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1As narratives of birth and re-birth, the Jātakas recount stories of transformation, change of identity, hidden appearances, and also of progress and striving for enlightenment. This article argues that water as a mediator or vehicle of dramatic change, plays, together with the symbolism associated with it, a central role in both the « Devadhamma Jātaka » and the story of Rusalka, a Czech opera by Antonín Dvořák. The two appear particularly apt for comparison: they bear resemblances in presenting a human kingdom and their respective Princes moving between the kingdom’s power structures and their counterparts as well as the world of nature with water as a significant element that triggers a transformation of the characters. In both narratives, water sprites play a major role. This paper intends to highlight the paradigms related to the imagery of water in these two works, pinpoint the perceptions common to both, and bring to light the structures of imagination inherent in the cultures that have produced them.

2According to the pagan Slavic myths, a rusalka, a being superior to man in mind and body and inhabiting a middle space, is related to water from which she arises in spring to give moisture to the fields. Starting with the 19^th century, rusalkas came to be viewed as possibly negative or even dangerous spirits of women who died by drowning, falling prey to men’s abuse or harassment. Whoever saw them at noon, the time when they were supposed to manifest themselves, would go mad, « became seized with a nympholeptic mania »1 and especially young men were to be on their guard. Antonín Dvořák composed an opera titled Rusalka in 1900 to the libretto written by Jaroslav Kvapil as based on Jaromír Erben’s and Božena Němcová’s fairy tales, the two having been, similarly to brothers Grimm, collectors of orally transmitted folk and fairy tales. Rusalka also calls to mind Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Mermaid.

3The narrative is romantic and tragic. Rusalka and her sister-nymphs inhabit a lake under the rule of their father, the Water Gnome, where a Prince comes to bathe. While cradling him in her arms, while remaining invisible, Rusalka falls in love with him and wants to become human to win his heart. The transformation happens, contrary to the Water Gnome’s advice, with the help of a witch on the condition that Rusalka remains mute during her human existence and will turn into a water demon of death if she fails in her love efforts. The Prince, enchanted with Rusalka-the human, takes her to his palace to marry her. At that time, a foreign Princess, out of revenge because she had been previously abandoned by the Prince, manages to draw him towards her only to reject him shortly afterwards. Rusalka, back to the lake, now a water demon of death, is still in love with the Prince. He, loving and desperate, comes to her to finally die in her arms after receiving, upon his own request, a kiss of death from her.

4Rusalka’s story can be interpreted in a number of ways and in all these interpretations, the focus is on water as a principle agent. It can be the representation of the Prince’s dream which is realized near water, as Zdeňka Kalnická argues, « aqueous environment is capable of producing dream states in human beings »2. It can also be understood as « bewitchment » in the sense of seduction or rapture caused by the bathing in the lake3. Insofar as water can be perceived as an « empty sign »4 which arouses imagination « the water element […] urges us to fill this indeterminable place with something more certain, more concrete […] with images, partly reflecting our past experiences, partly produced by our imagination »5. The succession of feelings of love in Rusalka can be viewed as a circle of seduction mirroring the myth of Pan in which the nymph who lived on the bank of a river and whom Pan attempted to rape sacrifices herself to show him more subtle ways of winning love, i.e. by playing the flute.

5What is highly significant, (and also reflects the Pan myth) is that a passage through water brings a radical change. In water, everything is « dissolved, every “form” is broken up […] nothing that was before remains after immersion in water »6. Deluge becomes here an appropriate symbol, the world being created, according to Indian (e.g. The Mahābhārata) and Teutonic myths, only after a deluge7. Even the biblical Deluge changed the then world dramatically: Noah could be considered the « new » Adam. After the evil had been removed, the human society was created anew.

6If, at the human level, « immersion is the equivalent of death », as Eliade argues8, then what happens to the Prince in Rusalka can be interpreted on a superficial level as a simple story of being bewitched with death by drowning in the lake as a consequence. Rusalkas also remind us of the Sirens, « women causing death »9, originally nymphs. However, Rusalka is not capable of bewitching anybody with her voice because she could only make herself audible to the Prince in her appearance of a death demon towards the end. Nevertheless, the interpretation of the figure of Rusalka as « an instrument of death », points to « a representation of the anima consciously repressed by the male », a « femme fatale » who represents « men’s fears of women’s power - more of a projection onto the female than a mirror of her reality », to borrow Jung’s words10.

7Bewitchment and subsequent death are but one representation of the radical change the characters can encounter through their passage through water. The incursion into the unconscious suggested above appears more appropriate for a plausible interpretation of the story. Jung states explicitly « that water is the aptest symbol for the unconscious »11. The Prince goes to the lake, apparently regularly, to bathe. The fact of his being so attracted to water may represent his instinctive-affective yearning to access the interior parts of his being, the unconscious, and his quest for and recognition of his Self. This yearning is further accentuated by his meeting with Rusalka-turned-human: it acquires more precise contours, a more personified expression. Rusalka, as a personification of water, can thus be viewed as a representation of his inner being, the instinctive-affective sphere related to the unconscious.

