tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-193271072024-03-18T13:01:43.547+00:00Jayarava's RavesA truth is a belief that yields expected results when one acts upon it Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger615125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19327107.post-76786882951746889702024-02-16T10:26:00.000+00:002024-02-16T10:26:55.488+00:00History as Practiced by Philologists: A Response to Levman's Response to Drewes. <div style="text-align: justify;">
<p>In 2017, David Drewes published an article that is now famous or infamous, depending on your viewpoint. Drewes argued for the thesis that we cannot connect the Buddha to any historical facts and concludes that <i>historians </i>should stop referring to "the historical Buddha". His article has no abstract, so let me cite a passage from his introduction that seems to sum up his argument:</p>
<blockquote>On one hand, the Buddha is universally agreed to have lived; but, on the other, more than two centuries of scholarship have failed to establish anything about him. We are thus left with the rather strange proposition that Buddhism was founded by a historical figure who has not been linked to any historical facts, an idea that would seem decidedly unempirical, and only dubiously coherent. Stuck in this awkward situation, scholars have rarely been able to avoid the temptation to offer some suggestion as to what was likely, or ‘must’ have been, true about him. By the time they get done, we end up with a flesh and blood person – widely considered to be one of the greatest human beings ever to have lived – conjured up from little more than fancy. (2017: 1)</blockquote>
<p>When Drewes says that "the Buddha is not linked to any historical facts", he means that there is no contemporary <i>documentation </i>of the Buddha. There are no eyewitness accounts of the Buddha, and there are no contemporary coins, inscriptions, or documents of any kind. There was no writing anywhere in India prior to the mid-third century BCE. This is indisputable. However, Drewes' article has engendered much disputation, of which Bryan Levman's (2019) response in the <i>Canadian Journal of Buddhist Studies </i>is a prominent example.</p><p>In this essay, I will review Levman's (2019) response to Drewes. I will let Levman introduce his own argument. The abstract of his article says:</p>
<blockquote>This article is a response to David Drewes’ hypothesis (2017: 1-25) that the Buddha was a mythic figure who did not necessarily exist as a historical fact. The article suggests that there are four criteria by which the Buddha’s historicity can be established, none of which were discussed by Drewes: 1) the historical facts presented in the Buddhist canon which are corroborated by non-canonical sources, 2) the fact that there is no plausible alternative explanation for the provenance of the teachings 3) the humanness of the Buddha as presented in the canon belies the purported mythologization which Drewes asserts and 4) a core biography of the Founder can be discerned in the Buddhist canon, once later interpolations are removed. </blockquote>
<p>Bryan Levman is an expert philologist who has specialised in the history of language in India. He has quite a chequered past, however, we are concerned here with his writing as a Buddhologist. </p><p>One of the notable features of Levman's vehement disagreement with <a href="https://jayarava.blogspot.com/2024/01/we-will-never-know-what-language-buddha.html">Stefan Karpik</a> over what language the Buddha spoke was that, amidst deploying abstruse arguments and accusing each other of incompetence, neither of them expressed any doubt whatsoever about the Buddha as a historical character. They both took the historicity of the Buddha for granted. </p><p>Both Drewes and Levman reference "historical facts" but in retrospect it's clear that they are using this phrase very differently from each other. Indeed, I would say that they are operating in quite distinct epistemes. So my first task is to define a "historical fact". I will take a historian's view of this issue. </p><br /><p style="text-align: center;"><b>Historical Facts</b></p><p>Historians argue about methods and aims a great deal but they all broadly agree that history is the study of people and societies <i>through documents</i>. As historian, John Vincent (2006: 9), puts it:</p><blockquote>"Historical study requires verbal evidence, with marginal exceptions. And this verbal evidence, with all respect to the fascination of oral history, is nearly all written evidence." </blockquote>
<p>Documents are defined as broadly as possible. Any form of <i>written </i>evidence can be considered, including coins and inscriptions. Vincent (2006: 10), again, says: "History is about literate societies, and strongly tilted, at very least, towards literate people in literate societies". Richard J. Evans (1997: 75) cites Sir Geoffrey Elton's definition:</p><p></p><blockquote>A historical fact was something that happened in the past, which had left traces in documents which could be used by historians to reconstruct it in the present. </blockquote><p></p><p>Evans (1997: 76) notes that this view was expressed in direct contrast to E. H. Carr's view that "a past event did not become a historical fact until it was accepted as such by historians." Carr's view turns out to be untenable since he confuses "fact" with "evidence". This gives us a useful distinction: a <i>fact </i>is something that happened, and <i>evidence </i>is an attempt to use that fact to argue for a particular view of history. Evans (1997: 80) again:</p><p></p><blockquote><p>What is at issue, therefore, is how historians use documents not to establish discreet facts, but as evidence for establishing the larger patterns that connect them. </p><p></p></blockquote><p>A "historical fact", then, is a <i>documented </i>fact. To be a historical fact about a particular time requires that the document be authored by someone who lived at that time. In effect, historical facts are eyewitness accounts preserved in documents. Determining the veracity or trustworthiness of such accounts is bread and butter for historians. </p><p>Alexander Wynne (2019: 100) suggests that "Good evidence for the Buddha would perhaps be his mention in a non-Buddhist document from the fifth century BC." This is an example of someone confusing "facts" and "evidence". To provide us with <i>facts </i>about the Buddha, presuming he lived in the fifth century CE, a document <i>must </i>be from the fifth century BCE. Wynne admits that no such documents exist. If he were a historian he would admit that the absence of documents of any kind means that we cannot write a history of India in the fifth century. We have to step aside and let archaeologists and anthropologist do their work. Wynne continues to argue <i>sans any relevant facts </i>for another fifty pages. </p><p>NB: Historians don't typically refer to facts or evidence as "good" or "bad". A fact may be <i>true </i>or <i>false</i>, but not "good" or "bad". Similarly a fact may constitute "salient" or "relevant" evidence for a particular argument or not. </p><p>Importantly for this discussion, <i>an inference is not a fact</i>. At best an inference is an interpretation based on a fact or facts. Moreover, logical inferences are validated or invalidated against sets of axioms. It's all too obvious that for Levman, Karpik, and Wynne, the existence of the historical Buddha is <i>axiomatic</i>. Each of their projects is tendentiously seeking to prove what they take on faith. And each erroneously takes their own inferences, validated against their article of faith, to be "historical facts". </p><p>Long before Drewes joined the fray, historian Jonathan S, Walters (1999: 248) wrote:</p>
<blockquote>I think it fair to say that among contemporary historians of the Theravāda, there has been a marked shift from attempting to say much of anything at all about "early Buddhism". Whereas earlier scholars tended to ignore post-Aśokan Buddhist history as corrupt, more recent scholars have tended to regard early Buddhism as unknowable. </blockquote>
<p>The Buddha lived in a pre-literate society and thus in a <i>prehistoric </i>society. A history of a <i>pre-literate </i>society or person is a contradiction in terms. In the context of history as a field or discipline, what Drewes says is entirely uncontroversial<i> </i>and in keeping with the theory and methods of modern historiography. (Note: I take <i>historiography </i>to mean "the act of, and methods used in, writing of history")</p><p>It is surprising that anyone who knows anything at all about historiography would take issue with this. It turns out that those who disagree with Drewes don't seem to know about historiography. In my conclusion, I will offer a possible explanation of why philologists and linguists, in particular, might disagree with historians' definition of "historical facts". However, we have first to address Levman's attempts to prove Drewes wrong.</p><br />
<p style="text-align: center;"><b>Levman's Arguments Against Drewes.</b></p>
<p><b>1. Corroboration. </b></p>
<p>Levman's first objection is "the historical facts presented in the Buddhist canon which are corroborated by non-canonical sources". Leaving aside, for the moment, the problem of what, if any "historical facts" are presented in the Buddhist canon (and <i>when</i> they refer to), let's look at Levman's examples of corroboration:</p>
<blockquote>"The Asokan rock edicts for example, contain numerous references to the Buddha, the earliest going back to shortly after his coronation in 268 BCE." (28). </blockquote>
<p>However, even if the Asokan corpus does refer to the Buddha, it was composed <i>after </i>268 BCE. Most scholars guess that the Buddha died around the year 400 BCE (see Norman 2008: 50-52) but this is far from certain and in conflict with <i>all</i> the existing Buddhist traditions which place his death at 486 CE or earlier. The Asokan documents reflect a view from a least 170 years after the putative lifetime of the Buddha (possibly considerably more). This is not an eyewitness account or even a second-hand account. Something that no one seems to have remarked on is that, by the time the edicts were composed, Asoka was a <i>Buddhist convert </i>who appeared to have a certain amount of <i>convert zeal</i>. </p><p>The Asokan edicts are <i>not </i>evidence of the historicity of the Buddha. At best, they reflect beliefs <i>about </i>the Buddha from a later period, as expressed by a latter-day Buddhist convert, who dedicated his early life to brutal wars of conquest and had a lot of bad karma to make up for.</p>
<p>This is a clear example of Levman making a hypothetical <i>inference </i>based on the Asokan corpus and treating his inference as a "historical fact" based on his pre-existing belief in the historicity of the Buddha. By the way, no one argues against the idea of a community of Buddhists existing in the third century BCE. This <i>is </i>a historical fact. Levman's (2019: 29) next argument is:</p>
<blockquote>The presumed historical existence of the Buddha is reflected in many of the early suttas where the Buddha is situated in actual historical places alongside real historical figures.</blockquote>
<p>Note the phrase "presumed historical existence of the Buddha". This is Levman's presumption, not mine. As an example, he continues:</p><blockquote>"We know, for example, from other sources, that the kings (Ajātasattu, Bimbisāra, Pasenadi) the Buddha meets with were real historical figures." </blockquote>
<p>It is simply not true that Ajātasattu, Bimbisāra, and Pasenadi are historical figures. As with the Buddha, there are no contemporary documents connected with any of these names. As kings, they left no trace of historical evidence, because <i>there was no writing in India at that time</i>. Given this, Levman's attempts to back up his assertion are surprisingly half-hearted. For example, Levman casually mentions references to Bimbisāra and Ajātasattu in "Jain texts" (without any citation). However, this is to completely ignore the history of Jain literature. Johannes Bronkhorst (2020) comments:</p><p></p><blockquote>Our most important sources of information regarding early Jainism are found in the canon preserved by the Śvetāmbara Jains. Unfortunately, this canon was given its definitive form at a late date, some 980 years after Mahāvīra according to a Jain tradition, that is, 454 or 514 CE.</blockquote><p></p><p>The Jains themselves tell us that all of their early literature was lost and then later reconstructed. Jain literature is all <i>considerably younger </i>than, and owes a difficult-to-quantify debt to, Buddhist literature. Bronkhorst (2020) again:</p><p></p><blockquote>We have already seen that the <i>Sūtrakṛtāṅga Sūtra </i>is one of the oldest texts contained in the Śvetāmbara canon. However, the contents of even this relatively old text date from long after Mahāvīra. This is clear from the following: the <i>Sūtrakṛtāṅga Sūtra </i>shows acquaintance with the innovations that had taken place in northwestern Buddhism in the 2nd century BCE. </blockquote><p></p><p>Jain literature can tell us nothing at all about the putative lifetime of the Buddha because, although it mentions events in the past, it was <i>written down </i>much later even than Buddhist literature. Moreover, the references Jain literature makes to the Buddha are vague. As Bollée (1974: 27) says:</p>
<blockquote>It is only in the post-canonical period, and especially when the Jains begin to write in Sanskrit, that in our sources the railings at undefined opponents with more or less ambiguous statements about their views make way for more concrete philosophical arguing with different schools, among whom the Buddhists gradually come to the front to such an extent that <i>śākyādayaḥ </i>as a comprehensive expression for various heretics becomes dominating.</blockquote>
<p>Similarly, Levman cites "Sanskrit genealogies... [in] <i>Purāṇas</i>, and so forth." Levman does not give an example from or even the name of a <i>Purāṇa </i>text, so it's difficult to know what he is referring to here. As far as the <i>Purāṇa </i>literature goes, it is impossible to accurately date the composition of any given <i>Purāṇa </i>text. The most plausible dating scenarios suggest they were composed <i>well into </i>the Common Era. </p><p>So Levman's examples "corroborated facts" are <i>not factual </i>and <i>are not corroborated</i>. And the whole article follows this pattern. </p><p>Levman goes on to discuss stories from various suttas as though they were evidence of historicity, but we've already seen that historians have long considered this to be folly. The suttas are not documents <i>from </i>the fifth century BCE. At best they reflect beliefs from the late first century BCE, but more likely even later. That idea the suttas reflect an earlier time is <i>not </i>a fact, it is <i>an inference</i>. Inferences about the past are <i>not </i>historical facts. </p>
<p>There is another caveat here. The oldest extant Pāli document of any kind is a partial manuscript from the fifth century CE (Stargardt 1995). The next oldest is a fragment from the ninth century. There are no Pāli manuscripts from the first century, though there are Gāndhārī texts from that period. </p><p>The idea that the Pāli texts were written down in the first century is based on uncorroborated claims made in the <i>Dīpavaṃsa </i>and <i>Mahāvāṃsa</i>, which are relatively late texts composed in Sri Lanka. The <i>Mahāvaṃsa </i>(33.100) states that the canon and its commentaries were committed to writing in the reign of King Vaṭṭagāmiṇi (29-17 BCE) at the Alu-vihāra in Sri Lanka.</p><p>The authors of the <i>Mahāvaṃsa </i>lived thousands of miles and hundreds of years distant from the events they purport to describe. Moreover, as Jonathan Walters (2000) has pointed out:</p>
<blockquote>Scholars who have treated the Vaṃsas as history have ignored the indications that they were written within (and should be understood within) a temporal and causal framework different from that which we know in the modern West.</blockquote><p>In other words, Levman is guilty of the fallacy of <i>presentism </i>since he apparently assumes his own, modern, linear sense of time and causality applies to this ancient <i>religious </i>text. Similarly, Kristin Scheible (2016) has cast doubt on the naive use of the <i>Mahāvaṃsa </i>as a historical source. The clear trend in scholarship on the Vaṃsa literature is towards <i>dehistoricizing </i>it. The majority of modern historians don't consider the <i>Mahāvāṃsa </i>to be a straightforward record of history anymore. To some extent, Levman anticipates this objection and his response is telling:</p>
