical or a purely literary point of view". (Leitner 1877 III:6)

Leitner seems to have considered the legend a mixture of fact and fiction, as evidenced byhis title and by his reference to both "historical" and "purely literary" points of view. Yet it wasthe historical point of view that drew the attention of those who came after Leitner.

Captain H.C. Marsh visited Gilgit in 1875 where he heard the legend of "a former Raja byname of Shirbudut" (Marsh 1876:128).

Major John Biddulph, the first in a succession of British Political Agents to reside in Gilgit,published "Tribes of the Hindoo Koosh" in which he asserted:

In spite of the supernatural attributes now assigned to him, there can be no doubtthat Shiri Buddutt was a real personage; the term Shiri is doubtless the title of respect still givento Hindu princes. (Biddulph 1880:134)

In 1905, Munshi Ghulam Muhammad, Chief Clerk of the Political Office in Gilgit,continued the focus on a historical identity, publishing a version of the Shri Badat story as"Historical Folklore" (Muhammad 1905:114-115).

H.L. Haughton, a British officer visiting Gilgit in 1913, followed precedent in presentinganother version as historical legend. (Haughton 1913: 178-179, 184-191)

Colonel Reginald Schomberg, who visited some 20 years after Haughton, commentedthat:

The last ruler [of Gilgit] reputed to have been a Hindu was Sri Badat; … hewas a real person, but has become legendary on account of his reputed cannibalism. (Schomberg1936:249)

Colonel David Lorimer published a version sent to him in writing by Muhammad GhaniKhan, the son of the Mir of Hunza, which placed Shri Badat at the head of the genealogy of theMirs of Hunza. (Lorimer 1935:376-389)

John Clark, while staying with the Mir of Hunza, heard a version of the Shri Badat legend,which was described to him as "the traditional song of our [the Mir's] dynasty … ourhistory". (Clark 1956:175)

Professor A.H. Dani is the latest in the series of those who focus on a historical realityunderlying the legend. Professor Dani has refined the historical point of view, writing:

Local traditions agree about the name of the last Buddhist ruler of Gilgit. They allcall him Sri Badad or Sri Badat. … This traditional history sounds more romantic than real. However, it is possible to make sense out of it in the light of other historical evidence. In thetraditional name Bagartham [the name given for Shri Badat's grandfather in one version] onecould recognize Bagra or Vajra. The word "Tham" is certainly "Thum", which, in the locallanguage, means "a ruler". Thus the two names Bagartham and Vajraditya appear to be one and the same. … The lastruler, according to the Hunza Rock Inscription, was Chandra Sri Deva Vikramaditya. He shouldbe identified with Sri Badad. The last known date of this ruler, according to inscriptions, is AD749. (Dani 1989:163-164)

Indological scholarship has long held central the search for historical origins. Proto-languages, origins of peoples, and ur-texts are some of the concerns of this scholarship.However, the results obtained from "attempts to discover the representation of some historicalreality" (Goldman 1984:26) behind tales, legends, and epics should be examined carefully. Thehistorical specificity obtained through such exercises may hold a significance for scholars quiteapart from the significance the legends have for the people who tell them. Apart from theethnocentrism of such studies, they do little to increase understanding of the development of thesocial reality and worldview of the people whose legends they are. Moreover, the sometimesdisastrous results of the combination of these two separate significations should caution us aboutattempts to posit a historical specificity for the figures of legend. As an example of this volatilecombination, we need only look at the historicization of the epic of Rama and the resultingviolent conflict over the contested physical space in Ayodhya. Such examples lead us toreexamine scholarship's historicizing tendencies and consider whether the positing of a historicalreality behind legends and epics perhaps obscures as much, if not more, than it reveals.

As an alternative interpretive strategy, some scholars have turned to psychology. I haveheard Shri Badat's cannibalism interpreted as a case of the "demonization" of past history inorder to validate a new social order. That is, Shri Badat, as the last Buddhist king of Gilgit, hasbeen turned into a tyrant and a cannibal in order to discredit Buddhism by demonizing thepreviously sacred. This interpretation, however, still retains the central notion of the historicityof the legend, a suspect notion as I have argued above. Furthermore, legends just don't behave inthis way. Legends are legends in part because they persist. The basic structure of a legend is notinverted 180 degrees by the winds of change of human affairs. As a case in point, we do not finda demonization of Rama in Muslim Malaysia. Folklore does not readily permit its morphologyto be completely restructured. The interpretation may vary, but the morphology stays thesame.

So, if we are to abandon the historical interpretation of Shri Badat and cut it loose from themoorings of historicity, where are we to place this intriguing legend? How should weunderstand it? I believe the answer to this question lies in understanding how the "folk"themselves understand it.