8The Prince is almost at the end of his quest when the story gets a new twist. When far away from water (this altered setting is significant), in the Royal Palace, his attempts become, once again (because that has already happened before) subject to the manipulative power of the Foreign Princess. The Princess is an embodiment of what is foreign to the Prince’s proper Self, his desires, and inclinations; it is a force that can be viewed as representing his super-ego: she is a Princess, thus far away from the world of nature and natural instincts. In the end, she does not provide him with any satisfaction or fulfillment. Her power having receded, the Prince has now a better and indeed even fuller access to his interior Self. Merging with it, i.e., becoming what he is, which is symbolized by the kiss and the immersion in water, he is granted a new beginning.

9The Jātakas, part of the Theravāda Buddhist canon, figure among the earliest of the Pāli writings. Scholars situate them between the 5^th century BCE and the 3^rd century CE12. As Sarah Shaw reminds us13, before they came to be fixed in any written form the Jātakas had been transmitted orally, in a similar way to other ancient writings of the Indian subcontinent of the period such as the great epics The Ramayana and The Mahabharata. Comparable to the cosmology-related fairy tales that intertwine within the European cultural context, the Jātakas can be traced back to the common roots of orally transmitted and evolving narratives originating in the imagination of the Indian subcontinent: « the basis of this huge treasure trove is not the Jātakas so to speak, but the vast repository of narratives created by people of northern India obviously before Buddhism came into being and continuously enriched by them ever since »14.

10A Jātaka typically consists of a frame story, a current story, in which the Master tells a past story to his disciples to teach them a moral, the past story being a narrative of one of Buddha’s previous lives. The frame story of « Devadhamma Jātaka » is a story of a rich disciple who is reluctant to renounce his wealth. In the past story, Mahimsasa (alias Boddhisatva) is accompanied by his two brothers, the Moon Prince and the Sun Prince, the three of them leaving the palace at the King’s bidding for fear of the Queen’s plotting against them, and they all come to a water pool. The lake is guarded by a water sprite whose power is to devour all those who do not know what « truly godlike » is when they prepare to enter the lake. Neither the Sun Prince nor the Moon Prince knows the correct answer when sent there one by one by Mahimsasa to fetch water and are, in consequence, devoured by the sprite. Only Mahimsasa knows that neither sun, nor moon nor the four quarters of heaven (respectively suggested by the two Princes) are truly godlike, but that « Those only “godlike” call who shrink from sin, The white-souled tranquil votaries of Good »15. Not only does his ultimate wisdom liberate his brothers from the water sprite’s power, but it also brings about the demon’s conversion into a good and virtuous being. After the King’s death, Mahimsasa is crowned King, and his brothers become high officials. Then the present story reveals Mahimsasa as Bodhisattva, his brothers as Buddha’s distinguished disciples Sariputta and Ananda, and the water demon as a wealthy brother who was made to change his mind entirely.

11« Devadhamma Jātaka » is one of the Jātakas in which the Bodhisattva behaves, to borrow Naomi Appleton’s words, in a « good’ way [… and is] morally upright […] a particularly sagacious hero » and even « a compassionate saviour of others [… and ] a teacher »16. As Hinduism and Buddhism and their imageries have common roots and during centuries coexisted in India, it is not difficult, while interpreting the stories, to find resemblances. Thus, for example, Sisi Kumar Das notices that not only Jātakas and other texts within the Buddhist tradition are considered as versions of The Ramayana, but also there is a couple of others, « Devadhamma Jātaka » being one of them, « where the Rama story has been referred »17. In both The Ramayana and the « Devadhamma Jātaka’s » past story, the point of departure is the dispute between the King and his wife concerning the inheritance of the kingdom and the final gain of it respectively by Rama and Mahimsasa (Bodhisattva) on the basis of their virtues. Further on, Mircea Eliade views Bodhisattva as a « religious hero » resembling both Rama and Krishna18, and at a time when Vaishnavism and Buddhism were competing and when even Buddha himself had been proclaimed the ninth incarnation of Vishnu19.