<blockquote>The alternative, that somehow a pseudo-historical figure was fabricated out of whole cloth or evolved on its own <i>does not make rational sense</i>. (Emphasis added)</blockquote>
<p>This is an example of the informal fallacy of <i>argument from incredulity</i>. Wynne (2019) and others are similarly incredulous. We don't even learn <i>why </i>Levman thinks that it "does not make rational sense". Presumably, this is because the historicity of the Buddha is a given in his view. It's not irrational to believe that human storytellers might have invented a heroic figure to be the protagonist of their stories. Since this is exactly what storytellers do, it would be more surprising if Buddhists did not do it (as I will argue below, we see them doing exactly this at every stage of Buddhist literature). That such stories might have evolved as they were repeated orally for centuries, is exactly what I expect. </p><p>Levman finally finds some purchase on <i>historical facts </i>seven pages into his article when he introduces the issue of how accurately the Pāli stories present geographical information, and accurately reflect the flora and fauna of the Ganges Valley. This strategy is also employed by Wynne (2019). However, the fact that Sāvatthī, for example, was a real city is not evidence that the Buddha was a real person. Rather, it is evidence that the Pāli authors knew Sāvatthī from first-hand experience or got reliable second-hand descriptions. </p><br />
<p><b>2. Aetiology</b></p>
<p>Levman's second argument is to ask: "If the Buddha is indeed a mythic figure, how did his teachings arise?" He argues that if we say his explanation is not <i>the </i>explanation then we are bound to offer an alternative explanation. This is not the case. </p><p>The drift of Drewes's argument is to say that in the absence of historical facts (i.e. contemporary documentation) there is nothing that we can interpret to create a historical narrative. The absence of historical facts means that <i>historians </i>have to accept that they are ignorant and <i>stop talking</i>. Moreover, the old Roman legal principle applies:</p>
<blockquote><i>Onus probandi incumbit ei qui dicit, non ei qui negat</i>. <br />The burden of proof lies with the one who asserts, not the one who denies</blockquote>
<p>Levman is making assertions, so the burden of proof lies with him. We've already seen that the standard of the "evidence" Levman cites is insufficient to make his case. Indeed, although he repeatedly mentions "historical facts", Levman has presented none. Rather he presents his speculations about what the facts might have been, validated against his axiomatic belief in the historical Buddha, and treats this mess as "facts". There is no documentation from the time he wishes to historicise. Historians don't engage in the <i>reconstruction of facts</i>. They use facts as evidence to construct a story about the past. </p><p>In making the observation that there are no contemporary documents from which to construct a history of that period, Drewes has done his job as a historian. Explaining <i>prehistory </i>is not the job of historians; it is the job of archaeologists and anthropologists. For example, there are interesting archaeological accounts of the second urbanisation based on the distribution of pot-making technology, which gives us the "two cultures hypothesis" (see e.g. Samuel 2008: 48 ff.). Neither Levman nor Karpik mentions this hypothesis. </p><p>Levman (36) continues </p>
<blockquote>Over the twenty-five centuries since the Buddha lived and taught, billions of people have responded to his teachings of relief from suffering through the realization of selflessness; the four-fold saṅgha of upāsakas and upāsikās, bhikkhus and bhikkhunis has lasted in an uninterrupted continuum from then to the present day. Are we to say that these teachings were simply invented or evolved? Is that even possible?</blockquote>
<p>It's apparent here, again, that for Levman the historicity of the Buddha is not in question. It is something that he takes for granted. He's not making an argument from facts, he is stating a belief about what the facts might have been. And there are at least two other fallacies involved here. </p><p>"Billions" is probably an exaggeration. The fact that a million people believe a myth is not a reason to consider it <i>historical</i>. This appeal to the authority of the masses is called the <i>bandwagon fallacy</i>. Moreover, millions of people (more often than not, the <i>very same </i>millions of people) have also believed that the Buddha <i>performed miracles</i><i>. </i>Levman does not consider this other testimony from the same source to be a "historical fact". If the bandwagon fallacy applies, then Levman should be arguing that the historical Buddha <i>did miracles </i>as a matter of historical fact. </p>
<p>In "Is it even possible?" we also have another <i>argument from incredulity</i>. Levman has twice now asked his readers, "Could the teachings have been invented and then evolved?" So let's look at how we might answer him. </p><p>From Buddhist literature, we know that Buddhist teachings evolved constantly while there was life in Indian Buddhism (and also that it continued to evolve outside of India). Even within the Pāli texts, we see clear evidence of the evolution of Buddhist doctrines, from archaic formulations later refined or abandoned, to the emergence of <i>abhidharma-</i>style lists. This evolution is frequently used as evidence for the antiquity and authenticity of the Pāli suttas. In fact, every documented Buddhist sect in history eventually <a href="https://jayarava.blogspot.com/2023/11/why-did-buddhists-abandon-buddhavana.html"><i>abandoned Buddhavacana </i>in favour of new doctrines</a>.</p><p>We also know that ancient Buddhists invented new buddhas<i>. </i>We know, for example, that Buddhists invented the "buddhas of the past" to compete with the Jains and their lists of <i>tīrthaṅkaras</i>. And this happened early enough to become <i>canonical</i>. We also know that, before the Common Era, Buddhists were busy inventing new buddhas <i>ex nihilo</i>,<i> </i>e.g. Amitābha, Akṣobhya, and Bhaiṣyajagūru. In addition, they invented a whole new class of ahistorical awakened beings, i.e. bodhisatvas such as Mañjuśrī and Avalokitasvara (later Avalokiteśvara).</p>
<p>Since the invention of both doctrines and buddhas are observed at every point in <i>documented </i>Buddhist history, it makes no sense to argue that such processes were unknown before the advent of writing. Here we see how Levman's <i>a priori </i>beliefs skew his arguments towards tendentious conclusions. If later mentions of the Buddha are "evidence", the later inventions of buddhas are also "evidence" <i>in the same way</i>. Levman considers the former to be factual and does not consider the latter at all. </p><p>Interestingly, Roy Norman (2008: 47), notes that the words <i>buddha </i>and <i>jina </i>are common to both Buddhism and Jainism, meaning that "there were <i>buddhas </i>and there were <i>jinas </i>before the beginning of both Buddhism and Jainism". If buddhas predate Buddhism then it is entirely possible, for example, that the protagonist of the Pāli suttas is a composite of numerous buddhas. This might explain variations in terminology. </p><p>In answer to Levman's question—<i>Is that even possible?</i>—then, I would answer, that it is not only possible that Buddhists invented doctrines and that those doctrines evolved; it was the <i>norm</i>. The invention of buddhas was also normative. The Buddha and his doctrines could easily have been "fabricated out of whole cloth" and this would have been entirely in keeping with trends we see everywhere in Buddhism and in other world mythologies. So Levman's incredulity is not probative; it's just an expression of his ignorance. </p><p>Levman finishes this section by recapitulating his assertion that the bandwagon fallacy applies. This tells us that his invocation of this fallacy was not a mistake. He appears to genuinely think that the bandwagon fallacy is a valid historical method. </p><br />
<p><b>3. The Humanness of the Buddha</b></p>
<p>Levman's third argument is that amongst all the many supernatural features of the protagonist of the Buddhist suttas, are some human details. These details he draws from Pāli texts that were not written down until some <i>400-500 years </i>after the events that they purport to describe. Detailing all of the fallacies that this argument involves would be tedious, however, there is one informal fallacy here that it is worth focussing on since it also cropped up earlier. </p><p>On any given page of the Pāli canon, we are likely to encounter both human details and superhuman details attributed to the Buddha by the author(s). By "superhuman" here, I mean qualities that involve magic or the supernatural, such as miracles, psychic powers, visiting god realms, and so on; anything that breaks the laws of physics as we know them.</p><p>From this body of literature, Levman cites examples of one type of detail and not the other, and the only examples he cites are those that support his view. But he does not tell us why or how he made this distinction and doesn't admit that there are a huge number of passages that <i>don't </i>support his view. In using selected examples that are not representative of the whole literature, he appears to believe that what fits his presuppositions is positive evidence for his conclusions and what does not fit <i>is not evidence at all</i>. This is called the <i>cherry-picking fallacy</i>. </p><p>In fact, the Pāli authors almost always included <i>both </i>kinds of details and there is little or no sign that they made the kind of distinction that Levman takes to be a given. The authors apparently didn't think in terms of "historical facts" and "extraneous magical thinking that can safely be ignored". As far as the authors of the Pāli Canon were concerned, it's all undifferentiated <i>buddhavacana</i>,<i> </i>including the miracles and magic. Levman seeks to impose his modernist distinctions on an ancient literature that definitely did not make that distinction. So this is also an example of the <i>presentism fallacy</i>.</p>
<p>All stories contain human details, even when they are about non-humans because this is how stories work. Drewes (2017: 19) notes that many other mythic figures are fleshed out by storytellers:</p>
<blockquote>There may similarly have been an actual person behind the mythical Agamemnon, Homer, or King Arthur; Vyāsa, Vālmīki, Kṛṣṇa, or Rāma, but this does not make it possible to identify them as historical. </blockquote>
<p>After many pages of fallacious argument in this style, we find Levman asserting:</p>
<blockquote>If the Buddha were indeed a mythic character, surely this kind of human material, where the Founder is portrayed as old and weak, would be the first to go (44).</blockquote>
<p>In Christian hermeneutics, unflattering details about Jesus—such as being betrayed to his death by his own followers—are given <i>extra </i>significance because of the <i>principle of embarrassment </i>(c.f. <i><a href="https://jayarava.blogspot.com/2023/07/meiers-historicity-criteria.html">Meier's Historicity Criteria</a></i>). Stories about real people would be expected not to include unflattering details <i>unless they were true</i>, so such details can be taken to be more likely to be factual. This is not a criterion that can be applied in isolation and we would want to see documentary corroboration from another source but, still, the inclusion of negative qualities makes a protagonist seem <i>more </i>real, not less. </p>
<p>Compare some examples from Greek mythology. I think of the myth of Prometheus—almost certainly not based on a real person—who creates humans and <i>steals </i>fire from Zeus for us. Zeus doesn't take fire away from us, but he does punish Prometheus for eternity and creates Pandora's box (which introduces evil into the world via women's curiosity about the world). Zeus himself was guilty of numerous rapes and other forms of brutality. I think also of Hephaestus who was born lame, rejected by his mother, fell hopelessly in love with Aphrodite, and experienced overwhelming jealousy towards Ares. Or think of capricious Yahweh who, <i>enraged </i>by human conduct, wiped out humanity and started again from Noah and his family, but who apparently still applied the doctrine of original sin to justify oppressing humanity with difficulty and pain. </p><p>Does myth-making always exclude the negative? <i>By no means. </i>The gods have all of humanity's foibles, often in extreme forms. Suppose the inventive storyteller wanted us to believe in the historicity of the Buddha. The little negative details are exactly the kind of qualities they would include, be it historical fact or pious fiction. Human details make fictional characters relatable and memorable. </p><p>So there is no reason to assume that human details attributed to the Buddha reflect historical facts. </p><br /><p><b>4. Biographical</b></p><p>Finally, Levman argues "But discoverable in the canon is evidence of an early, core biography preserving the authentic history of a real person in an unembellished state. Is this also invented?" (26). </p><p>Note again the incredulity. We have already established that the only <i>documented </i>history can be "authentic" and the documents that Levman cites are from at least 400 years after the period he wishes to historicise (and probably much longer). Levman's method here is no more than the interpretation of scripture, a procedure already long discredited amongst historians when Drewes wrote his article. Much of what Levman writes in this section takes the form of "hand waving", e.g. </p>
<blockquote>This may or may not represent something close to the actual words of the historical Buddha; the simplicity and candor of the statement do seem to reflect a “certain genuineness” on the part of the speaker (47).</blockquote>
<p>The idea of "a certain genuineness" is vague and <i>subjective </i>and Levman's use of scare quotes here suggests that he was aware of this. It's all too apparent that Levman finds passages to be "genuine" when they confirm his belief and when he does not find that confirmation he does not discuss them at all (cherry-picking fallacy). </p><p>More importantly, how would anyone <i>know</i> if any words from any source reflected the "actual words" of the "historical" Buddha? Given the lack of contemporary documentation, what is the yardstick here? No one disputes that the Buddha was a non-literate person living in a non-literate society. There <i>are </i>no possible corroborating sources from the fifth century BCE. </p>
<p>Identifying common elements in versions of a story does not make them truer, if anything it just makes them seem older. How old, we have no idea. The idea that older = truer is a fallacy known as <i>appealing to tradition</i>. The "simplicity" of an idea has never been a criterion for its historicity.</p><p>The problem here is that the further back in time we go, the more partial and fragmentary are our witnesses to history. Fewer and fewer sources may well give the illusion of increasing simplicity, when in fact it's just a paucity of sources. There is no <i>a priori </i>reason that the past should be any less complex than the present (at least in historical terms). As Graeber and Wengrow (2021) have amply demonstrated in their first two chapters, those people the Europeans described as "simple" and even "savage" were usually anything but. Arguably the indigenous Americans encountered by Europeans were far more socially and politically sophisticated than their European counterparts. Notably, it was Europeans who adopted American ideas—like individual liberty—rather than the other way around.</p>