It is widely observed that legends help people understand their own history. Hence peopleoften interpret their legends in historicizing ways (Pollock 1991:71). So, we find the people ofHunza interpreting Shri Badat as the original legend of their ruler's lineage. Oral epics andlegends "derive much of their meaning from intense engagement with the conditions of socialand political existence" (Pollock 1986:14). In Hunza, the genealogies of regicide, parricide andfratricide accord with what we know about recent succession history (Biddulph 1880:134-143,Mueller-Stellrecht 1981:52-53) and the Shri Badat legend as told in Hunza supports thiscondition of political existence there. We should also note that the legendary hero who marriedShri Badat's daughter and founded the line of Hunza Mirs (Biddulph 1880:135) was no merehuman, but a "fairy-born" prince, who descended to earth from another realm. The rulers ofHunza were ascribed magical powers and held to be "sky-born" (Ayesho in the locallanguage Burushashki) like the hero who routed Shri Badat. The celebration in song andceremony (Clark 1956:175) of the overthrow of Shri Badat by his own daughter and hersky-born husband forms a narrative about kingly power and its legitimate usage. Because of thissignificance, the legend finds a place in Hunza history as a validation of social and politicalconditions. John Clark shows us the legend being sung in the royal assembly, its singingpatronized by the ruler, and the ruler sponsoring thetumshiling festival whichreenacts the legend (Clark 1956:175).

While discussing this interpretation with Hunzakutz friends, I heard another Hunzainterpretation of the Shri Badat legend and its connection with thetumshiling festival. InDecember, torches were lit in every household and carried to a central place, where they werethrown together to form a bonfire. Just as torches were piled around Shri Badat's fort to melt hissoul/heart of butter, Hunza people would reenact the overthrow of Shri Badat throughtumshiling. (Althoughtumshiling is not practiced presently, it is in the livingmemory of 30-year-olds.) When, my friends told me, infant mortality rises in Hunza, people saythat the soul of Shri Badat is rising, and figuratively "eating" the infants. In such years, thetumshiling would be celebrated more vigourously, in order to put down the soul of ShriBadat.

From looking at how the legend engages with social and political existence, we begin to seethat what is interesting about the legend is not a postulated historicity at its core, but how theelements of plot and theme, the "motiphemes", as Alan Dundes has termed them (Dundes 1962),work together to signify a social reality for the people whose story it is.

Rather than working to confine the legend to a specific historical location by stripping it ofits morphological texture, we can open it up to a broader significance. This is a far moreinteresting pursuit, for motifs, themes, and structural relationships between characters"participate in an international network" (Ramanujan 1992:6), traveling widely through repeatedtelling.

Using the well known Aarne-Thomson tale type index, we find the legend of Shri Badat tobe a particular instance of a well-known genre - a princess rescued from an ogre by a hero. It isclassified as AT tale type # 302 (Aarne & Thompson 1961:93-94). This tale type iscommon in Europe, India and China. It is also known in Persia, though it does not occur asfrequently as in India or China. The fact that the princess of the Gilgit version is the ogre'sdaughter, marks the Shri Badat legend as a distinct Indic variant (Thompson & Roberts1960:46).

Hence, we can state that the morphological elements of motif, theme and the identity of andrelationships between the main characters are not unique to the Gilgit legend. What we find inusing the tale type indexes are numerous examples of multiple existence and variation. Thishelps us to confirm that we are not dealing with history, but with folklore. Of course, even onthe local, very specific level, we also find this multiple existence and variation. We have at leastsix versions of the Shri Badat legend for Gilgit and Hunza, and Rohit Vohra informs us of aversion in the Nubra valley of Ladakh (Vohra 1985:248).

It is ironic that the one motif which for Biddulph and Schomberg obscured the historicitythey sought in the Shri Badat legend turns out to reveal a most interesting broader significance ofthe legend. I am referring to Shri Badat's distinguishing characteristic, his cannibalism. This is amotif in wide circulation, especially in South Asia. Of course, for demons, ogres, or Rakshasas,by whichever term we know them, humans have always been their main meal. But what is foodfor demons is not an acceptable meal for humans, and especially for kings. When we search forthis particular motif, "Taste of Human Flesh leads to Habitual Cannibalism", classified as motifG 36.2 in the Thompson and Balys South Asian motif index (Thompson & Balys1958:203), we are led to a very interesting Pali Jataka tale (Malalasekara II 1938:573). Thestriking structural congruence between the Jataka tale and the Shri Badat legend points to a morefundamental unity between them.

In the Jataka, we find one Brahmadatta, King of Benares, just as Shri Badat was king inGilgit. As Shri Badat is a demon in his present life, Brahmadatta was a demon in a previous life. Brahmadatta unknowingly tastes human flesh, and so, like Shri Badat, accidentally develops hiscannibal habit. Brahmadatta becomes a tyrant, like Shri Badat, demanding a daily humansacrifice to meet his desire for human meat. Like Shri Badat, Brahmadatta's cannibalism revoltsthe people, leads to an uprising, and he is driven out of his kingdom.

