The Journal of the American Oriental Society
Vol.113 No.3
July-Sep 1993
Pp.511-512
Copyright by American Oriental Society
The essays collected in this volume are based on papers given during the 1987-1988 academic year in a seminar series at the School of Oriental and African Studies of the University of London. The series, entitled "The Buddhist Forum," was not organized in accordance with a single theme, but encompassed various aspects of Buddhism and was intended to "provide a forum for the presentation of new research and for the exchange of opinions and ideas." In "Recovering the Buddha's Message," R. F. Gombrich discusses the historical and intellectual context in which the earliest Buddhist scriptures, assumed to reflect the teaching of the Buddha himself, are to be read. He first briefly reviews certain methods by which it has been suggested that chronological layers can be discerned within texts: for example, stylistic criteria or inconsistencies in argument. As a general guide to interpretation, Gombrich supports analogous application of the textual principle of "difficilior potior" to the Buddhist teaching and argues that the tendency of later tradition would be to eliminate contradictions and inconsistencies that are thus more likely to derive from the Buddha himself. Further, assuming that the earliest teaching was based on direct mystical experience, Gombrich suggests that its linguistic expression would accordingly be multifaceted, given its attempt to describe in a variety of modes something not amenable to univocal discursive expression. Finally, Gombrich argues, with examples, for a closer reading of the Buddhist texts in a Vedic, brahmanical context; as objects of jokes or puns, or as foils for arguments, many Buddhist passages require knowledge of this context to be fully intelligible. In another contribution, "How the Mahayana Began," Gombrich offers a novel perspective on the long-discussed and still murky origins of Mahayana. The decisive event leading to the emergence of Mahayana, according to Gombrich, is the introduction of writing and the emergence of written texts. This enabled dissenting or heretical ideas to be preserved independent of what he sees as the inherent tendency of collective oral transmission toward status-quo standardization. Gombrich finds a confirming echo of this pivotal event in the predilection of Mahayana texts to celebrate their own worship in written form. In "Pali Philology and the Study of Buddhism," K. R. Norman argues for the pressing need for more philological work on Buddhist scriptures. Concisely and with well-chosen examples, he underscores that errors and ambiguities mar the reading of most published texts of Pali Buddhist scriptures. The textual deficiencies of Pali texts, and by extension other branches of the Buddhist tradition, Norman argues, cannot be ignored as trivial by scholars intent on larger doctrinal issues. Unless basic work is undertaken to produce sounder texts, interpretative arguments built on a porous textual foundation will ultimately founder. In a relatively longer essay, "How Buddhist is Theravada Buddhist Law? A Survey of Legal Literature in Pali-Land," A. Huxley undertakes to examine comparatively the development of "Buddhist secular law" in the "predecessor kingdoms" to modern Burma, Laos, Kampuchea, and Thailand (for which Huxley coins the neologism "Pali-land") in the period from 1044 to 1893 A.D. After a lengthy and detailed historical survey of the various genres of legal literature in each of the three regions, Huxley turns to a discussion of common underlying legal concepts in secular law of the Pali-land as a whole, and more briefly to the various Buddhist social contexts influencing the development of law in each subregion. In his conclusion, Huxley includes developments in Sri Lanka to throw further into relief the conditions that led to divergent and individual expressions of legal tradition in each culture. In his contribution, "Kill the Patriarchs," T. H. Barrett investigates the emergence of the notion of spiritual lineages in the Ch'an Buddhism of seventh-century China. After a short survey of recent Western and Japanese studies examining the historical background and context of the notion of authoritative tradition in China at that time, Barrett offers his own perspective focusing on the crisis of authority in Chinese Buddhism provoked by the new translations of the returned pilgrim Hsuan-tsang. One response to this crisis, Barrett suggests, was the assertion of the notion of an already established lineage of authoritative patriarchs, in the case of Ch'an, extending unbroken back through the key figure, Bodhidharma, to shadowy origins in India. In a second essay, "Exploratory Observations on Some Weeping Pilgrims," Barrett examines certain underlying, particularly Chinese, modes of intellectual and affective perception that shaped the experiences of medieval Chinese pilgrims to India--Fa-hsien, Hsuan-Tsang, and I-ching--and formalized the literary record of their journeys. Much of the unique character and interest of their experiences Barrett sees as springing from the contrasting and conflicting interaction of Chinese sensibility and Indian Buddhist belief heightened by the rare event of actual pilgrimage to India. In the final essay of this collection, "Images and Permutations of Vajrasattva in the Vajradhatu-Mandala," I. Astley-Kristensen explores some of the complex correspondences that configure the worship of Vajrasattva in the Naya Assembly sub-mandala of the important Vajradhatu-mandala. By tracing the scriptural sources, delineating the doctrinal precedents, and articulating the ritual form of this one sub-mandala, the author illustrates the remarkable degree of condensation of tradition effected by the Tantric Buddhist tradition. The editor is to be commended for bringing about the publication of this collection of essays so that a wider audience can also participate in some way in the evidently interesting seminars of "The Buddhist Forum" of the School of Oriental and African Studies. The volume contains essays of interest to scholars of varied specialized interests in Buddhist Studies and succeeds admirably in providing, as the editor notes, "a broad cross-section of British scholarship in Buddhist Studies today."