<p>How does Levman <i>know </i>that any statement in Pāli is "candid"? He claims to be concerned with rational conclusions, but what <i>rational </i>criteria can he possibly apply to arrive at this "insight"? This is all just <i>confirmation bias. </i>This section finishes with a flourish of hand-waving</p>
<blockquote>Of his true roots we know very little, beyond the few snippets which are buried in the canon, or can be reasonably surmised based on the evidence. All of the material I have been able to find is summarized in my 2013 article. But though his background has been mythologized, this does not make him a mythological character, just someone whose true roots have been obscured and excised for purposes of social and political acceptance.</blockquote>
<p>This is what Drewes was referring to at the outset when he said, "scholars have rarely been able to avoid the temptation to offer some suggestion as to what was likely, or ‘must’ have been, true about him."</p><p></p><p>In point of fact, of the Buddha's "true roots", we know nothing. The snippets that conform to Levman's views are dwarfed by an avalanche of passages that do not. Levman systematically ignores the vast bulk of the Pāli canon because <i>it doesn't support his argument</i>. There are literally no documentary facts upon which any reasonable surmise might be based. And Levman has not introduced any new facts and inferences are not facts. </p><p>Levman sums up by repeating the numerous fallacies already listed. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that Levman doesn't understand the theories and methods of modern historiography. He completely misses the significance and importance of Drewes's argument. </p><p><br /></p><p><b>Summing up</b></p><p>At this point, I would characterise Levman's article as an example of what historiographer Carl R. Trueman (2010: 45) calls the <i>aesthetic fallacy</i>: “if it looks scholarly, then, agree or disagree with it, it is scholarly and must be taken seriously and allowed a place at the scholarly table”. Levman's article looks scholarly, but his methods are <i>not scholarly</i>. At least not from the point of view of a historian. </p><p>History is the study of documents. There are no Indian documents before Asoka because writing was not used in India until he created his famous edicts. Attempting to write a history of a preliterate society is a contradiction in terms, at least as far as historians are concerned. This is the historian's episteme. This is how historians try to ensure the validity of their use of historical facts as evidence for reconstructing knowledge of the past. The epistemology of history is still a live topic and the impact of postmodernist critiques of the use of texts is still being felt. Still, the centrality of contemporary documentation has never been problematised. </p><p>Levman appears to fundamentally miss Drewes' point and makes a series of irrelevant arguments. For example, Levman appears to be convinced that certain presumptions and subjective judgements about stories recorded in Pāli amount to historical facts about the Buddha. Or that his inferences about the past amount to historical facts. In his arguments, Levman relies heavily on unexamined assumptions, skimps on citations, makes factually incorrect statements, and employs numerous informal fallacies including, <i>presentism</i>, <i>argument from incredulity</i>, <i>cherry-picking</i>, the <i>bandwagon fallacy</i>, and <i>confirmation bias</i>.</p><p>Fallacies and biases aside, it's clear that Levman, Karpik, and Wynne are all doing something similar when they argue for the historicity of the Buddha. And I think I can shed some light on this. </p>
<br />
<p style="text-align: center;"><b>Two Epistemes</b></p><p>Most Buddhist Studies scholars are educated in the theories and methods of philology and/or historical linguistics; not in the theories and methods of history and historiography. Philologers routinely reconstruct lost ur-texts from surviving witnesses and historical linguists routinely reconstruct long lost proto-languages. My thesis is that, given these prominent activities it might seem natural for philologists and historical linguists to use similar methods to attempt to <i>reconstruct historical facts </i>via inferences. </p><p>Nineteenth-century linguists, especially in Germany, were able to analyse the way that phonology changes over time and observe that only certain changes and certain types of changes occur. This allows philologists to define descriptive "laws" which limit how any Indo-European language is permitted to change. So we get <a href="https://iranicaonline.org/articles/bartholomaes-law-the-name-given-to-a-rule-of-phonetic-assimilation-in-the-indo-iranian-and-probably-also-the-proto-indo-eu">Bartholomae's Law</a>, <a href="https://www.uvm.edu/~jbailly/courses/clas22/additional%20notes/grimm'sLawNOTESEXAMPLES.html">Grimm's Law</a> and so on. Since phonological change follows regular patterns that apply across locations and times, we can apply descriptive laws prescriptively and retroactively to reconstruct a universal mother tongue for all of the Indo-European family of languages. Given modern languages and a set of rules, the sounds of ancient languages can be retrospectively reconstructed with considerable confidence. The reconstruction of Proto-Indo-European is an awesome achievement. </p><p>The practice of textual criticism has its roots in the interpretation of legal and religious documents. Formalised methods of recreating the <i>ur-text </i>of the author developed over centuries. Whether they know it or not, modern scholars rely on the method of Karl Lachmann (1793-1851), especially as expressed by his student Paul Maas (1927). As manuscripts are repeatedly copied, errors and amendments build up. By carefully comparing witnesses using Lachmann's method, the textual critic may restore the "original text" even though none of the surviving documents reflects that text. </p><p>In both cases, scholars can <i>infer </i>reliable knowledge of the past based on extant documents. This should sound familiar because it also describes the method of Levman, Karpik, and Wynne (other biases and fallacious arguments aside). They are all making inferences about the past and treating these as historical facts. However, this is not a sound methodology for historiography. </p><p>In contrast to the situation in which we have complete descriptions of dozens of modern languages and extensive descriptions of ancient languages, the Pāli texts don't constitute anything like a complete description of a culture or society. They are normative religious texts that are, for the most part, mythological in character, and only look "historical" after some very restrictive cherry-picking. There is no historical analogue of the lawful changes in phonology (or grammar). </p><p>Historians have long acknowledged that history is <i>not </i>governed by laws analogous to those that govern phonological change. It is a truism that those who fail to learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past. However, it is also a truism that knowledge of the past does not enable one to predict the future. Indeed, in history knowledge of the present does not allow us to predict the past either. If it did then we could simply observe Buddhists in the present, formulate some laws that govern change, and infer facts about the past. This method does not work for history. </p><p>It's notable that in the absence of any general laws, Levman appears to substitute "common sense". I point, for example, to his repeated argument from incredulity and his use of subjective terms like "candour" or "genuineness". Even though Drewes pre-warns him that this is not a credible method, Levman goes ahead and does it anyway.</p><p>In effect, historians and philologists have different views on epistemology based on different methods applied to different bodies of knowledge. In this view, philologists appear to believe that the kinds of methods that allow them to reconstruct a proto-language or an ur-text can be applied <i>mutatis mutandis </i>to historical facts. Levman repeatedly treats his inferences as facts. </p>
<p>While the philological approach to history fails, and fails badly, in terms of historiography, at least this explanation of Levman's method as rooted in philology and historical linguistics rather than history and historiography makes a certain kind of sense. I'm not sure this is correct, but this is the most charitable interpretation of Levman's method that I have been able to come up with. </p>
<p>This view may also help to explain the (undeniable) controversy that Drewes' article caused amongst Buddhist Studies scholars and religieux. Perhaps Drewes's invocation of historical methods, while obvious to any professional historian, was a bit too casual for an audience of philologists and linguists with no background in historiography. Philologists confidently resurrect lost texts and linguists resurrect dead languages all the time, so resurrecting the Buddha may well seem straightforward to them, more especially if his historicity is axiomatic for them. Historians in their turn expect facts to emerge from documents <i>of that time</i>. They are puzzled that the evidence presented is all 500 years too late and of very mixed provenance and doubtful veracity. One side is shouting "<i>What about the facts?</i>" and the other is shouting back "<i>What facts?</i>". As far as I know, no one has previously observed that the two sides define the word "fact" in different ways. </p><p><br /></p><p style="text-align: center;"><b>Conclusions</b></p>
<p>In the arena of academic historiography, Drewes is right to say "my argument is really a minor one" (19). In the context of modern historiographical methods, there is no such thing as "the historical Buddha" because there are no documents from that time. Drewes is absolutely right that <i>historians </i>should stop using this phrase. </p><p>I think it's fair to say that the dispute over the historicity of the Buddha has been framed in ideological terms, i.e. as a conflict between <i>traditionalists </i>and <i>modernists</i>. This is unfortunate because ideological disputes are extremely resistant to resolution. Ideologues don't change their minds. The dispute is better framed as a dispute over methodology and epistemology. </p><p>This is to say, the dispute hinges on the ability of different methods to give us reliable information about the past. Historians, who specialise in explaining the past, universally agree that history begins with contemporary documents, with the broadest possible meaning of document as any form of writing. A historical fact is a documented fact. </p><p>The problem is that Levman is <i>not a historian</i>. Levman does apply a historian's methodology and does not cite any authorities on the theories or methods of historians. Rather, where Levman is not relying on some fallacy or other, he relies almost entirely on treating inferences as historical facts (analogous to PIE or some ur-text). The raw materials for his inferences are documents from a much later period, after writing began to be used. The validation of such inferences seems to rest on his axiomatic belief in the historicity of the Buddha (the same can be said of Karpik and Wynne) and appeals to incredulity, common sense, and so. </p><p>As compelling as the rhetoric of a "middle way" might be at this point in trying to resolve a dispute, it's clear that historians have already established a "middle way". This is to restrict themselves to contemporary documents. This means that historiography is necessarily limited in scope and reach. </p><p>In fact, the method of treating inferences as facts, as adopted by philologists like Levman, is <i>not </i>a reliable way to get information about the past. It works in the case of proto-languages and ur-texts, but it does not work in historiography. That Levman's attempt to apply this method is plagued by fallacious reasoning and bias should not distract from the problem that his method is fundamentally unsound. </p><p>This is also an answer to the philosopher/philologer colleague who accused me and Drewes of practising "positivism" because we refuse to accept the philological method of treating inferences as facts. We are not "positivists" demanding <i>scientific </i>facts, we are <i>historians </i>using generally accepted methods in historiography to assess the salience and veracity of facts in documents. </p>
<p>That said, I do not think the idea of a founder of Buddhism is impossible or unreasonable (as I understand Drewes he thinks the same). It actually seems quite plausible that the mythology of Buddhism might be based on a real religious leader. The problem here is that <i>history </i>is not about what we surmise or guess to be true. Inferences are not facts. </p><p>History deals with documented facts and prioritises facts that can be corroborated. As such history is extremely limited in scope. As John Vincent (quoted above) says, "history leans towards literate individuals in literate societies". The Buddha is not a historical figure by any definition of "historical" used <i>by historians </i>precisely because he is <i>not </i>a literate figure and was <i>not </i>from a literate society. In attempting to historicise the mythical Buddha using other methods and without reference to the long history of historiography, Levman ignores the accumulated wisdom of historians. </p><p>Notwithstanding the possibility of his being based on a real person, the Buddha as presented in Buddhist documents is clearly a <i>mythological </i>figure, who has human traits, but also does miracles and has supernatural powers. The term <i>mythological</i> is not intended to have any pejorative connotation. Myths are how preliterate societies encoded their views about the world and their values before the advent of writing. </p>
</div>
<p style="text-align: center;">~~oOo~~</p><br />
<p style="text-align: center;"><b>Bibliography</b></p>
<p class="hang">Allen, Charles. (2012). <i>Ashoka: The Search for India's Lost Emperor</i>. London: Abacus.</p>
<p class="hang">Bollée, W. B. (1974). "Buddhists and Buddhism in the Earlier Literature of the Śvetâmbara Jains." In <i>Buddhist Studies in Honour of I.B. Horner</i>, edited by L. Cousins, A. Kunst, K. R. Norman, 27-39. Dordrecht: Springer.</p><p class="hang">Bronkhorst, Johannes. (2020) "The Formative Period of Jainism (c. 500 BCE – 200 CE)" In <i>Brill's Encyclopedia of Jainism Online</i>. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1163%2F2590-2768_BEJO_COM_047082">doi:10.1163/2590-2768_BEJO_COM_047082.</a></p><p class="hang">Drewes, David. (2017). "The Ideal of the Historical Buddha." <i>Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies </i>40: 1-15.</p><p class="hang">Evans, Richard J. (1997). <i>In Defence of History</i>. London: Granta Books.</p>
<p class="hang">Levman, Bryan. (2019). "The Historical Buddha: Response to Drewes" <i>Canadian Journal of Buddhist Studies </i>14: 25-56.</p><p class="hang">Maas, Paul. 1927. <i>Textkritik</i>. Leipzig: Teubner. </p><p class="hang">Norman, K. R. (2008). <i>A Philological Approach to Buddhism: The Bukkyō Denō Kyōkai Lectures 1994</i>. Oxford: Pali Text Society. </p><p class="hang">Olivelle, Patrick. (2023). <i>Ashoka: Portrait of a Philosopher King</i>. Yale University Press</p><p class="hang">Samuel, Geoffrey. (2008). <i>The Origins of Yoga and Tantra: Indian Religions to the Thirteenth Century.</i> Cambridge University Press.</p><p class="hang">Scheible, Kristin (2016). <i>Reading the Mahāvamsa: The Literary Aims of a Theravada Buddhist History. </i>New York: Columbia University Press. </p><p class="hang">Schopen, Gregory. (1996). "Two Problems in the History of Indian Buddhism: The Layman/Monk Distinction and the Doctrines of the Transference of Merit." In <i>Bones, Stones, and Buddhist Monks: Collected Papers on the Archaeology, Epigraphy, and Texts of Monastic Buddhism in India</i>. University of Hawaii Press. </p>
<p class="hang">Stargardt, Janice. (1995). “The Oldest Known Pali Texts, 5–6th century: Results of the Cambridge Symposium on the Pyu Golden Pali Text from Śrī Kṣetra, 18–19 April 1995.” <i>The Journal of the Pali Text Society </i>21: 199-213.</p><p class="hang">Trueman, Carl R. (2010). <i>Histories and Fallacies: Problems Faced in the Writing of History</i>. Wheaton, Ill: Crossway.</p>
<p class="hang">Vincent, John. (2006). <i>An Intelligent Person's Guide to History</i>. London: Duckworth Overlook. (first published 1995).</p>
