Motif-hunting in the Khotanese Sudhanāvadāna
Résumé
The core of the Khotanese Sudhanāvadāna, a Buddhist text told in a tenth-century Late Khotanese poem, tells a previous life of the Buddha: the story of Sudhana and his wife, the fairy princess Manoharā. Even if probably intended for didactic and dogmatic purposes, this text is a folk-tale, which finds its close parallels in some Sanskrit texts and in the oral literatures of the Iranian languages. The tale consists of three main episodes — the Types ATU560, The Magic Ring, ATU313, The Magic Flight, and ATU400, The Man on a Quest for His Lost Wife —, but we can identify also a great number of Motifs. This paper will focus on some main Motifs and will provide a theoretical reflection on Thompson’s approach in a comparative perspective.