Review Kr Norman

8/3/2019 Review Kr Norman

1/6

REVIEWS

Untersuchungen zur buddhistischen Literature. Bearbeit von Frank

Bandurski, Bhikkhu Pasadika, Michael Schmidt, Bangwei Wang

(Sanskrit-Worterbuch der buddhistischen Texte aus den Turfan-Funden,

Beiheft 5), pp. 203, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, G ottingen, 1994. DM

75.00.

A brief editorial introduction (pp. 56) by Heinz Bechert, the editor of

the series, is followed by four contributions which have in common the

fact that they are all concerned with some aspect of Buddhist literature.

In the first ( Ubersicht uber die G ottinger Sammlungen der von R ahula

Sa _nkr

tyayana in Tibet aufgefundenen buddhistischen Sanskrit-Texte,

pp. 9126), Frank Bandurski deals with the G ottingen collection of

photographs of Buddhist MSS taken by the Indian Sanskritist R

ahulaSa _nkr

tyayana (=RS). RS made four journeys to Tibet in 1929/30,

1934, 1936 and 1938, searching for Sanskrit MSS. Conditions for

photography cannot have been easy. There were difficulties, either in

his photographic equipment or the use he made of it, as is shown by the

occasional blurring of the photographs which editors have commented

upon.1 In addition, certain practices which RS adopted, presumably in

the attempt to make the task of photographing the MSS easier, or to eke

out his supplies, such as squeezing as many folios into one exposure as

he could, overlapping folios, and holding the folios down with drawingpins, led to the loss of aks.

aras.2

The negatives, on glass and film, were brought back to the Bihar

Research Society in Patna, and were later deposited in the Kashi Prasad

Jayaswal Research Institute in Patna, and lists of the MSS which had

been photographed were published in the Journal of the Bihar Oriental

Research Society. The majority of the MSS are of texts in Buddhist

Sanskrit and Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit, but there are also some Ny aya

texts in Sanskrit, and texts in Tibetan, Sinhalese, Tamil, and one in

Apabhram.

sa (Sarahas Doh

ako

sa). Some of the MSS are now in Peking,one or two are known to be elsewhere, but the fate of the majority is quite

unknown. The difficulty of getting information about the photographs

and of obtaining prints from India has meant that full use has not

been made of RSs collection but, thanks mainly to Dr Gustav Roth,

Indo-Iranian Journal 40: 157194, 1997.c

1997 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.


2/6

158 REVIEWS

there is now in G ottingen a complete set of photographs from the RS

negatives. It is therefore a simple matter to obtain photographs of thosephotographs, and Bandurskis catalogue provides an invaluable guide

to the collection.

After a general introduction giving information about the materials

on which the MSS are written, the scripts employed, and dating, full

information is given about each MS, including the size, the number of

folios, the number of lines per folio, the script, the clarity of the print,

the identification, where possible, of the texts it contains, and anything

which is known about its present whereabouts. Bandurski goes further

than this, by giving information about any editions which exist of texts

included in the collection, whether based upon RSs photographs or

not. He also includes information about other ancillary material, e.g.

studies of those texts. He gives some additions to this (p. 116), but

further additions could be made. For example: Bandurski lists (pp. 81

82) the editions of the Dharmapada by Shukla, Roth and Cone, and

Cones translation, but makes no reference to Roths corrections to

his edition which are appended to the reprint of that edition in Roths

Selected Papers,3 nor to the present reviewers paper Notes on the

Patna Dharmapada.4 Other information could have been given more

clearly. For example: he refers in an oblique way to the indexes which

have been made to the editions of Shukla and Roth,5 but it might have

been helpful to have given more complete bibliographical information,

since not everyone has easy access to the article in Bukky o Kenky u

which he quotes. Similarly, readers who cannot find Kvrnes 1986

Bangkok study of the Cary ag ti (p. 48) in their local libraries might

have benefitted from the information that this is merely a reprint of

his 1977 Oslo publication.

6

Bandurski concludes his catalogue withindexes of authors (p. 123) and of the titles of texts (pp. 12426). The

latter could have been made even more helpful by adding symbols to

indicate which texts have been published and which are now in Peking.

In the second contribution (Abhidharma-Zitate aus der

Abhidharmakosavyakhy a, der Abhidharmad pa-Vibh as.

aprabhavr

tti und

dem Arthaviniscayas utra-Nibandhana, pp. 12754) Bhikkhu P asadika

lists the citations from the Abhidharma in these three texts, and gives

an index of the sources quoted.

In 1920 Ridding and La Valle

e Poussin published an edition of a frag-mentary Nepalese manuscript of a Bhiks.

un.

-Karmav acana which they

confidently asserted belonged to the Sarv astiv adin school. On the basis of

this proposed affiliation material from this text continued to be included

in the Sanskrit-Worterbuch der buddhistischen Texte aus den Turfan-


3/6

REVIEWS 159

Funden (=SWTF), which since Part 4 has been restricted to Sarv astiv adin

texts. In the third contribution to this volume (Zur Schulzugeh origkeiteiner Handschrift der Bhiks

.

un.