<p class="hang">Walters, Jonathan. S. (1999) "Suttas as History: Four Approaches to the Sermon on the Noble Quest (Ariyapariyesana Sutta)." <i>History of Religions </i>38.3: 247-8.</p>
<p class="hang">———. (2000). "Buddhist History: The Sri Lankan Pāli Vaṃsas and their Commentaries". In <i>Querying the Medieval: Texts and the History of Practice in South Asia</i>, 99-164. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780195124309.003.0003</p><p class="hang">Wynne, Alexander. (2019). "Did the Buddha Exist?" <i>Journal of the Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies </i>16: 98–48.</p>
<p class="hang"><br /></p>
Jayaravahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13783922534271559030noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19327107.post-67038581470088422572024-02-09T08:14:00.000+00:002024-02-09T08:14:03.677+00:00Guanyin Does Not Speak in the Heart Sutra<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRe_ADTfVcyPh3X1T-uQlBLwfifNRerVVwPJPBxaQoXbi4bwQFsu65m_wpXaa4TGk4yXWafwZUGmbbN4beW_VCUHcAWQ9z0nb4ePLIRCqkY2c-vQZI4eUJC6z6-Qf76I8LKYmq89UUlupYWRJDtpNt2Ly-DdMcYm8Xo4pzVkQ_dhk6X6QG8FnD/s525/image001.png" style="clear: left; display: block; float: left; padding: 1em 30px; text-align: center;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="525" data-original-width="184" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRe_ADTfVcyPh3X1T-uQlBLwfifNRerVVwPJPBxaQoXbi4bwQFsu65m_wpXaa4TGk4yXWafwZUGmbbN4beW_VCUHcAWQ9z0nb4ePLIRCqkY2c-vQZI4eUJC6z6-Qf76I8LKYmq89UUlupYWRJDtpNt2Ly-DdMcYm8Xo4pzVkQ_dhk6X6QG8FnD/s200/image001.png" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;"><p>In this short essay, I will challenge a universal presupposition about the <i>Heart Sutra</i>, i.e. that the lines that appear to be spoken to Śāriputra in the core section are spoken by Guanyin. I will show that, by all the conventions of Buddhist literature, this is not true. Guanyin does not speak. This observation further undermines the already weakened historically dominant narrative about the <i>Heart Sutra</i>. </p><p>For some years, I have made a practice of reading every scholarly publication on this text (in English), as well as selected popular works. To the best of my knowledge, no modern scholars have previously noticed the absences I mark below. I think Chinese Buddhist commentators in the late seventh–early eighth centuries were aware of this. And there were subsequently efforts made to obscure this fact.</p>
<p>A Buddhist sutra is, above all else, a record of <i>speech</i>. In Buddhist texts, speech is almost always indirect speech and the forms of indicating who is speaking to whom are essential to understanding the text. Forms of present speech in Buddhist texts are highly formalized and standardized; to the point of being universal across genres and over time. And they are not complex. We can easily describe the main forms and note the Chinese reflexes of these forms. I will focus on how they appear in the early Prajñāpāramitā literature, if only because this is the appropriate context for thinking about the <i>Heart Sutra</i>. </p>
<p>To begin with, we expect to see the speaker “addressing” (<i>āmantrayate</i>) the audience. At the beginning of the <i>Aṣṭasāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā </i>(<i>Aṣṭa</i>), for example:</p>
<blockquote>Then the Blessed One addressed the senior Elder Subhūti...” <br />
(<i>tatra khalu bhagavān āyuṣmantaṃ subhūtiṃ sthaviram āmantrayate sma</i>… Vaidya 1960 2). </blockquote>
<p>Here <i>āmantrayate sma </i>is the "pleonastic past". Here adding <i>sma </i>to a present tense verb makes it a past tense, but is also used for the "present in the past" tense so commonly used in storytelling. In Kumārajīva’s translation—the <i>Xiǎopǐn bānrě jīng </i>«小品般若經» (T 227)—this becomes…</p>
<blockquote>Then he Buddha addressed Subhūti<br /><i>
Ěr shí Fó gào Xūpútí</i> 爾時佛告須菩提 (T 227: 8.537a29)<br />
</blockquote><div style="text-align: left;">Here the verb is <i style="text-align: left;">gào </i><span style="text-align: left;">告 "to address". Note that Kumārajīva omits the honorific <i>ayuṣman </i>"Elder" and Subhūti's monastic title <i>sthavira </i>"Senior [monk]". In Chinese we also sometimes see:</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><blockquote><div style="text-align: justify;">“Subhūti addressed the Buddha, saying…” </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>Xūpútí bái Fó yán </i>爾時須菩提白佛言 (T 227, 8.537b06)</div></blockquote><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The character bái 白 is polysemic but here means “to make plain, to state clearly”, while yán 言 means “speak, talk”.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="text-align: left;">The extracts found in the </span><i style="text-align: left;">Heart Sutra</i><span style="text-align: left;"> are from a version of the </span><i style="text-align: left;">Pañcaviṃśātisāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā </i><span style="text-align: left;">(</span><i style="text-align: left;">Pañc</i><span style="text-align: left;">)</span><i style="text-align: left;">. </i><span style="text-align: left;">An example of the same form from the Gilgit manuscript of </span><i style="text-align: left;">Pañc</i><span style="text-align: left;">:</span></div></div><blockquote>The Bhagavan addressed Elder Śāradvatīputra...”<br /> (<i>bhagavān āyuṣmantaṃ śāradvatīputram āmantrayata</i>... Zacchetti 2005: 375). </blockquote>
<p>The use of <i>āmantrayate </i>(in various conjugations) usually marks the beginning of a passage of discourse, but within a given conversation, the speaker of individual passages is also marked. It is usual to spell this out laboriously, including the name and title of each participant. In the following passage from Chapter One of <i>Aṣṭa</i>, we find all of the most common forms of ongoing verbal address:</p>
<blockquote>Then Elder Śāriputra said this to Elder Subhūti, “Elder Subhūti, does this mind that is a mind without mind actually exist?”</blockquote>
<blockquote>When that was said, Elder Subhūti said this to Elder Śāriputra, “Elder Śāriputra, concerning that which is without mind, is the existence of mindlessness known or apprehended?”</blockquote>
<blockquote>Śāriputra said, “Indeed not, Elder Subhūti”.</blockquote>
<blockquote><i>Atha khalv āyuṣmān śāriputra āyuṣmantaṃ subhūtim etad avocat - kiṃ punar āyuṣman subhūte asti tac cittaṃ yaccittamacittam?<br />
Evam ukte āyuṣmān subhūtir āyuṣmantaṃ śāriputram etad avocat kiṃ punar āyuṣman śāriputra yā acittatā, tatra acittatāyām astitā vā nāstitā vā vidyate vā upalabhyate vā?<br />Śāriputra āha - na hy etad āyuṣman subhūte /</i> (Vaidya 1960: 3).</blockquote>
<p>The forms I wish to highlight are “said this” (<i>etad avocat</i>), “when this was said” (<i>evam ukte</i>), and “said” (<i>āha</i>). Both <i>avocat </i>and <i>ukte </i>derive from √<i>vac </i>“speak”, while the <i>āha </i>is from the defective verb √<i>ah </i>“say”. The same forms are used in the same way throughout the Pāli <i>Suttapiṭaka </i>also. An electronic search of the <i>Chaṭṭa Saṅgāyana Tipiṭaka </i>(4.1) suggests that in the four main Nikāyas: <i>āmantesi </i>occurs about 590 times, <i>etadavoca </i>occurs over 2200 times; <i>evaṃ vutte </i>occurs some 530 times; while <i>āha </i>occurs about 100 times. A few other such forms are used, but these are by far the most common. </p>
<p>When a person is addressed in Sanskrit or Pāli, their name occurs in the vocative case, e.g. “O Subhūti” (<i>subhūte</i>). In the CBETA version of the Taishō edition of the Chinese <i>Tripiṭaka</i>, the “vocative case” is represented by "!" following the speaker’s name. </p>
<p>Note the repetitive use of the title “Elder” (<i>āyuṣman</i>) most of the time. Given that both characters use the title, they appear to be social equals. I speculate that <i>āyuṣman </i>is omitted precisely when Śāriputra acknowledges Subhūti’s superior insight.</p>
<p> These forms are largely preserved in Chinese translations. Turning to Huifeng’s (2017: 205) translation of this same passage in the <i>Xiǎopǐn</i>:</p>
<blockquote>Thereupon, Śāriputra said to Subhūti: “Does this mind which is mindless exist?”</blockquote>
<blockquote> Subhti said to Śāriputra: “That mind which is mindless, is it apprehendable as either existing or not existing?” </blockquote>
<blockquote> Śāriputra said: “Indeed not!” </blockquote>
<p>Here, two different words are translated as “said”: <i>yǔ </i>語 (here translating <i>avocat</i>) and <i>yán </i>言 (translating <i>āha</i>).
</p><p>None of these conventions for indicating that someone is speaking or for who is addressing whom occurs in the <i>Heart Sutra</i>. The only indication we get that some parts of the text are indirect speech is the use of the vocative <i>śāriputre </i>“O Śāriputra” (<i>Shèlìzi </i>舍利子!). This is how we know that Śāriputra is being addressed. The <i>Heart Sutra</i> <i>does not say </i>who is speaking and everyone <i>assumes </i>that it is Guanyin. </p><p>The passage in which Śāriputra is addressed has been traced to the <i>Large Sutra </i>(see: T 223, 8.223.a13-a20 and Zacchetti 2005: 393). When we read the passage in this context, the lines are spoken to Śāriputra not by Guanyin, who has no speaking part in any Prajñāpramitā text, but by the Buddha. Interestingly, Woncheuk’s (613-696 CE) commentary (T 1711) appears to take the Buddha to be speaking as well.</p>
<blockquote>Question: [Since] this [teaching of] prajñāpāramitā is the dharma for the bodhisattva, why does the World Honored One preach not to the bodhisattva but to Śāriputra? (Hyun Choo 2006: 149) </blockquote>
<p>and</p>
<blockquote>Therefore, in the [<i>Heart Sūtra</i>], the Buddha preached to Śāriputra and intended to lead the Hīnayāna to the Mahāyāna as well. (Hyun Choo 2006: 149) </blockquote>
<p> It seems to me that Woncheuk could only have deduced this by looking at the source of the passage, i.e. <i>Pañc</i>.</p><p style="text-align: center;"><b>Conclusions</b></p><p>In this brief essay, I have tried to show that the universal view that Guanyin is speaking in the <i>Heart Sutra </i>is based on presupposition and unexamined assumptions. I did this by outlining Buddhist conventions for expressing who is speaking to whom. I argued that such conventional expressions are universal in Buddhist texts (in Pāli and Sanskrit) and that such conventions are absent from the <i>Heart Sutra</i>. All indications of <i>who </i>is speaking have been omitted. Taking the <i>Heart Sutra </i>at face value, <i>no one </i>is speaking. </p><p>We can explain this by pointing out that the <i>Heart Sutra </i>is not, in fact, a sutra. It is not a record of speech, rather it's a compilation of ideas and extracts from existing speeches. This much was obvious to the earliest commentators, though subsequently forgotten. The lines in their original context were spoken by the Buddha, as accurately reflected in the commentary by Woncheuk. </p><p>The (now disproved) "fact" that Guanyin was speaking has always been a problem for scholars since Guanyin plays no active role in any non-Tantric Prajñāpāramitā text (and the Tantric Prajñāpāramitā texts are more Tantra than Prajñāpāramitā). Various unsatisfactory explanations have been advanced (I've made several previous <a href="https://jayarava.blogspot.com/2020/08/the-extended-heart-sutra-avalokitesvara.html">attempts to explain</a>), but they have always been <i>ad hoc </i>or <i>post hoc </i>rationalisations, rather than real explanations (they all amount to hand-waving). </p><p>The most striking attempts to make sense of this situation are the <a href="https://jayarava.blogspot.com/2020/07/the-extended-heart-sutra-sources.html">two recensions of the extended <i>Heart Sutra</i> text</a> (1. T 252; 2. T 253 and all rest), probably composed in the early eighth century, possibly in the oasis town Dūnhuáng 敦煌, on the edge of the Gobi Desert (from where it was transmitted to Tibet). </p><p>In the extended texts, the two redactors have attempted to better integrate Guanyin into the narrative, by expanding the first paragraph. However, both recensions retained the rest of the standard <i>Heart Sutra </i>unaltered and in this part of the text, the verbs of speech are still absent. This means that despite more clearly articulating the reason for the presence of Guanyin, neither of the extended texts addresses the problem. Guanyin's presence seems more natural, but he/she still <i>does not speak </i>the lines directed to Śāriputra in the "core section". </p><p>The fact is that, in the <i>Heart Sutra</i>, Guanyin does not speak. Guanyin is invoked and then plays no further role in the text. In their original context, the lines are spoken by the Buddha. At this point, we can say that more or less all of the historical dominant narrative about the Heart Sutra is a <i>post hoc </i>invention. </p>
<p></p>
<p style="text-align: center;">~~oOo~~</p>
<br />
<p style="text-align: center;"><b>Bibliography</b></p>
<p class="hang">Huifeng. (2017). “An Annotated English Translation of Kumārajīva’s Xiǎopǐn Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra.” <i>Asian Literature and Translation </i>4(1): 187-236.</p>
<p class="hang"> Hyun Choo, B. (2006) “An English Translation of the Banya paramilda simgyeong chan: Wonch’uk’s Commentary on the Heart Sūtra (Prajñāpāramitā-hṛdaya-sūtra).” <i>International Journal of Buddhist Thought and Culture </i>6: 121-205.</p>
<p class="hang">Vaidya, P.L.(1960) <i>Aṣṭasāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra</i>. Darbhanga: The Mithila Institute. (Via the <a href="https://gretil.sub.uni-goettingen.de/gretil/1_sanskr/4_rellit/buddh/bsu049_u.htm">Gretil Archive</a>, 2014. Including Karashima, S. (2013) On the "Missing" Portion in the Aṣṭasāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā. ARIRIAB, 16: 189-192. Accessed 6 Feb 2024)</p>
<p class="hang">Zacchetti, Stefano. (2005). <i>In Praise of the Light: A Critical Synoptic Edition with an Annotated Translation of Chapters 1-3 of Dharmarakṣa’s Guang zan jing, Being the Earliest Chinese Translation of the Larger Prajñāpāramitā. </i>(Bibliotheca Philologica et Philosophica Buddhica, 8). Tokyo: The International Research Institute for Advanced Buddhology, Soka University.</p>
Jayaravahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13783922534271559030noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19327107.post-68229683799301758722024-01-26T08:35:00.002+00:002024-02-05T10:27:27.179+00:00A Provisional Revised Prajñāpāramitā Chronology<div style="text-align: justify;"><p>In the process of revising the history of the <i>Heart Sutra</i>, it has become clear that Conze's Prajñāpāramitā chronology is faulty in many respects. In this essay, I will discuss some of the main faults with the existing chronology and then propose a substantial revision, notably deprecating his use of the term "abbreviation". </p><p>In "The Development of Prajñāpāramitā Thought" (1967) Conze outlined nine stages of development:</p>
<ol>
<li>The initial formulation represented by the first two chapters of <i>Ratnaguṇasamcayagāthā </i>(Rgs).</li>
<li>Chapters 3-28 of Rgs.</li><li>Incorporation of matter from the Abhidharma.</li>
<li>Concessions to the Buddhism of Faith.</li>
<li>The last third of the Large Prajñāpāramitā</li>
<li>The short Sutras.</li><li>Yogacarin commentaries.</li>
<li>Tantra</li><li>Chan.</li></ol>
<p>Later, Conze (1978) boils this down to a fourfold chronology:</p>
<ol>
<li>The basic text (ca. 100 BCE – 100 CE)</li>
<li>Expansion (ca 100 – 300 CE)</li>
<li>Abbreviation (300 – 500 CE)</li>
<li>Tantric/Magical influence (600 – 1200 CE).</li></ol>
<p>There is some revision of this chronology in Stefano Zacchetti's (2020) authoritative encyclopedia entry for <i>Prajñāpāramitā Sūtras </i>in the <i>Brill Encyclopedia of Buddhism</i>, but even Zacchetti largely accepts Conze's views on the <i>Heart Sutra</i>. Unfortunately, neither Huifeng (2014) nor any of my research on the <i>Heart Sutra </i>made it into his article. Zacchetti's contribution to Prajñāpāramitā Studies was huge and his early death was a great loss to the profession. However, he did not go far enough in critiquing Conze and revising the chronology.</p>
<br />
<p><i>Ratnaguṇasamcayagāthā </i></p>