12Moreover, there is a noticeable similarity between the « Devadhamma Jātaka’s » past story and an episode in The Mahabharata. The end of the Book of the Forest tells the story of the Pandava brothers chasing a deer, while in exile in the forest. Exhausted, hungry and thirsty, they settle down to have a rest, and they discover, at some distance, a lake. Yudhishthira, the eldest of the Pandavas, sends Nakula first to fetch water for them all to drink. A voice claiming to be the owner of the lake (later identified as a yaksha) asks Nakula to answer a question before he drinks from the water and takes some with him. Disregarding this demand Nakula drinks and then drops down dead. The same happens to each of the three other brothers sent by Yudhishthira. When finally Yudhishthira himself comes to see what has happened and answers correctly not one but a series of questions relating to the just perception of life and reality, the yaksha reveals himself to be God Dharma himself, Yudhishthira’s father. The dead brothers are brought back to life and Dharma grants a boon to them for the remaining year of their exile.

13In The Disguises of the Demon: The Development of the Yaksa in Hinduism and Buddhism, Gail Hinich Sutherland sustains that « [t]he Hindu sense of the eternal, ritualized conflict between the “good guys” and “bad guys” » is « in the Buddhist tales significantly amended by means of the notion of conversion, which permanently alters the behaviour, if not the nature, of the yakkha »20. Then while what happens in « Devadhamma Jātaka » is a conversion of the yaksha (the water demon) in terms of « the behaviour, if not the nature », in The Mahabharata the alteration of the Yaksha can be described as complementary, i.e., that of the nature, but not the behavior. Nevertheless, it is necessary to emphasize that the latter is no real conversion, only the alteration of Yuddhishthira’s view of the Yaksha; and of course, this is made possible by the god Dharma’s power. It is the Pandavas’ perception of reality that is changed. The Mahabharata’s water being is a “good guy”, which is already alluded to by the lake being described as beautiful and created by a heavenly originator.

14In each of the two narratives, the alteration happens as directly related to the being ruling over the water realm. Indian cosmologies and mythologies abound in stories pointing to the importance of water for the (Indian) world. Buddhist cosmology views most of the earthly world of humans and human-like beings as filled by a vast ocean in which four continents can be found as small and differently shaped islands situated respectively in the south, east, west, and north. In search of enlightenment, Prince Siddharta is said to have dropped his hair into the river Anoma. The hair, instead of being carried downstream, floated upstream, thus making it clear that the Prince, who in the meantime had crossed the river, was pre-ordained to become a monk21. Gail Omvedt notes that the materialist Lokayata tradition within Indian Buddhism sees the four elements, earth, water, fire and air as the only original components of being22. In the Hindu mythological narratives, we find God Vishnu, the creator, either in the appearance of a cosmic ocean or a giant reposing on the waters23. Water is at the origin of a world, and it is into the cosmic ocean that the debris of a world that was ending are poured.

15The idea of the universe as a recurrent periodical cycle of singular worlds coming into existence, developing and finally disintegrating, relativizes and indeed minimizes « the whole content and the work of the human lifetime [and dissolves it] into unreality […] It was as though the mountains - […] would rise and fall like waves. The permanent would be seen as fluid »24. As such the world is operated by Māyā, « art: that by which an artifact, an appearance, is produced »25. Zimmer also gives an account of the mythological stories in which two saints ask Vishnu to reveal the secret of Māyā to them and in which each finds himself endowed with an entirely different identity after passing through water. Which identity is real and which just an illusion? That is the secret of Māyā. « Transformation worked by the waters […] was to be read as an operation of Māyā »26.

16While in Hindu mythology Māyā refers to illusion, tricks, deceit, jugglery, even sorcery or witchcraft and in a broader sense to Existence itself, to its cosmic flux and its creative power27, the Buddhist text of Abhidharma-samuccaya sees Māyā as deceit associated with both passion (lust) and bewilderment (erring) whose role is to serve as a basis for a corrupt conduct. Thus in The Mahabharata’s forest story, the transformation of the Pandavas’ perception can be perceived as Māyā operated by the god Dharma, and there is a transformation of « behaviour ». In « Devadhamma Jātaka », on the other hand, the operation of Māyā consists in the conversion of « nature » as the water sprite is evil by origin; he is granted the rule over the lake by Vessavana (also known as Kuvera), half-brother of Ravana, the demonic King of Lanka, who also gives him the power to devour those having entered the water and not knowing what « truly god-like »28 is: « Vessavana had rule over Tree-sprites as well as Water-sprites »29. The veil of Māya is lifted for Sun-Prince and Moon-Prince as the truth is revealed and they are brought back to life again.

17The ultimate wisdom revealed by Mahimsasa is « the logos principle that illuminates the Jātaka narrative is fixed in the very being of the bodhisatta »30. At the lake, a transformation by the waters, an operation of Māyā, is for all but Mahimsasa. After the passage through water, the two princes are brought back to life and the water-sprite, whose transformation or conversion is the most significant one, leaves his evil ways behind.

