“Religious systems and their accompanying social imaginaries can be approached from a variety of analytical vantage points, each offering distinct insights into their development within specific socio-temporal contexts. Among these, the category of ‘evil’—often sounds peripheral yet fundamental to the internal logic of many religious traditions—serves as a particularly productive lens. When examined across an extended historical arc, such a concept can illuminate both the continuities and transformations within a tradition’s conceptual and doctrinal framework. It has the power to tell a different story of the tradition’s journey.In the book under review, Michael D Nichols traces the longue durée history of Buddhism, from its emergence in the Ganga Valley to its expansion across Asia and eventual reach to the West via such a trope of evil within the tradition. By foregrounding Māra—the paradigmatic embodiment of evil in the Buddhist tradition—Nichols not only reconstructs the evolving representations of this figure but also, in doing so, offers a compelling narrative of the broader historical and ideological trajectories of Buddhism itself.In the book we get to encounter many forms of Māra and many Buddhism(s) in vast temporality and diverse spatial contexts. The author proposes three features of Māra in this long history—didactic, demonizing and shapeshifting. In any given context the figure has been instrumental in communicating didactic messages of Buddhism (in plural) and to corner or criticize the other thoughts contrary to the vision of the tradition by labelling them as Māra or evil. The shapeshifting or malleability of Māra has been very useful to achieve these ends, according to the author.The story of Māra in the book begins with early descriptions of the figure in the Padhāna-Sutta of the Suttanipāta in the Khuddaka-Nikāya (third or second century BCE), Aśvaghoṣa’s Buddhacarita (second century CE) and in the texts like Nidānakathā, Lalitavistara and Mahāvastu (together dated somewhere between third to fifth century CE). These are depictions of Māra’s battle with a determined Gautama for his last push towards awakening or Buddhahood. These mythic cycles are called ‘Māravijaya’ or ‘victory over Māra’ to which the author keeps returning throughout the book.Nichols notes that Māra is cast here in the earlier tropes of the Vedic mythic tradition but is transformed to give a different message. The attack and battle waged by Māra on the Buddha-to-be shows symbolic parallels to the erstwhile clashes between Vṛtra (as serpent holding water and causing drought) and Indra (with thunderbolt kills Vṛtra and releases water). However, the clash between Gautama and Māra is resolved without any bloodshed in the Māravijaya. Nichols argues that in this ‘new society’, Buddha wins over Māra through the means of knowledge. Here Māra obstructs knowledge (unlike Vṛtra who obstructs water) and the Buddha-to-be smashes Māra’s metaphorical grip on beings (not the skull of Vṛtra like Indra). Hence, an old memory of symbols has been utilized to give a totally different message.These arguments about early Māra are in line with other Buddhist scholars who have highlighted the tendency in early Buddhism to use the already existing words and categories from Brahmanism and fuse them with different or Buddhist meanings. The same is happening with the Indra-Vṛtra dyad here which is replaced with Gautama-Māra. But the signifier here will signify something else and that is an announcement of Buddhism as a different tradition.The difference of Buddhism from Brahmanical religion is further announced when Māra is described as a deva or deity of Brahmanical variety in the same sources mentioned above. As a figure prone to shapeshifting, Nichols suggests that Māra (evil in Buddhism) shows similarities in characteristics with Brahmanical gods like Brahma, Indra and Kāmadeva. At the same time, Māra becomes a useful trope to demonize Brahmanism—the ‘other’ of Buddhism.Through a close reading of above-mentioned early Buddhist texts, Nichols argues three instances where Māra is shown as promoting the key tenets of the Brahmanical social outlook and world view in the ‘Māravijaya’ episodes before his defeat by the Buddha. One is to advise ‘fire sacrifice’ to the Buddha-to-be as more appropriate than asceticism or renunciatory practices. Second is to remind him of his varṇa identity as a Kṣatriya and how renunciation is incompatible with it. And finally, in the Māra-saṁyutta (part of the Saṁyutta Nikāya), Māra takes the form of a Brahmin and encourages Bhikkhus to follow the stages of life or the āśrama system and not renounce at a young age. Hence, Māra in these descriptions as the quintessential evil within Buddhism at this stage represents all which has to be considered Brahmanical.Further, Nichols contends that when Brahmā is represented as eternal, as a creator, and as an advocate of worldly values—aligning with the Brahmanical conception—Buddhist texts portray him as subordinate to Māra, effectively serving as an agent or instrument of Māra’s influence. Similarly, the Indra of Epic and Purāṇic phase shows similarities in his working (to destroy the ascetic practice by sending apsaras and sometimes martial force as well) to the Buddhist evil Māra. Nichols contends that within the Brahmanical narrative framework, Indra is cast as the heroic protector of the sacred order, while the ascetic figure is portrayed as a destabilizing antagonist. Hence, it is Indra’s duty to hinder their tapas or austerities. In contrast, the Buddhist Māravijaya narrative inverts this structure—the ascetic Gautama emerges as a revolutionary hero who challenges and ultimately overcomes Māra, depicted as a despotic and tyrannical deity. While the Brahmanical tradition serves to uphold and legitimize priestly authority, the Buddhist narrative critiques and subverts that very authority by casting Māra as its symbolic embodiment.A comparable discussion emerges in relation to the roles of