<p>Conze's rationale for dating the <i>Ratnaguṇasamcayagāthā </i>very early was never sound. The first translation of <i>Rgs </i>into Chinese was in 991CE, by Fǎxián 法賢 (T 229). As Zacchetti (2020) says "... external evidence clearly points to a much later date of composition of this text, as all its witnesses, including the Chinese translation, are comparatively late". Zacchetti also notes that <i>Rgs </i>is not included in Xuanzang's compendium of Prajñāpāramitā texts. </p><p>Far from being an early exemplar, the <i>Rgs </i>played little or no part in the development of Prajñāpāramitā thought or literature and was a decorative after-thought. </p>
<br />
<p><i>Aṣṭasāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā</i></p>
<p>This makes <i>Aṣṭasāhasrikā </i>clearly the oldest Prajñāpāramitā text. The Split Collection manuscript of <i>Aṣṭasāhasrikā </i>has been carbon-14 dated to 74 CE with a two-sigma range of 47-147 CE (Falk 2011: 20). This date is consistent with paleographic dating of the manuscript. Thus we can place the existence of a written text in the first century, but we don't know when it was first written down, or when it was first composed. </p><p><i>Aṣṭasāhasrikā</i> was first translated into Chinese in 179 CE by Lokakṣema (T 224). The procedure of subtracting a century or two from the date of the earliest Chinese translation was never credible, despite being widely applied. Note, for the record, that the oldest extant Pāli text is from the fifth or sixth century. Which makes the oldest physical evidence for Prajñāpāramitā some 300-400 years older than the oldest Pāli text. As far as I know, the idea that the Pāli canon was written down around the beginning of the Common Era first occurs in a fifth-century Sri Lankan text: the <i>Mahāvaṃsa</i>.</p>
<p>My sense of <i>Aṣṭa </i>is that the written text reflects an older, probably oral tradition. Everyone seems to agree that the first Chapter of Aṣṭa is likely older than the rest and possibly represents the "original" Prajñāpāramitā text. The first chapter has no narrative structure but is an episodic (almost <i>disparate</i>) collection of independent dialogues. <i>Aṣṭa </i>often seems like a roughly edited selection of brief stories featuring fragments of dialogues between figures that feature in early Buddhist texts. </p>
<p>The fragments in <i>Aṣṭa </i>show a clear affinity to ideas found in early Buddhist texts, suggesting that Prajñāpāramitā is conceptually much older than its oldest texts. Anālayo (2021) argues that the practice of withdrawing attention from sensory experience (so that it ceases) seems to predate Buddhism since this is precisely what the Buddha learns from his pre-awakening teachers: Āḷāra Kālama and Udaka Ramaputta. </p>
<p>Later chapters of <i>Aṣṭa </i>still lack any sense of narrative, except for the story of Sadāprarudita (Chapters 31 and 32), but are more thematically consistent. Huifeng's PhD thesis identified several "chiastic" structures in the earliest Chinese translation of Aṣṭa. A chiastic structure involves a mirror image. Topics are introduced from the beginning to the middle and then recapitulated in reverse order from the middle to the end. Huifant identified chiastic structures in Chapters 1 and 2 and in Sadāpraruidita chapters. He also proposes that the entire text has a chiastic structure. This conflicts with the broadly accepted notion that the text was built up piecemeal from a core variously said to comprise Chapters 1 and 2, just Chapter 1, or some part of Chapter 1. Joseph Walser (2018: 130-134) gives a good overview of the "quest for the ur-sūtra"</p>
<p>While I don't know enough to comment on this, it does seem to me that no chapter of Aṣṭa has just one topic. </p>
<br />
<p><i>Vajracchedikā Prajñāpāramitā</i></p>
<p>The <i>Vajracchedikā—</i>which Conze placed in a later period—is now widely believed to be from an earlier period. However, the rationale for this early dating is unclear and difficult to check. Curiously, Zacchetti's (2020) account of the <i>Vajracchedikā </i>ignores the issue of its place in Conze's chronology, which risks people interpreting this as approval. </p><p>It seems likely that <i>Vajracchedikā </i>was initially considerably shorter since there is in fact a clear ending at verse 13a. More text seems to have been tacked onto the end, which fits the same pattern of evolution of other Prajñāpāramitā texts. </p><p>Harrison (2006) does not mention dates, but merely alludes to comments made by Gregory Schopen (1975: 153): </p>
<p></p><blockquote>It is, however, worth noting that a number of Japanese scholars have suggested a date for the <i>Vaj </i>which is considerably earlier than the one suggested by Conze, and that the exact nature of the relationship between the <i>Vaj </i>and the [<i>Aṣṭa</i>] is far from clear.</blockquote><p>The main text then points to a footnote which lists several sources of interest:<br /></p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEj0GbUb9O4uk17ccPzqCj2eF6KeOF1xHm1q2aE2mOwgjZOjF4Vl68J4hnuZAo-BHcvHmBgSwmD4tdpibCNVLdi_LO5FM7vxl070yF-NE1NMAlWsidKew-d70mt_ztWliOx0zf3WmNmiBO2d-8tnyYFFvc3iC6Gai0tWT5M-9uITcsCSJRQ_CUSY" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="202" data-original-width="611" height="170" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEj0GbUb9O4uk17ccPzqCj2eF6KeOF1xHm1q2aE2mOwgjZOjF4Vl68J4hnuZAo-BHcvHmBgSwmD4tdpibCNVLdi_LO5FM7vxl070yF-NE1NMAlWsidKew-d70mt_ztWliOx0zf3WmNmiBO2d-8tnyYFFvc3iC6Gai0tWT5M-9uITcsCSJRQ_CUSY=w513-h170" width="513" /></a></div><br />Two of these sources are repeatedly cited by other scholars also. <p></p>
<blockquote>Nakamura, H. (1964). "A Critical Survey of Mahāyāna and Esoteric Buddhism chiefly based on Japanese Studies." <i>Acta Asiatica </i>6: 64-65.</blockquote><blockquote>Ui, Hakuju. (1958). "Chronological Survey of the Vajracchedikā-Prajñāpāramitā." <i>Nagoya-Daigaku-Bungakubu Kenkyu-Ronshū </i>XXI: 49-51.</blockquote>
<p>Ui (1958) is not available in any UK library as far as I can see. Cambridge, Oxford, and SOAS libraries all have this periodical, but their runs are incomplete and Vol XXI is missing from all three. Cambridge also lacks the early numbers of <i>Acta Asiatica</i>. None of these is online as far as I can see. So as of today, I have been unable to consult any of these (I haven't given up). </p>
<p>The citation, "Trans, by Hanayama Shōyū, 'SVRPL' (cf. n. 8) 55-61." refers to </p>
<blockquote>Hanayama, Shōyū 花山勝友. (1966) "A summary of various research on the Prajñāpāramitā literature by Japanese scholars." <i>Acta Asiatica </i>10: 55-6</blockquote>
<p>Again, I have yet to get access to this. Schopen notes that:</p>
<p></p><blockquote>"Ui says 'judging from its contents, this <i>sūtra </i>gives us the impression that it is a very old sūtra" (p. 56); and "... the latest date of the establishment of the <i>Diamond Sutra </i>will be 200 A.D. or probably 150 A.D., though we cannot decide the earliest possible date of this sūtra" (p. 60)." </blockquote><p></p>
<p>However, it's not clear on what basis Ui is making this judgement. Although the article is widely cited, no one seems to say what was Ui's rationale for this date. And I can't find any more recent research. </p>
<p>The first translation into Chinese is Kumārajīva's T235 <i>Jīngāng bōrě bōluómì jīng </i>«金剛般若波羅蜜經» in 402 CE. However, extant commentaries have been attributed to both Asaṅga and Vasubandhu. This would help except that the dates of these two are not certain and such attributions cannot be taken at face value: numerous texts are attributed to both of them apocryphally. Asaṅga is assumed to have lived in the fourth century. Jonathan C. Gold asserts that Vasubandhu lived in the late fourth or early fifth centuries (<a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/vasubandhu/">Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy</a>). But there does not seem to be any consensus on their dates. </p>
<p>So <i>Vajracchedikā </i>seems to have existed by the end of the fourth century. If there is evidence compelling us to push this date back, I cannot find it (yet). I occasionally correspond with Paul Harrison and I know that he is writing a book on <i>Vajracchedikā </i>and has his own ideas on dates, partly based on the Central Asian manuscripts. Nothing he has published so far makes this any clearer. </p><p></p><blockquote>Note 5 Feb 2024. Harrison has responded to an email saying that he believes Vaj was originally composed in a Prakrit based on Central Asian fragments. And that composition in the second century, per Ui (1958), seems likely. </blockquote><p></p>
<br />
<p><i>Expansion</i></p>
<p>Dates for the composition of the extended Prajñāpāramitā texts, particularly <i>Pañcaviṃśatisāhasrikā</i>, are uncertain. There are two Chinese translations from the third century: <i>Guāng zàn jīng </i>«光讚經» (T 222) by Dharmarakṣa in 286 CE; and <i>Fàng guāng bānrě jīng </i>«放光般若經» (T221), by Mokṣala in 291 CE. The earliest Sanskrit witness is the Gilgit Manuscript dated to the sixth or seventh century. </p>
<p><i>Pañcaviṃśatisāhasrikā </i>retains the basic organisational plan of <i>Aṣṭa</i>, and includes more or less all of the text, but intersperses new material that is twice the length of the shorter text. Jan Nattier (2003: 62, n. 19) has likened the process to slicing bread and filling the spaces. </p>
<br />
<p><i>Abbreviations</i></p>
<p>While <i>Aṣṭasāhasrikā </i>certainly underwent massive expansion, notably producing <i>Pañcaviṃśatisāhasrikā</i>, (and several variants) there never was a period of "abbreviation" of <i>Prajñāpāramitā</i>. No Indian text was ever abbreviated. The closest we get to this in Indian Buddhist literature is passages quoted in anthologies. </p><p>Moreover, the <i>Heart Sutra</i> definitely does not fit Conze's paradigm since it was composed in China in the mid-650s. It is incorrect to think of <i>Vajracchedikā </i>as an "abbreviation". Rather it is a short text targeting a particular type of wrong view about the relation between experience and abstract concepts. </p>
<p>It is not plausible to think of the short Tantric texts as "abbreviated" either. As with <i>Vajracchedikā</i>, these are not "abbreviations" because this would imply the existence of some longer text that they were abbreviations of. No such longer text exists. They are simply <i>short texts </i>composed by Tantric Buddhists, with a Prajñāpāramitā flavour to them. </p>
<p>In my view, the development of Madhyamaka metaphysics was a wholly separate and unrelated process, though the two do share some antecedents. The mythology linking Nāgārjuna to Prajñāpāramitā is a late tradition and not entirely coherent, given the strikingly different emphases and conclusions of the two traditions. </p>
<br />
<p style="text-align: center;"><b>Provisional Revised Chronology</b></p>
<p>In retrospect, we can speculatively identify a <i>zeroeth </i>phase of Prajñāpāramitā, as found in texts such as the <i>Cūḷasuññatā Sutta </i>(MN 121) and the <i>Kaccānagotta Sutta</i> (SN 12.15)<i>. </i>Prajñāpāramitā has numerous antecedents in early Buddhist literature and, if legends can be taken as indicative, this form of practice predates Buddhism. For example, the Ariyapariyesanā Sutta (MN 26) points to the Buddha learning precisely this style of meditation, aimed at the cessation of sensory experience, from his pre-enlightenment teachers.</p>
<p>There is a major caveat here. While we can identify <i>antecedents </i>to Prajñāpāramitā it is a mistake to think of these as <i>proto-Prajñāpāramitā</i>. The prefix <i>proto- </i>implies a teleology: the idea that these earlier ideas and practices <i>necessarily </i>became Prajñāpāramitā (and only Prajñāpāramitā). In fact, there is no such necessity, and these particular antecedents are also antecedent to other forms of Buddhism. Buddhism is notable for constantly diversifying into new forms and converging from time to time in new syntheses (on the limitations of the branching tree model of evolution compared to a braided stream model, see: <i><a href="https://jayarava.blogspot.com/2013/12/evolution-trees-and-braids.html">Evolution: Trees and Braids</a> </i>27 December 2013).</p>
<p>The first phase of Prajñāpāramitā literature proper is what we now call the <i>Aṣṭasāhasrikā</i>. The first Prajñāpāramitā text was likely considerably shorter (based on extant witnesses that grow over time) and was probably originally just called <i>Prajñāpāramitā</i>. Arguments about an ur-text underlying the extant manuscript witnesses are speculative. This period is likely still intimately connected with an ancient tradition of meditative practice focussed on attaining cessation and dwelling for long periods (up to seven days) in the absence of sensory experience. As noted, this approach has clear antecedents in early Buddhist texts and likely predates Buddhism (based on Buddhist accounts). </p>
<p>The second phase involves both the expansion of <i>Aṣṭa</i> and the composition of the <i>Vajracchedikā</i>. In the first case, the basic Prajñāpāramitā text (in roughly 8000 lines) was expanded into versions of 10,000, 18,000 and 25,000 lines, incorporating a great deal of new material as well as unpacking some of the abbreviated expressions. Contra Conze, I don't think this involved Abhidharma or "concessions to the Buddhism of faith". A subsequent expansion of the 25,000-line text to 100,000 lines did not add new material, but mainly consisted of a full and complete expansion of all the abbreviated expressions. If there was still a distinct Prajñāpāramitā practice community, it had begun to adopt an approach that was both more eclectic and more scholastic. </p>
<p>A third phase was the composition of commentaries such as the <i>Abhisamayalaṅkāra </i>and the <i>Mahāprajñāpāramitopadeśa</i>, which were highly influential in Tibet and China respectively. These commentaries are quite clearly scholastic rather than practical. Thus I assume that Prajñāpāramitā as a distinct form of practice is no longer visible, though I think some form of this practice probably still existed and was passed on within other traditions (I think here particularly of Mahāmudra). </p>
<p>The fourth and final phase reflected the absorption of elements of Prajñāpāramitā into Tantric Buddhism and the disappearance or submergence of any remnants of Prajñāpāramitā as a distinct approach to Buddhist practice. This coincides with the production of a number of short texts expressing a Tantric worldview and the emergence of Prajñāpāramitā as a Tantric deity. Whether these are really Prajñāpāramitā texts is moot and I am inclined to lump them with Tantra. </p>
</div>
<p style="text-align: center;">~~oOo~~</p>
<br />
<p style="text-align: center;"><b>Bibliography</b></p>
<p class="hang">Anālayo. (2021) “Being Mindful of What is Absent.” <i>Mindfulness </i>13: 1671-1678.</p>
<p class="hang">Conze, Edward. (1967). "The Development of Prajñāpāramitā Thought." In <i>Thirty Years of Buddhist Studies</i>, 123-147. New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal. [First published In <i>Buddhism and Culture, Dedicated to Dr. Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki in Commemoration of His Ninetieth Birthday</i>, ed. S. Yamaguchi, 24–45. Kyoto: Suzuki Gakujutsu Zaidai].</p>
<p class="hang">———. (1978) <i>The Prajñāpāramitā Literature</i>. (2nd Ed.) Tokyo: The Reiyukai.</p>
<p class="hang">Falk, Harry. (2011). <i>The ‘Split’ Collection of Kharoṣṭhī Texts.</i> ARIRIAB XIV (2011), 13-23. https://www.academia.edu/3561702/split_collection</p><p class="hang">Nattier, Jan. (2003). <i>A Few Good Men: The Bodhisattva Path according to The Inquiry of Ugra (Ugraparipṛcchā)</i>. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press.</p>
<p class="hang">Schopen, G. (1975). "The phrase ‘<i>sa pthivīpradeśaś caityabhūto bhavet</i>' in the Vajracchedikā: Notes on the cult of the book in Mahāyāna." <i>Indo-Iranian Journal</i> 17(3/4): 147-181.</p>
<p class="hang">Walser, Joseph. (2018). <i>Genealogies of Mahāyāna Buddhism: Emptiness, Power, and the Question of Origin</i>. London and New York: Routledge.</p>
<p class="hang">Zacchetti, Stefano. (2020) “Prajñāpāramitā Sūtras.” In <i>Brill's
Encyclopedia of Buddhism Online, </i>edited by Jonathan A. Silk, Oskar von
Hinüber, and Vincent Eltschinger (Unpaginated). Leiden: Brill. https://referenceworks.brillonline.com/entries/encyclopedia-of-buddhism/prajnaparamita-sutras-COM_0017
[accessed 6 Sept 2023].