-Karmavacana, pp. 15564), Michael

Schmidt, who has recently re-edited the text, gives clear evidence, based

upon a detailed comparison with the M ulasarvastiv adin Pratimoks.

as utra,

that suggestions that the text belongs to the M ulasarvastiv adin school

are correct. Its material will therefore no longer be included in SWTF

but, as the editor states (p. 5), will be included in a future dictionary

of M ulasarvastivadin texts.

In the fourth contribution (Buddhist Nikayas through Ancient Chinese

Eyes, pp. 165203) Bangewei Wang (=BW) considers the evidence

found in Chinese sources for knowledge of the nikayas, or schools,

into which Buddhism had already been divided in India before its

introduction into China.

He deals with the material in three sections. In the early period, up to

the fifth century A.D., the Chinese sources contain no direct references to

the Buddhist nikayas, and it is probable that little if anything was known

about them at that time. The earliest information about the nikayas is

found in relation to the translations of Vinaya texts. Catalogues and the

prefaces to translations, where still extant, sometimes give information

about the affiliation of these vinaya texts. It was not until about the

beginning of the fifth century A.D. that Chinese Buddhists began to try

to obtain and translate all available vinaya texts. The newly translated

texts shed light upon the nikaya situation which until then had, because

of the limited range of translations, not been clear to the Chinese.

Moreover, Chinese pilgrims in their accounts of their visits to India

give a great deal of information about the nikayas, although some of their

statements are not entirely clear. BW deals (p. 177) with Xuanzangsstatement that there existed in India and Sri Lanka a nikaya called

Mahayana Sthavira. He refers to and rejects Lamottes explanation that

they were [Sthaviras] influenced to a certain degree by Mah ayanist

theories, and explains that the Mah ayana Sthavira is a Mah ayanist

monastic community among the Therav adins, although this statement

seems too imprecise to clarify the position completely. He does not

refer to Becherts explanation:7 The Mahayana-Sthaviravadin are those

sections of the Sthaviravada community who had accepted Mahayana

doctrines although they still belonged to Sthavirav

ada school as faras bhiks.

u ordination and vinaya-karma was concerned. BW does,

however, go on to say (p. 179): All Buddhist monks, whether they are

Mahayanists or H nayanists, always use, even today without exception,

the so-called H nayana vinaya and lead their religious life basically


4/6

160 REVIEWS

according to its rules. If this is so, then Mah ayana-Sthaviravadin would

indeed mean one ordained into the Sthaviravada but holding Mahayanadoctrines. Properly speaking, therefore, every Mah ayanist could be

designated as Mah ayana-Sarv astivadin or Mahayana-Dharmaguptaka,

or whatever, while every H nay anist could be designated in a comparable

way. BW summarises (p. 179 note 57; cf. p. 194 note 22) Xuanzangs

classification of the modes of Buddhism in India and Central Asia, which

includes: (1) communities belonging to a certain nikaya while their

members subscribe to H nayana theories, e.g. H nayana Sarvastiv adins;

(2) communities belonging to a certain nikaya while their members

subscribe to Mah ayana theories, e.g. Mah ayana Sthavira. This situation

would seem to be confirmed by the quotation from Yijing (p. 181):

Among these four nikayas [: : :

] some belong to Mah ayana and some

to H nay ana. The designation Mahayana Sthavira does not necessarily

imply a conversion to Mahayana, which Becherts definition might

perhaps be interpreted to mean. BW notes (p. 181) that some modern

definitions of Mahayana seem to be somewhat complicated, and he

quotes with approval Yijings definition: If one worships Bodhisattvas

and reads Mahayana scriptures, he will be called a Mah ayanist, otherwise

a H nayanist. Such a circular statement, however, seems hardly more

satisfactory than those which BW condemns. In the third section he deals

with the establishment of the nikayas in China. Although from the fourth

to the sixth centuries the Sarv astivadin nikaya tradition was strongest in

China, it seems that from the eight century onwards the Dharmaguptaka

vinaya tradition achieved a dominant position throughout the country.

Despite the importance of the M ula-Sarvastivadin vinaya for Indian

Buddhism, it seems to have come rather late into China and disappeared

fairly soon after Yijing translated it in the eighth century.Some of the information which BW gives can be augmented. He

states (p. 172) that the Up alipr

cchas utra might have some relation

to Theravadin Buddhism. He does not refer to de Jongs review8 of

V. Stache-Rosens translation and study of this text, in which it is

pointed out that there are closer parallels with the Pr atimoks.

as of the

Sarv astivadins and M ulasarvastivadins than with the P ali version.

His reference to evidence for the existence of the Mah asam.

ghikas

at Bamiy an also needs correcting and augmenting. His statement that

the discovery of its vinaya text in Sanskrit in B

amiy

an (pp. 16667) should be corrected to

: : :

of a fragment of its vinaya text. It is

worth noting that a re-examination of L evis material by Oskar von

Hin uber9 has revealed that another fragment probably belongs to the

Mahasam.

ghika-Lokottaravada-Vinaya.