Kāmadeva and Yama, whose meanings diverge significantly with that of Māra in Buddhism. Nichols—unlike earlier scholars such as Bimal Law and NN Bhattacharyya—warns against a simplistic identification of Māra with these figures. Rather, he argues that ‘Māra is a reinvention of all these figures, but also none of them, for he is those deities as re-imagined through a Buddhist lens, communicating essential aspects of Buddhist teaching while serving as a meta mythic diatribe against Brahmansim (p. 101).The similarities shown between Māra and deities like Indra, Brahma, Yama and Kāmadeva to argue some sort of diatribe against Brahmanism is a well-weaved narrative. However, readers would have benefited more if in this larger picture of the Buddhist-Brahmin encounter around the figure of Māra, a fair understanding of chronological developments had been made. This lapse is visible in the book by the use of the category ‘Brahmanical’ and ‘Hindu’. Often these are collapsed in each other, ‘the Brahmanical/Hindu perspective’ (p. 80), but sometimes the categories are separated as ‘the Brahmanical and later Hindu understanding’ (p. 80).The students of early South Asia separate Vedic Brahmanism with Puranic Hinduism and somewhere between the two comes the early Buddhist phase which affected the shaping of Puranic Hinduism or this shift from Vedic Brahmanism to Puranic Hinduism. Or as Patrick Olivelle has argued that the Dharmaśāstric framework of the āśramas (the four stages of life) was a later development, when Brahmanism rendered the ascetic way of life popularized by Buddhism from being an alternative world view into the stages of retirement and renunciation of the aging householder (Olivelle 2018, 15–29). With this understanding in mind Nichols could have explored more the invocation of the āśrama system in the Māra-Saṁyutta. This is only one such example and there are many such possibilities in the long chapter, ‘Māra the God’.In the next step of the journey in Māra’s malleability as a trope of evil, Nichols discusses several descriptions in the Mahāyāna texts, like the Aṣṭasāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra, the Vimalakīrti Sūtra, the Śūraṃgamasamādhi Sūtra and the Nirvāṇa Sūtra. The author argues that in these texts once again we note a refashioned myth of Māra for a totally different function. For example, in the Aṣṭasāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā, Māra is appropriated to target Buddhists instead of Brahmins as we saw on earlier occasions. At this stage the strategy is to highlight the differences within the larger Buddhism to counter ‘traditional’ views vis-à-vis Mahāyāna position. Thus, Māra becomes instrumental in communicating a ‘characteristically Mahāyāna perspective’.Nichols discusses Māra’s journeys beyond South Asia in the last two chapters. Relying largely on secondary sources, Nichols highlights how ‘Māravijaya’ remained a central imagination in different Asian countries at the same time as Māra got translated both linguistically and culturally into local conditions. For instance, as mo in Chinese Daoist pantheon, as bdud in Tibet and as tengu in Japan.The chapter I enjoyed the most is the last one where the author takes us to the discussions around Māra in ‘Buddhist Modernism’ specifically in the western context. By focusing on the books written in English about Buddhism for practitioners by the practitioners of Buddhism, Nichols brings the story of the changing description of Māra in our immediate context. A comparison of Māra shifting his shape and meaning in our immediate world with the changes in the past helps us to read and understand the past as well as present in an even better way. This exercise breaks the wall between the present and the past, which unconsciously always projects the past as a very distant phenomenon.By focusing upon different characters and their commentaries on Buddhism, Nichols notes the following tendencies. There is an attempt to demystify Buddhism and its supernatural elements and argue for an identical nature of modern science and the teachings of the Buddha. Within this project Māra is transformed from a mythical figure to psychological components. Using Carl Jung’s notion of ‘shadow self’, Stephen Batchelor has argued that Māra is the ‘shadow self’ of Buddha, the dark part of human nature. This is an updated interpretation of Māra for the new western audiences. Contrary to Batchelor, the author argues that another practitioner, Puṇṇadhammo, has adapted a different reading of Māra. In Puṇṇadhammo’s reading Māra has reinvented himself with more powerful and seductive tools (modern technologies like internet, etc.) through which he can trap individuals in modern times.While it would be unreasonable to expect the author—who has already undertaken a commendable and extensive scholarly task—to also engage with the post-Mahāyāna trajectories of the figure of Māra within South Asia, this remains a promising area of inquiry for scholars of South Asian religious and intellectual history. In fact, the centrality of Saṁsāra and Māyā in the Bhakti and more specifically in the Nātha tradition could be an interesting arena to explore the afterlife of Māra in South Asia. Also, it would be fruitful to examine how Navayāna Buddhists—emerging in the wake of BR Ambedkar’s 1956 conversion to Buddhism—interpret and position Māra within the broader contours of the Buddhist tradition.Overall, the book is an important addition to Buddhist studies especially on the mythologies of evil. At the same time, some chapters are useful exercises in intra-religion exchanges of characters within the framework of dialogue between traditions. The author has successfully managed to capture the story of Māra beyond the spatial limits of Indian history without flattening the nuances which are possible in the studies of a longue durée nature.”
—Chandrabhan P Yadav teaches History at the National Law School of India University, Bengaluru, The Book Review, Volume XLIX Number 6 June 2025