</p>Jayaravahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13783922534271559030noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19327107.post-38590981201339724292024-01-19T10:05:00.000+00:002024-01-19T10:05:35.160+00:00On the Evolution of the Heart Sutra<div style="text-align: justify;"><p>The evolution of the <i>Heart Sutra </i>has been largely obscured by the historically dominant narratives and by the reluctance of Buddhist Studies to go beyond description and seek explanations. Watanabe Shōgo (1990) and Jan Nattier (1992) showed that the historical narratives about the <i>Heart Sutra </i>are pious fictions and pointed to another, rather unexpected history: the <i>Heart Sutra </i>was composed in China in the mid-seventh century. Their insights were subsequently confirmed by Huifeng (2014), and then I started publishing on this topic in 2015, both confirming the existing observations and adding a few of my own. While the field of Buddhist Studies (and the Buddhist world) has yet to catch up, it is now certain that the Chinese origins theory is correct.</p>
<p>Part of my contribution has been to step outside the usual descriptive mode of Buddhist Studies and propose <i>explanations </i>for the origins and evolution of the <i>Heart Sutra</i>. To date, my main focus has been on origins since this seemed to be the most urgent problem. More recently, I have begun to look at how the text evolved once it appeared ca 656 CE. In particular, I published an article on the varieties and relationships between the extended versions (Attwood 2021a). </p>
<p>In this essay, I will present a first attempt at an overview of the origins and the evolution of the <i>Heart Sutra</i>. I will explain why the variant texts on the <i>Heart Sutra</i> were produced and why they took the form that they did. In particular, I will argue that all of the major variants were created to bolster the perceived authenticity of the <i>Heart Sutra.</i> That the <i>Heart Sutra </i>appeared to lack authenticity in some eyes is hardly surprising given what we now know about its origins. </p>
<p>The centre of this argument is a simplified version of the <i>stemma </i>(or genealogy) of the <i>Heart Sutra </i>that I published in 2021. This diagram shows the relationships between the main inputs to the <i>Heart Sutra</i> and the five main versions that subsequently appeared. </p>
<p>Here a solid arrow represents the lines of descent, and the dotted arrow reflects the fact that Chinese extended versions repeat the text of <i>Xīn jīng </i>(T 251) where they overlap. Vertical spacing reflects relative chronology.</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhiLWC5gKpklbWS9m7ReJFAAQ8Hje4UPaYEimEjbx1dTJJsjlsiUSqqiHM5UQnHj8EeMCx-UILRoRD48vCYb_R1CnRnvI2zUPmXNHShvt6WbwP5BEk0xEb2b71qD02t8_a_8qkEiSRZSqyGwtaunvQXhIO3z_6Udh7wHjR9i7W1-pg019zXjBFQ/s819/Middle%20map-copy.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="701" data-original-width="819" height="481" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhiLWC5gKpklbWS9m7ReJFAAQ8Hje4UPaYEimEjbx1dTJJsjlsiUSqqiHM5UQnHj8EeMCx-UILRoRD48vCYb_R1CnRnvI2zUPmXNHShvt6WbwP5BEk0xEb2b71qD02t8_a_8qkEiSRZSqyGwtaunvQXhIO3z_6Udh7wHjR9i7W1-pg019zXjBFQ/w561-h481/Middle%20map-copy.png" width="561" /></a></div>
<p>There are two processes to consider: an initial <i>convergence </i>in the <i>Xīn jīng</i> and a subsequent <i>divergence </i>into numerous versions of the text. </p>
<p>As much as the <i>Xīn jīng </i>reflects a convergence of texts, it also reflects a convergence of Indian and Chinese Buddhism. This may not be obvious since writing about Indian Buddhism and Chinese Buddhism tends to happen in different academic contexts that don’t communicate very well. This is sometimes referred to as “the silo mentality”. Even when there is some crossover, such as when scholars of Pāli literature study Chinese translations of <i>Āgama </i>texts, they see the Chinese translations as reflecting Indian culture rather than Chinese culture. Little or no attempt is made to read translated <i>Āgama </i>texts as Chinese texts. </p>
<p>This may be understandable in the case of <i>Āgama </i>texts but it doesn't work in the case of the <i>Heart Sutra</i>. The text was created in a Chinese Buddhist milieu and this is important for understanding it. However, the principal ideas in the text—Avalokiteśvara bodhisatva, Prajñāpāramitā, and <i>dhāraṇī</i>—all come from, and must understood in terms of, Indian Buddhism as well. Understanding the <i>Heart Sutra</i> requires us to have a foot in both camps, which may explain why the text has been so neglected and many of the articles that appear in print are low quality.</p>
<br />
<p style="text-align: center;"><b>Convergence</b></p>
<p>The late Stefano Zacchetti (2005: 32) says that Kumārajīva's translation of <i>Pañcaviṃśatisāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā</i> (<i>Pañc</i>) occurred during the period 29 May 403–13 Jan 404 CE. The <i>Móhē bānrě bōluómì jīng </i>«摩訶般若波羅蜜經» (T 223; <i>Móhē</i>) was completed with the help of several expert assistants and was a significant improvement on previous translations. In parallel Kumārajīva and his team translated the *<i>Mahāprajñāpāramitopadeśa </i>an extensive commentary attributed to Nāgārjuna. The <i>Dàzhìdù lùn </i>«大智度論» was completed on 1 Feb 406 CE. </p>
<p>During the process of translating the commentary, it became clear that <i>Móhē </i>required some revisions. Zacchetti says that these were complete by 18 May 404, but also says in a footnote (128) that one of Kumārajīva's principal assistants, Sengrui (僧睿; 371–438 CE), in his preface to the sutra, mentions revisions continuing to be made throughout the process of producing the <i>Dàzhìdù lùn. </i>The commentary and its text have guided the Chinese understanding of Prajñāpāramitā from that time onwards. </p>
<p>While we still don't know for sure who composed the <i>Xīn jīng</i>, it seems increasingly likely to have been Xuanzang. His name is associated with the earliest mention of the text, he is named in the oldest artefacts, and the earliest commentaries were by some of his close associates. My thorough exploration of this evidence has been submitted for peer review and with luck will be published in 2024. In this essay, after long and detailed consideration of the evidence, I assume that Xuanzang was the author. This is a provisional conclusion that may be subject to revision if some plausible refutation appears (<i>implausible </i>refutations already exist, but can be safely ignored). </p>
<p>Sometime between 654 CE and 26 December 656 CE, Xuanzang composed the <i>Bānrě bōluómìduō xīn jīng </i>«般若波羅蜜多心經» (T 251; <i>Xīn</i>). The earlier date reflects when the <i>dhāraṇī </i>was translated in the <i>Tuóluóní jí jīng </i>«陀羅尼集經» (T 901) by Atikūṭa. Since <i>dhāraṇī </i>transcription in China was never standardised, where we see an identical transcription in two different texts it is highly likely that one copied from the other. Given the nature of <i>Xīn</i>, which is mainly copied passages, I provisionally assume that Xuanzang copied the <i>dhāraṇī </i>from the <i>Tuóluóní jí jīng. </i>This means that <i>Xīn </i>could not have existed before this date. Note that Watanabe Shōgo (1990) definitively refuted the idea of <i>Heart Sutra </i>texts existing prior to the composition of the <i>Xīn</i>. </p>
<p>The later date is when the text is first mentioned in Buddhist literature, i.e. in the <i>Biography </i>of Xuanzang, <i>Dà Táng dà Cí’ēnsì sānzàng fǎshī chuán xù</i> «大唐大慈恩寺三藏法師傳序» (T 2053), composed by Yàncóng 彥悰 in 688 CE. The best translation of the <i>Biography</i> is Li (1995), but see also remarks on its historicity in Kotyk (2019). </p>
<p>There is no evidence of the <i>Heart Sutra</i>, of any kind, from any place, before 654 CE. From that date onwards, evidence in the form of inscriptions, manuscripts, catalogue entries, and commentaries proliferated and began to spread to neighbouring polities in Tibet, Korea, Japan, and Vietnam. There is no evidence of any kind from India and it now seems extremely unlikely the <i>Heart Sutra</i> was ever known there. The so-called Indo-Tibetan commentaries are better thought of as Tibetan commentaries attributed to Indian authors (a legitimising strategy).</p>
<p><i>Xin </i>consists of some copied passages from <i>Móhē</i>, to which Xuanzang added some touches of his own (notably some novel "spellings" and the figure of Guanyin) and the <i>dhāraṇī. </i><i>Xīn </i>became the standard <i>Heart Sutra </i>from that time onwards in China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam. It is <i>Xīn </i>that people refer to when they say "The <i>Heart Sutra</i> is the most popular Mahāyāna text".</p>
<p>This part of the stemma also emphasises that passages from <i>Pañc </i>found in <i>Hṛd </i>did not arrive there directly. Contra the historically dominant narrative, the copied passages arrived via a Chinese intermediary, i.e. <i>Móhē</i>. That is, the passages copied from <i>Pañc </i>were not copied directly in Sanskrit from a Sanskrit source. Rather they were selected from <i>Móhē</i>, and only later were they (inexpertly) translated back into Sanskrit. </p>
<p>As Jan Nattier (1992: 170) pointed out, <i>Hṛd </i>bears all the hallmarks of a "back-translation". These include “unmatched but synonymous equivalents” for some Sanskrit terms and “incorrect word order, grammatical errors that can be traced to the structure of the intermediary language, and incorrect readings (due to visual confusion of certain letters or characters in the intermediary language)”.</p>
<p>Thus the <i>Heart Sutra </i>can be explained as the the result of a series of convergent processes and reflects also a convergence of Indian and Chinese Buddhist cultures. However, the text soon began to diverge into numerous versions and it is to these that that we now turn. </p>
<br />
<p style="text-align: center;"><b>Divergence </b></p>
<p>From the <i>Xīn</i> we see three main lines of development that, as yet, cannot be precisely dated. </p>
<ol><li>The creation of the <i>Dàmíngzhòu jīng </i>(T 250) and its attribution to Kumārajīva </li>
<li>The creation of the Sanskrit text titled <i>Prajñāpāramitāhṛdaya</i>. </li>
<li>The creation of two <i>extended texts.</i></li></ol>
<p>Note that the dotted line from <i>Xīn </i>to the Chinese extended sutras (T 253, 254, 257) reflects the retention of the Chinese text of <i>Xīn</i> where they overlap. The phrase "two extended texts" refers to (1) the Chinese text of T 252, and (2) the Sanskrit <i>Pañcaviṃśatikā-prajñāpāramitā-hṛdaya nāma dhāraṇī </i>“Dhāraṇī named The Heart of the Perfection of Insight in Twenty-five [Lines]”. The <i>Pañcaviṃśatikā </i>was subsequently translated into Chinese (T 253, 254, 257). </p><p>I will take each of these versions in turn and try to show that each adds something that was perceived to be missing from the <i>Heart Sutra</i>. I don’t argue that there was any coordination between the three processes and, indeed, they seem to have occurred independently and over quite a long timeframe. However, together with the hagiographic stories about Xuanzang, they were embraced into the established myth of the <i>Heart Sutra </i>as an Indian Buddhist text.</p><br />
<p>1. <i>Dàmíngzhòu jīng </i></p>
<p> The <i>Heart Sutra </i>was associated with Xuanzang from the outset and this might have been enough to ensure its place as an authentic Indian Buddhist sutra. The four early Chinese commentaries, however, still exhibit some anxiety on this score. The commentaries are:</p>
<ul>
<li><i>Bōrě bōluómìduō xīn jīng yōuzàn </i>«般若波羅蜜多心經幽贊» “Profound Explanation of the Sutra of the Essence of Prajñāpāramitā”, by Kuījī 窺基 (T 1710)</li>
<li><i>Fú shuō bōrě bōluómìduō xīn jīng zàn </i>«佛說般若波羅蜜多心經贊» “Explanation of the Sutra of the Essence of Prajñāpāramitā” by Woncheuk 圓測 (T 1711)</li>
<li><i>Bōrě bōluómìduō xīn jīng shū </i>«般若波羅蜜多心經疏» “Commentary on the Sutra of the Essence of Prajñāpāramitā” by Jìngmài 靖邁 (X 522)</li>
<li><i>Bōrě bōluómìduō xīn jīng lüèshū </i>«般若波羅蜜多心經略疏» “Brief Commentary on the Sutra of the Essence of Prajñāpāramitā” by Fǎzàng 法藏 (T 1712). </li></ul>
<p>Fǎzàng's commentary is traditionally dated to ca. 702 CE and he died in 712 CE. The other four are not dated, but Kuījī and Woncheuk died in 682 and 696 CE respectively. Jìngmài’s precise dates are unknown but he was roughly contemporary with Xuanzang. Thus they all date from the late seventh or early eighth centuries, and span perhaps twenty years (682–702). </p>
<p>Each commentator notes that the <i>Heart Sutra </i>lacks the expected introduction and conclusion of an authentic sutra. They also note that it consists of extractions from Prajñāpāramitā, which at that point in history seems to have been a reference to <i>Móhē</i>. All four men went ahead and composed their commentaries, but they left some ambiguity. Each of the subsequent developments in the <i>Heart Sutra </i>seems to address this ambiguity.</p>
<p>One approach to securing the authenticity of the text was to create the impression that previous translations existed, notably a translation attributed to the greatest of all the Chinese translators, Kumārajīva, i.e. <i>Móhē bānrě bōluómì dàmíngzhòu jīng </i>«摩訶般若波羅蜜大明呪經» (T 250; hereafter <i>Dàmíngzhòu jīng</i>). Note the title does not include the word <i>xīn </i>心 "heart". Many of Kumārajiva's translations from the early fifth century are still in use today. </p>
<p>The idea of a Kumārajīva translation and the title it was given (<i>Dàmíngzhòu jīng</i>) were used to make links to another story about an even earlier translation, titled <i>Móhē bānrě bōluómì shénzhòu </i>摩訶般若波羅蜜神呪. This created the myth of the "lost translation" by Zhī Qiān 支謙 (fl. 3rd century).</p>
<p>Watanabe (1990) thoroughly debunked this story, pointing out that it relies on a two-step process: (1) the false attribution of the <i>shénzhòu </i>text to Zhi Qian—in the catalogue <i>Lìdài sānbǎo jì </i>«歷代三寶紀» (T 2034), compiled by Fèi Chángfáng 費長房 in 598 CE—and (2) the conflation of this <i>shénzhòu </i>text with <i>Dàmíngzhòu jīng</i>. The debunking of this story (some 34 years ago) has not stopped commentators from continuing to use the idea of the "lost translations" to push back the date of translation and assert the validity of the claim that the text is Indian in origin. To be clear, neither Kumārajīva nor Zhi Qian translated the <i>Heart Sutra</i>. This is a false trail, deliberately laid. </p>
<p>In fact, the first evidence of the <i>Dàmíngzhòu jīng</i>, of any kind,<i> </i>is a mention in the <i>Dàtáng nèidiǎn lù </i>«大唐內典錄» "Catalogue of the Inner Canon of the Great Tang" (T 2149), published in 730 CE. As far as I can tell there are no physical texts of <i>Dàmíngzhòu jīng </i>before the eleventh century. The idea that a translation by Kumārajīva could be lost and then rediscovered some three hundred years after his death is extremely far-fetched and scholars have long doubted this attribution, starting with Matsumoto (1932). </p>
<p>That a text produced after <i>Xīn </i>might be retrospectively attributed to Kumārajīva to bolster its perceived authenticity is entirely plausible. It is not merely theoretical to say that <i>Dàmíngzhòu jīng </i>might have been used this way since this is exactly the use that has been made of it in practice. Indeed, we may say that legitimising <i>Xīn</i> is more or less the <i>only</i> use that has been made of the <i>Dàmíngzhòu jīng. </i>In stark contrast to <i>Xīn</i>, there are no commentaries on <i>Dàmíngzhòu jīng</i>, for example, and no prominent inscriptions or famous manuscripts. To my knowledge, <i>Dàmíngzhòu jīng </i>was never transmitted outside of China or translated into another language. </p>
<p><i>Dàmíngzhòu jīng</i>, then, seems to have been created with the intention of making <i>Xīn </i>appear to be more authentic by pushing back the date of its composition.</p><p><br /></p>
<p>2. <i>Prajñāpāramitāhṛdaya</i>.</p>