Brahmadatta, as it turns out, was not a historical figure either. Rather, this was the name of awhole line of kings (Eck 1982:54). Stories about King Brahmadatta appear in theKathasaritasagara, the Kashmiri Ocean of Story (Towney 1923), and many Jataka tales beginwith the stock phrase "When Brahmadatta reigned at Benaras." (Morris 1884)

No one, as far as I am aware, has noticed the remarkable structural congruence between ShriBadat's story and Brahmadatta's story. Given the known previous existence of Buddhism inGilgit,it seems not unreasonable to assume that the Gilgit legend is a local version of a widely knownSouth Asian tale that came to Gilgit in the form of the Jataka tale. My assumption of some unitybetween the two tales, implicit in their structural congruence, can be made more explicit throughthecongruence of the names of the two kings. The phonological derivation of the name Badat fromBrahmadatta is more plausible than the complex phonological and semantic derivation of BadatfromVikramaditya via Vajraditya and Bagarthum proposed by Professor Dani.

What this evidence suggests is that we can dispense with a specific historical interpretationof Shri Badat and posit instead that the legend is a local version of a widely known South Asiantale. We find the tale preserved as a Buddhist Jataka tale and as a legend in Gilgit. The Jatakatale should not be regarded as the original source of the legend, but rather as another version of avery common, very old story. The Jataka version is an adaption and interpretation to suit adidactic religious purpose. Rather than limiting the legend to an externally imposed meaning,this approach enables us to focus on what the legend might signify in the worldview of thepeople who regard the legend as their own story. The king in the Jataka tale is a cannibal and thestory of the cannibal king existed even during the heyday of Buddhism in Gilgit. I suggest thatShri Badat never existed except in popular folklore just as Brahmadatta in Benares never existedas an individual king.

Once we place the Shri Badat legend within the field of folklore, we can, throughmorphological analysis, explore the extent to which this particular legend participates in abroader circulation. The story of the King's cannibalism forms one part of the story, and the storyof the hero who triumphs over the demon king forms another part. The two parts usually occurtogether. When we look at the story of the hero, of Azur Jamsher and how he overthrows ShriBadat, we note the many parallels of motif, theme and character with an epic in wide circulationin the Karakoram and the Himalaya, including northern Pakistan. This is the epic of Gesar orKisar. In the Demon of the North (bDud 'dul in Tibetan) episode, Kisar kills a cannibaldemon with the help of the demon's daughter. She reveals to him the way in which her fathercan be killed, just as Shri Badat's daughter reveals her father's secret to the young hero.

In an earlier Kisar episode, the Heaven (Lha gling in Tibetan) episode, Kisar is theyoungest of three brothers. He enters into an archery contest with his two elder brothers, wins,but is tricked into descending to earth by his brothers, just as in the Shri Badat legend, Azuroutdoes his two elder brothers in archery but is then tricked by them into remaining on earthwhile they return to their home in the sky.

And here I must also briefly mention a Werchikwar text collected by Lorimer, titled "TheKing Who Had Two Wives" (Lorimer 1962:322-337). This previously unnoticed tale alsocontains these precise elements of motif, plot, and character relationships as found in both theKisar epic and the legend of Shri Badat's overthrow by Azur Jamsher.

The fact that these three narratives from the Gilgit-Hunza area all share the same plot, theme,and structural relationships between characters points to a shared typology of folklore for thehigh mountain regions of South and Central Asia. But, here I enter into the topic of a separatestudy on the nature of the hero in Gilgit-Hunza and Central Asian oral narratives, so I must stopwith just pointing out these most interesting parallels.

To conclude, I suggest that we should seek the significance of folklore from within thecontext in which it is told. The significance can, and does, in this case, vary depending on theinterpretive frame and social reality being validated. The Shri Badat tale may originally havehad a didactic significance as preserved in the Jataka Brahmadatta version. In Gilgit now, in thatthe usurper is ascribed a Muslim identity, the legend finds significance as an allegory of thechange from Buddhism/Hinduism to Islam and is functioning as "symbolic language"(Ramanujan 1992:2) by which to generate a new social order. In Hunza, the hero's role hassignificance as a narrative about kingly power and the limits of its legitimate use, and the hero isprincipally identified as the founder of the Mir dynasty.

Yet in every version, from every place and time, we find the king was always a cannibal. The hero was always a bringer of truth. Whether the hero is a sky-born prince, a Buddhist or aMuslim depends on how the teller wishes to tell the legend and what social order is beingvalidated. The legend remains the same; it is the context of interpretations that changes and sochanges the meaning of the legend.