18Finally, after the King’s death, the three brothers inherit the kingdom with Mahimsasa taking over as King. The water sprite is brought to the seat of the kingdom with them and finds his undeniable place there: « This installation of the yakkha is commonly considered to constitute an active assimilation on the part of the figure of the Buddha (and the Institution of Buddhism) of the indispensable dimension of the wilderness, the unexplored, the profusion of nature, and particularly, the bounty associated with the waters in the form of plentiful rainfall »31.

19The moral of the story is an appeal to do good deeds, which refers to the law of karma. Thus the transformation at the lake as a joint doing of Bodhisattva’s enlightening wisdom and water points back to the circle of rebirth.

20It is interesting to note that Mahimsasa’s (Boddhisatva) brother by the same mother is called Moon and the one by the next queen Sun. The Moon is closely related to water and the feminine, and it is also to the Moon that Rusalka sings her most beautiful song of love. Nevertheless, not even Prince Moon, the first to enter the water, knows the correct answer to the water sprite’s question, pointing to the Moon and the Sun. While in Rusalka water and the Moon are directly related to the representation of the feminine and interconnected, in « Devadhamma Jātaka » the feminine is mentioned only briefly as the Queen’s insistence on the fulfillment of the King’s promise, nevertheless with a direct impact on what happens afterwards. The ways in which this may reflect the perception of Māyā-Shakti as the creative power of the male deity, personified in the Hindu imagery as the world-protecting, feminine, maternal side of the Ultimate Being32 remains open to further analysis.

21According to Mircea Eliade, « [w]ater purifies and regenerates because it nullifies the past, and restores […] the integrity of the dawn of things »33. In « Devadhamma Jātaka », it is the world of the kingdom’s past, i.e. the order of things deprived of the ultimate knowledge that disappears and there is a restoration, a new beginning, a rebirth of the kingdom with a king who is to be reborn as Buddha, the awakened one. All the individuals at the lake, the three brothers and the water sprite, experience a new beginning; Mahimsasa, alias Bodhisattva, is yet to be re-born into his final appearance as Buddha later on. Thus the change he undergoes is only a minor one.

22In Rusalka, an entirely new form is given to the Prince. In the perspective outlined, the apparent ceasing of the past condition represents recognition of his unconscious, which is symbolized by his desire for Rusalka. On the contrary, Rusalka’s fairy identity is, upon her own request and out of love, transformed into a human one. But what follows is another transformation into a death demon due to the incapability of the Prince to resist the manipulative power of his super-ego, read his own unconscious and the hidden but truthful desires of his Self. The only unmovable one here is the Water Gnome, the ruler of the water realm and Rusalka’s father, the one in whose power it is to both determine and watch over the law and order of the water world. Both he and the water demon in « Devadhamma Jātaka » are powerful beings capable of working upon reality and masters of both destructive and creative powers34.

23Both narratives put the respective worlds of the familiar, the kingdoms with their manipulative powers, on the one hand, and the unknown, the world of nature into which they venture, on the other, as counterparts: « A vestige of the frightening unknown - the moral and cultural wilderness that is to some extent the setting of the Mahābhārata variant - is present in the boddhisatta-prince’s treatment of his brothers when he charges them to go out into the forest to search for water »35. Going to the lake and bathing in its waters, Rusalka’s Prince is in search of what could constitute the counterpart of the rigid moral and cultural rules. If in the « Devadhamma Jātaka » the priority is given to the moral in the end over the natural36, my reading of Rusalka’s narrative shows precisely the opposite. The Prince has to emancipate himself from ethics to discover the true nature of his Self.

24The contrapuntal reading of the two stories contributes to the understanding of the role of the water imagery in collective human consciousness. One cannot but accord cross-cultural validity to what Mircea Eliade says about water: « Water symbolizes the whole of potentiality [… and] the primal substance from which all forms come and to which they will return »37. Thus, e.g. Rusalka’s identification with water can remind us of Vishnu as the cosmic ocean, origin of all creation. The water sprite in the « Devadhamma Jātaka » could, upon the wisdom pronounced at a water pool, resist Vessavana’s power and recover the deepest layers of his Self. By analogy, the wealthy brother can, as if by the workings of water, when reminded of his past life as this particular water demon, experience the change of attitude necessary for his sense of shame to be restored.

25What has the Bodhisattva acquired in this particular appearance? In preparation for his final birth, he is supposed to and intends to « build the strengths, resources and experience ready for his final birth »38 and master all ten perfections, i.e., generosity, virtue or restraint, renunciation, wisdom, effort, forbearance, truthfulness, resolve, loving kindness and equanimity39. Thanks to these efforts, the « Devadhamma Jātaka » tells us, both the water demon at the lake and the wealthy brother could be saved from their respective evil paths. « That Brother won the Fruit of the First Path," as the present story of the « Devadhamma Jātaka » concludes40.