<p>In the historically dominant view, <i>Xīn</i>, the main text used in China, is a translation of this authentic Sanskrit version of the text. What some scholars still call "the Sanskrit original" proves that the <i>Heart Sutra </i>is an authentic Indian Buddhist sutra.</p>
<p>This view is spoiled by a detailed analysis of the text which shows that <i>Hṛd </i>definitely<i> </i>could not have borrowed its copied passages directly from <i>Pañc</i>. Rather the passages were clearly copied into <i>Xīn </i>from <i>Móhē </i>and then translated back into Sanskrit, leaving numerous telltales of the "back-translation" process. This was the gist of Nattier (1992) but has been confirmed numerous times by Huifeng (2014) and yours truly (see especially Attwood 2021b). The Sanskrit text is a translation of the Chinese. As such, it is not a stretch to refer to it as a "Chinese forgery". </p>
<p>It seems that the Sanskrit text was produced at around the same time as <i>Dàmíngzhòu jīng </i>was being created, i.e. in the late seventh or early eighth century. To date, we have no information on who did the translation or when. There is an ambiguous reference to "a Sanskrit text" (<i>fàn běn</i> 梵本) in Woncheuk's commentary (T 1711), though he does not name <i>Hṛd </i>and might have been referring to <i>Pañc</i>, since he says:<br /></p>
<blockquote>The reason there is no introduction or conclusion is that [this text] <b>selects the essential outlines from all the Prajñā texts</b>. It has only the main chapter, without an introduction and conclusion, just as the <i>Guānyīn jīng</i> is not composed of three sections (Adapted from Hyun Choo 2006: 138: emphasis added).</blockquote>
<p>The <i>Guānyīn jīng </i>«觀音經» being originally the twenty-fifth chapter of the <i>Miàofǎ liánhuá jīng </i>«妙法蓮華經» (T 262; Skt. <i>Saddharmapuṇḍarīka Sūtra</i>), where it is titled <i>Guānshìyīn púsà pǔmén pǐn </i>觀世音菩薩普門品 “Chapter of the Universal Gate of Avalokiteśvara Bodhisattva”. </p><p>I assume that a manuscript of <i>Hṛd </i>was forged for this purpose, and passed off as an Indian “original” since later copies of a Sanskrit text do exist (such as the famous Hōryūji manuscript). A Sanskrit manuscript is the <i>sine qua non </i>of authenticity for a Buddhist text in China. </p>
<p>Now that it has been revealed to be a back-translation, <i>Hṛd </i>has little philological value. Those existing studies that treat this text as "the Sanskrit original" have to be deprecated. In a forthcoming article in <i>Asian Literature and Translation</i>, I revise Conze's unparsable Sanskrit edition of <i>Hṛd </i>to make it parsable. But even this was perceived as a dead end by one of the reviewers. Study of the Sanskrit text is now quite pointless except as a unique historical artefact from early Tang China. </p>
<p>It is not that rare for a Chinese Buddhist text to turn out to have been composed in Chinese. Examples of this have been well documented, even in antiquity. It is exceedingly rare for a Chinese text to be translated into Sanskrit. A few examples of this have been noted. To my knowledge, the <i>Hṛd </i>is unique for having been successfully passed off as an authentic Indian text. </p>
<p>The single most important sign of the authenticity of a Buddhist text in Tang China was precisely the existence of a Sanskrit manuscript. Once again, Hṛd appears to have been created to fill a perceived gap in the authentication of <i>Xīn</i>. </p>
<br /><p>3. <i>Extended Texts</i></p>
<p> All of the early commentators on <i>Xīn </i>comment on—and attempt to explain—the absence of the usual introduction and conclusion that we expect in Buddhist sutra (I cited Woncheuk on this above; the others make similar comments). The extended text is an attempt to supply exactly these missing sections and this appears to have happened at least twice. </p><p>The first extended text appears to be <i>Pǔbiàn zhì cáng bānrě bōluómìduō xīn jīng </i>«普遍智藏般若波羅蜜多心經» (T 252). This text has an introduction and conclusion that are substantially different from all other extended <i>Heart Sutra</i> texts. The introduction is much longer and has specific details —like the presence of 100,000 bhikṣus and 70,000 bodhisatvas—that are absent in all the other texts. At the same time, the conclusion of <i>Pǔbiàn </i>is much shorter and more perfunctory. It is quite striking that the significant differences here have been almost entirely overlooked by other scholars. For more, though still incomplete, detail see Attwood (2021a). </p>
<p>All the other extended texts are clearly from one source, probably in Sanskrit, though with Tibetan and Chinese translations. The Chinese versions of the extended text (i.e. T 253, 254, 257) appear to be genuine translations from Sanskrit. That said, all the Chinese versions, including <i>Pǔbiàn</i>, retain the text of <i>Xīn </i>and only retranslate the extensions. </p><p>Ben Nourse (2010) has noted several variant extended texts in the Dunhuang cache. He suggests that these may be hybrids of standard and extended texts, but an alternative explanation might be that they are additional attempts at creating an extended text. More work needs to be done on the Dunhuang texts.
</p><p>So for a third time, we see the <i>Heart Sutra </i>being modified to better fit a Chinese preconception about authenticity, in this case, that a real sutra has an introduction and conclusion. Only here, however, do we see two (or possibly more) attempts at the same modification. </p>
<br />
<p style="text-align: center;"><b>Conclusion</b></p>
<p>I have been engaged in explaining the origins of the <i>Heart Sutra</i> for around twelve years. It already seems like old news to me and I find it frustrating that no one in <i>Buddhist Studies </i>seems willing or able to keep up with my oeuvre. At some point, the textbooks will have to change and I only hope I live long enough to see this. How this affects Buddhists is anyone's guess, but I suspect that they will continue to resist all attempts at a deflationary explanation. </p><p>The evolution of the <i>Heart Sutra </i>beyond its origins has been of even less interest to the field (and of no interest to Buddhists). The existence of multiple versions is, of course, well known. However, the dates of these versions have been obscured by presuppositions and this has hampered any attempts to understand how the text evolved. Watanabe (1990) debunked the attributions to Kumārajīva and Zhi Qian, making it clear that <i>Xīn </i>is the earliest version of the text. But his work has largely been ignored (including by me until 2023). The <i>dhāraṇī </i>tells us that <i>Xīn </i>cannot have existed before 654 CE, when Atikūṭa transcribed it in <i>Tuóluóní jí jīng</i> «陀羅尼集經» (T 901). This is our starting point. </p>
<p>As we have seen, <i>Xīn </i>diverged into four other versions—ie. <i>Dàmíngzhòu jīng, Hṛd, Pǔbiàn, </i>and <i>Pañcaviṃśatikā</i>. I have argued that we can see these versions as the result of three processes:</p>
<ol>
<li>One attempt to push back the date of composition</li>
<li>One attempt to create a "Sanskrit original"</li>
<li>Two attempts to provide the missing introduction and conclusion. </li></ol>
<p>In other words, the evolution of the <i>Heart Sutra</i> was driven by conscious attempts to make the origins of the <i>Heart Sutra </i>fit preconceived notions of authenticity in China. These attempts largely succeeded and the associated ideas were incorporated into the historically dominant narratives of the <i>Heart Sutra </i>as an ancient Indian sutra text. </p>
<p>What my work shows is that the <i>Heart Sutra </i>was never ancient, Indian, or a sutra. It was created in the mid-seventh century, in China, and is modelled on a <i>chāo jīng </i>抄經 "digest text" (a Chinese genre of Buddhist text). And this created anxieties related to authenticity that were addressed in a variety of ways. </p>
<p>I hope that it is becoming clear to my readers that the historically dominant narrative, the myth of the <i>Heart Sutra</i>, is largely a fiction, created quite consciously (thought without much coordination) by Chinese Buddhists. If the <i>Heart Sutra </i>had been merely another ancient Indian sutra, it would have been quite prosaic, notable only for its popularity in East Asia. The idea that it was composed in China and deliberately (and successfully) passed off as an ancient Indian sutra is far more interesting (even a little exciting for a textual scholar). </p>
<p>While I am still not an expert in Chinese Buddhist texts, if I am right about this, it makes the <i>Heart Sutra </i>unique amongst Buddhist texts. Moreover, I think I am right because my approach has a great deal more explanatory power than the historically dominant narratives: expanding on existing work, I have explained the origins of the text in detail. I hope this essay shows that my approach can also explain subsequent developments in the <i>Heart Sutra</i> as well. </p>
</div>
<p style="text-align: center;">~~oOo~~</p>
<br />
<p style="text-align: center;"><b>Bibliography</b></p>
<p class="hang"> Attwood, Jayarava. (2021a). "Preliminary Notes on the Extended Heart Sutra in Chinese." <i>Asian Literature and Translation</i> 8(1): 63–85. DOI: http://doi.org/10.18573/alt.53</p>
<p class="hang">——. (2021b). “The Chinese Origins of the Heart Sutra Revisited: A Comparative Analysis of the Chinese and Sanskrit Texts.” <i>Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies</i> 44: 13–52.</p>
<p class="hang">Huifeng. (2014). "Apocryphal Treatment for Conze’s Heart Problems: Non-attainment, Apprehension, and Mental Hanging in the <i>Prajñāpāramitā Hṛdaya</i>." <i>Journal of the Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies</i> 6: 72-105. </p>
<p class="hang">Hyun Choo, B. (2006). "An English Translation of the Banya paramilda simgyeong chan: Wonch’uk’s Commentary on the Heart Sūtra (Prajñāpāramitā-hṛdaya-sūtra)." <i>International Journal of Buddhist Thought & Culture</i> 6: 121-205.</p>
<p class="hang">Kotyk, Jeffrey. (2019). ‘Chinese State and Buddhist Historical Sources on Xuanzang: Historicity and the Daci’en si sanzang fashi zhuan 大慈恩寺三藏法師傳’. T’oung Pao 105(5-6): 513–544. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/15685322-10556P01</p>
<p class="hang">Li, Rongxi (1995). <i>A Biography of the Tripiṭaka Master of the Great Ci’en Monastery of the Great Tang Dynasty</i>. Berkeley, CA.: Numata Centre of Buddhist Translation and Research. </p>
<p class="hang">Matsumoto, Tokumyo. (1932). <i>Die Prajñāpāramitā Literatur</i>. Rheinischen Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universitat zu Bonn.</p>
<p class="hang">Nattier, Jan (1992). "The Heart Sūtra: a Chinese apocryphal text?" <i>Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies</i> 15 (2): 153-223.</p><p class="hang">Nourse, Benjamin. (2010) "The Heart Sutra at Dunhuang." <i>Paper presented at the North American Graduate Students Conference on Buddhist Studies</i>. Toronto, Canada. April 10, 2010. </p>
<p class="hang">Watanabe, Shōgo. (1990). “<i>Móhē bānrě bōluómì shénzhòu jīng </i>and <i>Móhē bānrě bōluómì dàmíngzhòu jīng</i>, As Seen in the Sutra Catalogues.” <i>Indogaku Bukkyōgaku Kenkyū</i> 39-1: 54–58. [= 渡辺章悟. 1990. 「経録からみた『摩訶般若波羅蜜神呪経』と『摩訶般若波羅蜜大明呪経』」印度学仏教学研究 39-1: 54–58.] </p><p class="hang">Zacchetti, Stefano. (2005) <i>In Praise of the Light: A Critical Synoptic Edition with an Annotated Translation of Chapters 1-3 of Dharmarakṣa’s Guang zan jing, Being the Earliest Chinese Translation of the Larger Prajñāpāramitā.</i> (Bibliotheca Philologica et Philosophica Buddhica, 8). Tokyo: The International Research Institute of Advanced Buddhology, Soka University. </p>
Jayaravahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13783922534271559030noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19327107.post-28719049629523658542024-01-05T08:06:00.002+00:002024-01-11T17:58:25.290+00:00We Will Never Know What Language the Buddha Spoke<blockquote style="text-align: center; width: 250px;">“What can be said at all can be said clearly, and whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.” <br /><span style="font-size: x-small;">Ludwig Wittgenstein. <i>Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus</i>.</span></blockquote>
<div style="text-align: justify;"><p>Stefan Karpik (2023) has proposed that “serious attention be given to the Theravada tradition that the Buddha spoke Pali” (2023: 41). Both this and an earlier paper (Karpik 2019) make linguistic arguments about the Pāli language, arriving at conclusions that question the existing paradigm on the history of Pāli and it relation to other Prakrits. Karpik then argues that these new conclusions tell that the Buddha spoke Pāli. In this essay, I will review these papers and some related material. In this first section I'll outline a broad response to the claim that we <i>can </i>know what language the Buddha spoke, in the context of some responses to Karpik and a resume of the milieu that he has emerged from. I'll identify some unexamined assumptions that Karpik makes (in common with others in his milieu). In the next section, I'll consider the historicity of the Buddha, then the issue of historicity itself. Finally I will make some remarks about historical facts that can be gleaned from Pāli texts and then conclude with a summary.</p>
<p>My first response to Karpik (2019a, 2023) is that, while the philological methods that Karpik employs allow him to make interesting and even compelling conjectures about the history of Pāli, these methods do not allow him to infer anything at all about what language the Buddha spoke without relying on some major assumptions that I don't find interesting let alone compelling. Something I will reiterate below, is that the issue of what language the Buddha spoke is entirely extrinsic to the issues of the history of Pāli. Karpik's conclusions are compatible with literally any position on the historicity of the Buddha. However, the historicity of the Buddha is the hill that he has chosen to die on.</p>
<p>The reasons for rejecting his conclusions are obvious. Karpik accepts the modern consensus that the Buddha lived in the fifth century BCE. There is simply no evidence related to the Buddha from this period or within about 500 years of this date. All that we think we know comes from Buddhist scripture composed in a later period and how we interpret scripture depends on which assumptions we make and/or do not make. And such assumptions are not explored in Karpik's articles. The date itself is based on a series of assumptions and speculative interpretations of Buddhist scripture. Moveover, there is no evidence of any language other than Sanskrit and a Northwestern Prakrit being spoken at that time (this evidence comes from the Sanskrit Grammarians Yāska and Pāṇini). It's interesting to see Karpik relying on a consensus on dates, when his project is to undermine another consensus amongst virtually the same small group of scholars. </p>
<p>The simple fact is that there is no evidence from that time period on which we can base a history of the Buddha. This is not to say that the myth of the Buddha as found in Buddhist texts is not important. Nor do I argue that the Buddha did not exist. We cannot base an argument for the historicity of the Buddha on the evidence we have since it all comes from religious texts composed long after the time in question, and then only according to particular, biased, readings of those texts. We simply don't know. </p>
<p>There has been little response to Karpik (2019a) from academics working in the field already. The notable exception is from <a href="https://utoronto.academia.edu/BryanLevman">Bryan Levman</a>. Levman has been actively publishing on the history of Pāli for some years (2008, 2010a, 2010b, 2016, 2019, 2020a, 2020b, 2021, 2022, 2023). Levman's (2019) critique of Karpik (2019a) on philological grounds is the most extensive response and strongly argues against Karpik and for the utility of the current consensus. </p>