5/6

REVIEWS 161

In three appendices BW gives English translations of portions of the

Chinese texts he has quoted: (1) The records of the four vinayas arrivingin China; (2) An account of the Sarv astivada nikaya; (3) Biographies

of prominent monks. In the footnotes to the third appendix (p. 195

note 22) he draws attention to the danger of determining the nikaya

affiliation of an individual monk on the basis of only one or two of his

works.

BW has not been well served by the person who is thanked by

name for checking and correcting the English of his paper. Despite

that checking, his translations include such infelicities as an A sokas

stupa (p. 191) and set back for home (p. 191); the use of articles is

haphazard: cf. in foreign language (pp. 188 and 199) with in a foreign

langauge (p. 188); the meaning of such sentences as His translation is

meticulous which looks like the Vibhas.

a was first composed (p. 190)

and who: : :

say there is an atman, not saying the phase of s unyata

(p. 190) is not immediately obvious.

There is no index of names, and no Chinese characters are printed

in the paper due, BW regrets (p. 166 note 1), to some technical diffi-

culties. Even if they could not be included in the text, one might have

thought that they could be given in an appendix. When anyone owning

a personal computer with the appropriate software can print Chinese

characters without difficulty it is regrettable that a commercial publisher

has to omit them, for whatever reason.

6, Huttles Green K. R. NORMAN

Shepreth, Royston,

Herts, SG8 6PR, U.K.

NOTES

1 As Dr M. Cone states of the Dharmapada: The photograph of the MS is noteasy to read and some of the leaves are blurred (Journal of the Pali Text SocietyXIII, 1989, p. 103).2 Cone says (ibid.): Some of the leaves are overlapped by others: drawing-pinsobscure some lines. Cf. Padmanabh S. Jaini, A few letters (two or three) of thefirst line of a large number of folios are lost under the drawing pins used by thephotographer in pinning the palm-leaves (Abhidharmadpa with Vibh as aprabh avr

tti,Patna, 1977, p. 135).3

G. Roth, Indian Studies (Selected Papers), Sri Satguru Publications, Delhi India,1986, pp. 45255.4 In Amal a Praj ~n a: Aspects of Buddhist Studies (Professor P. V. Bapat FelicitationVolume), Delhi, 1989, pp. 43144.5 Made by Tetsuya Tabata and published by the Abhidharma Research Institute,Kyoto, 1981 and 1982.6 Per Kvrne: An Anthology of Buddhist Tantric Songs: A Study of the Cary agti.


6/6

162 REVIEWS

(Det Norske Videnskap-Akademi: II. Hist.-Filos. Klasse Skrifter Ny Serie No. 14),

Oslo, 1977.7 H. Bechert, Notes on the formation of Buddhist Sects and the origins of Mah ayana,German Scholars on India, Vol. I, Varanasi 1973, pp. 618 (p. 13).8 Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 49, 3, 1986, pp. 59192.9 A fragment of the Mahasamghika-Lokottaravada-Vinaya from Bamiyan, Bulletind Etudes Indiennes 4, 1986, pp. 295303.

Paul J. Griffiths, On Being Buddha: The Classical Doctrine of Buddha-

hood, SUNY series, Towards a Comparative Philosophy of Religions,

Albany, State University of New York Press, 1994, 261 pp.

In his 1986 book, On Being Mindless: Buddhist Meditation and the

Mind-Body Problem, Paul Griffiths investigated the relationship between

philosophical theory and meditative practice in Buddhism taking as a

case study the attainment of cessation (nirodhasam apatti). As well as

offering a careful exposition of the position of several Buddhist schoolsGriffiths offered a critical assessment of their arguments and premises

thus moving beyond exegesis to normative evaluations through an

exercise in cross-cultural philosophising. Part of the rationale behind

this procedure was the desire to treat the material with a philosophical

seriousness often missing in the historical-critical approach characteristic

of much recent Western scholarship.

In his recent book published in the SUNY series, Towards a Compara-

tive Philosophy of Religions, entitled On Being Buddha: The Classical

Doctrine of Buddhahood, Griffiths adopts a similar approach. Herehe takes as his subject matter the classical doctrine of Buddhahood

expounded in the digests of the learned Buddhist doctors of Gupta and

immediately post-Gupta India. In this book the concerns with cross-

cultural philosophising foreshadowed in the earlier work are clearly

articulated. Early in the book he investigates the normative function

of doctrine with a view to providing a cross-cultural category which

could lead to a truly comparative philosophy. Griffiths hopes thereby to

avoid any kind of explanatory reductionism and, in some measure, to

correct what he regards as an excessively historicist approach to Bud-dhist thought. After expounding his theoretical formulations Griffiths

investigates specifically Buddhist doctrine and its exemplification

in the classical formulations on Buddhahood understood as highest

perfection or maximal greatness. The final chapter is given over to

Review Kr Norman

Documents

Transcript of Review Kr Norman