<p>Karpik seems to have been given a "right of reply" to Levman since his rebuttal appears in the same issue of JOCBS. Karpik (2019b) repudiates <i>all</i> of Levman's points and criticises him quite severely for ignoring facts, using faulty methods, and even misunderstanding linguistic technical terms. Note that these are serious accusations in an academic context: Karpik implies that Levman is incompetent.</p>
<p>While I don't entirely follow (or care about) the linguistic arguments, the idea that someone as well versed in this topic as Levman got <i>everything </i>wrong and effectively doesn't understand his area of expertise seems far-fetched. On the other hand, my research on the <i>Heart Sutra</i> shows that such situations in which the "experts" in Buddhist Studies are flatly wrong about everything are certainly possible. So I'm not <i>a priori</i> against the idea, but the proposition that Levman is substantially wrong on the facts is <i>prima facie</i> unlikely. Edward Conze was a charlatan of the first order, but Levman seems on the level to me. </p>
<p>Other responses have been cursory. Mark Allon (2021) mentions Karpik (2019a) in passing, grouping him with Richard Gombrich and others who believe, <i>without evidence, </i>that the Buddha spoke Pāli. Allon, a leading expert on Middle Indic, certainly does not seem to take Karpik's argument seriously. Similarly, Roderick Bucknell (2022), another expert on Middle Indic, mentions Karpik (2019) but only in passing. He seems unpersuaded as well. </p><p>In the end, I don't know enough about linguistics to adjudicate on the linguistic issues. I think Karpik could be right. I found his articles persuasive. I also found Levman persuasive and he could be right as well. That said, I think I do understand the historical points that Karpik seeks to make and I note that Levman shares many of Karpik's presuppositions on this matter. It is this historical aspect of Karpik's articles that I will be addressing.</p>
<p>Karpik's contributions have emerged from a particular milieu based in Oxford, UK. Richard Gombrich founded the Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies (OCBS)—<a href="https://ocbs.org/status-change/">until recently associated with Oxford University</a>—in 2004 to promote the study of Buddhism. Gombrich was also instrumental in founding the Numata chair in Buddhist Studies at Oxford, now held by Kate Crosby. </p>
<p>When Gombrich retired as director of the Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies (OCBS) in 2020, Wynne was anointed his successor (I gather from Gombrich that he was the only candidate). They co-edited the OCBS journal (JOCBS) in 2019 and then Wynne took over in 2020. Wynne (2006) had already contributed to the "debate" on the Buddha's language, concluding:</p>
<blockquote>"I therefore agree with Rhys Davids, and disagree with sceptics such as Sénart, Kern and Schopen, that the internal evidence of early Buddhist literature proves its historical authenticity." (65)</blockquote>
<p>Wynne (2006: 66) ends on a characteristically pugnacious note: "The claim that we cannot know anything about early Indian Buddhism because all the manuscripts are late is vacuous, and made, I assume, by those who have not studied the textual material thoroughly." Like Karpik, then, Wynne sees the people whose <i>interpretation of scripture </i>conflicts with his as not merely wrong, but as <i>incompetent</i>. He apparently believes that no one could read the same scriptures as he has and come to a different conclusion. Which would be a first in the history of interpreting religious scripture if it were true. </p><p>In a more recent JOCBS article, Wynne (2019a: abstract) states that "early Buddhist discourses are largely authentic, and can be regarded as a reasonably accurate historical witness." Wynne certainly proves that this is <i>his belief</i>, but his conclusions are based on a reading of Buddhist texts that <i>assumes </i>their authenticity and the historicity of the Buddha. Wynne (2019b) has also weighed in, via a JOCBS editorial, on the specific topic of the language the Buddha spoke. Again the assumption throughout is that the Buddha is historical and that the Pāli suttas are a "reasonably accurate historical witness".</p>
<p>Also emerging from the Oxford milieu are two notable longer works. An extensive apologetic tract by Therāvadin bhikkhus Sujato and Brahmali (2013), published as a supplement to JOCBS 5, which again assumes the historicity of the Buddha and the authenticity of the the Pāli Canon and then presents evidence that "proves" the authenticity of the Pāli texts.* </p>
<blockquote style="font-size: x-small;">* Sujato has recently stated that he is "not Theravādin", though he still uses his Theravāda ordination name, still wears Theravāda robes, and still allows people to refer to him using Theravādin honorifics like "Bhante" and "Venerable". Given that he was kicked out of the lineage that ordained him, one wonders why he persists in the fiction that he is a <i>bhikkhu </i>at all. </blockquote>
<p>And Gombrich's (2018) own contribution, which also supports the idea that the Buddha was <i>probably </i>historical and that Pāli was <i>probably </i>the language he spoke. Gombrich, a good Popperian, leaves room for doubt. </p><p>To date, all of Karpik's publications have been in JOCBS under Wynne's editorship. </p>
<p>I will happily stipulate that Karpik (2019a) makes an interesting and persuasive argument for Pāli being the ur-language of the Pāli canon. Similarly for his argument that Pāli was a single language with natural variations rather than a koine or argot; that it need not reflect an artificial language or a mashup of dialects, and that at least some suttas were probably composed in Pāli. I am persuaded of the possibility of a community of Buddhists in Indian using Pāli in daily life and recording their ideas about Buddhism in that language. The idea that texts were composed in some other language and translated into Pāli does look questionable. Karpik (2023) extends this argument to include the Asoka inscriptions under the heading of Pāli. </p>
<p>What puzzles me is why Karpik, Gombrich, Wynne, and even Levman, all think that their conclusions about the <i>history of Pāli</i>, or even conclusions of this general type, have any bearing at all on the problem of what language the Buddha spoke. Knowing what language the Pāli texts were composed in or knowing the relationship between that language and the language of the Asokan edicts tells us nothing at all about the Buddha. I can’t see that one has any bearing on the other, except <i>when we assume </i>a priori<i> that it does</i>. As Karpik explains, in criticising Levman, when the assumption leads the conclusion:</p>
<blockquote>This is a circular argument known as "begging the question" or <i>petitio principii</i>, where one assumes what one wishes to prove in order to prove it.</blockquote>
<p>Karpik accuses Levman of relying on this informal fallacy. It is obvious, however, that this same fallacy is central to Karpik's historical arguments about "the Buddha". The unexamined assumptions that Karpik appears to rely on include:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>(1) that the historicity of the Buddha, qua founder of Buddhism, is not in doubt</p>
<p>(2) that the Pāli literature faithfully records the utterances of the “historical Buddha”</p>
<p>(3) that the Pāli literature can be taken literally </p></blockquote><blockquote><p>(4) that the Asoka inscription have some clear relation to spoken language in different parts of India at the time.</p></blockquote>
<p>Let us try to see, then, the role these assumptions play in Karpik's articles. </p>
<br />
<p style="text-align: center;"><b>On the Historicity of the Buddha</b></p>
<p>As already noted, Karpik’s method leans heavily on the assumed historicity of the Buddha. For example “The Buddha would have known of the precise transmission of the Vedic texts” (2019: 17). I’m not sure how Karpik knows this and he doesn’t say. My impression is that Brahmins learned the Vedas in private and that their mnemonic methods were not used by Buddhists because they <i>did not know about them</i>. There is no mention of such techniques in the Pāli texts to my knowledge (and as it happens I have comprehensive studied references to Brahmanical religious belief and practice in the four Nikāyas for an unpublished article). </p>
<p>A few pages later: “The evidence suggests a single, intentionally fluid, oral transmission from the Buddha.” (19). I agree that he has made a case for oral transmission, but “from the Buddha” is not a conclusion that he draws from the evidence presented. Rather “from the Buddha” relies on a background assumption about the Buddha and his role in founding Buddhism. The evidence presented does not speak to this issue at all. </p>
<p>Stories about the kings mentioned in the Pāli are discussed as though they too are historical. We see statements like "In the Buddha’s day, king Pasenadi of Kosala and king Ajātasattu of Magadha had each defeated the other in battle (J II.237)" (Karpik 2019a: 21). Just as for the Buddha, there is no evidence that either Pasenadi or Ajātasattu is historical, and no evidence for battles between them other than stories in scripture. </p><p>Note that the source Karpik cites here is a <i>Jātaka </i>story. The <i>Jātaka </i>and <i>Avadāna </i>literature is explicitly allegorical and/or mythological in character and predicated on (the supernatural) idea of the Buddha "remembering his past lives". And yet Karpik's interpretation of this literature is presented as an equally reliable and valid source of historical information as, say, the suttas. Karpik seems to accord this special status to every text that he cites in support of his thesis. And at this point his brutal methodological criticism of Levman starts to look disingenuous, since Karpik himself appears to be unclear on what kind of inferences his own methods can validate.</p>
<p>Another example occurs in Karpik's (2019b) rebuttal of Levman (2019):</p>
<blockquote>In common with MOTT (Multiple Oral Transmission Theory) advocates, Levman gives no account of why the underlying layer was discarded and lost, <i>despite repeated injunctions in the suttas to memorise them to the letter </i>(Karpik 2019: 14-15). (Emphasis added)</blockquote>
<p>Here again, Karpik is <i>interpreting scripture </i>rather than putting forward an argument based on evidence. His argument is that certain religious texts say it <i>should</i> not happen, therefore it <i>cannot have </i>happened. But this reasoning is clearly faulty, even at a common sense level. </p>
<p>Gregory Schopen has noted that where we have archaeological evidence for early monasticism, it almost invariably contradicts the texts. Wynne (2006) argued that Schopen's scepticism—he always sides with archaeology over texts—is "extreme" and takes the opposite view, that the texts are usually trustworth. At best the conflict between text and archaeology leaves us with <i>unresolveable uncertainty</i>. Note that the scholars who seem loathe to acknowledge this uncertainty are all practising Theravādins or Theravāda-adjacent. Note also that the disagreement seems to take the form of denunciation. The suggestion is always that those who argue that we don't know and cannot know are somehow disingenuous, "extremist", and/or incompetent. While it seldom rises to the level of an <i>ad hominem </i>fallacy, the language used is not consistent with academic standards of discourse.</p>
<p>Karpik's (2019a) discussion then turns to the subject of where the Buddha lived and taught, as though the Pāli texts straightforwardly describe his actual life. Karpik provides four pages of charts of locations attributed to suttas, and simply treats these as factual records of where the Buddha visited. He even notes Schopen’s (2004) article outlining his discovery of a Buddhist <i>Vinaya </i>text that shows that locations were allowed to be made up when they were missing. And of course, they were/are missing in very many cases.</p>
<p>It is, of course, true that the Buddha is popularly believed to be an historical figure. No one denies this. Interestingly, Bryan Levman shares Karpik's belief on this score. However, as David Drewes (2017) has pointed out, <i>academic historiography </i>has a rather higher bar for historicity than religious or popular belief and, all things considered, the Buddha <i>does not meet this bar</i>.</p>
<blockquote>We are thus left with the rather strange proposition that Buddhism was founded by a historical figure who has not been linked to any historical facts, an idea that would seem decidedly unempirical, and only dubiously coherent. Stuck in this awkward situation, scholars have rarely been able to avoid the temptation to offer some suggestion as to what was likely, or ‘must’ have been, true about him. By the time they get done, we end up with a flesh and blood person – widely considered to be one of the greatest human beings ever to have lived – conjured up from little more than fancy (Drewes 2017: 1). </blockquote>
<p>A straw man argument that we commonly see employed against Drewes, is that he argues that "the Buddha didn't exist". This fake argument was raised, for example, by leading Middle-Indic scholar, Oskar von Hinüber (2019: abstract):</p>
<blockquote>David Drewes reviewed the opinions of a number of western Buddhologists on whether or not the Buddha was a historical person and<i> in conclusion claimed that the Buddha never existed.</i>"<i> </i>(Emphasis added)</blockquote>
<p>Actually this is not true. Drewes never makes this claim and what he <i>does </i>say is far more nuanced: <br /></p>
<blockquote>Although the idea that the Buddha cannot be considered a historical figure may seem radical, my argument is really a minor one. Though there has long been an industry devoted to the production of sensational claims about the Buddha, nothing about him has ever been established as fact, and the standard position in scholarship has long been that he is a figure about whom we know nothing. My only real suggestion is that we make the small shift from speaking of an unknown, contentless Buddha to accepting that we do not have grounds for speaking of a historical Buddha at all (2017: 19)</blockquote>
<p>Drewes is writing for academic historians not for religious believers. However, this distinction is often blurred in Buddhist Studies because so many Buddhist Studies scholars are heavily invested in normative Buddhist traditions (e.g. Gombrich, Wynne, Sujato, Brahmali, and Karpik). Academic historians not having grounds to use the term "historical Buddha" is not the same thing as saying "the Buddha never existed". What Drewes says boils down to this: academic historians<i> don't know </i>and we should stop saying "we know". </p>
<p>The specific category error of mistaking an epistemic argument ("we don't know") for a metaphysical argument ("he doesn't exist") is so common in Buddhist thought and academic Buddhist Studies that it ought to have a name. This fallacy poisons all of Edward Conze's work, for example. And most of the commentary on the doctrine of <i>anātman</i>. Highlighting this fallacy and correcting it is central to my own revisionist history project on the <i>Heart Sutra</i>. I believe we would get closer to the truth of Buddhism by abandoning all metaphysical claims related to Buddhism and reframing them as epistemic or phenomenological observations. While this is still a minority view, there are some interesting academic contributions such as Hamilton (2000), Shulman (2008), Gombrich (2009), Heim & Ram-Prasad (2018), and Jones (2022). </p>
<p>Not only does von Hinüber (2019) misrepresent Drewes' conclusion, but his method of validating his own claims consists entirely of <i>interpreting scripture</i>. In one sense, then, von Hinüber's article ought to give Karpik heart, since it shows that even the most educated and highly regarded experts are capable of serious missteps. On the other hand, when we pay attention to what Drewes <i>actually says</i>, it clearly vitiates Karpik's claims to know anything at all about the Buddha. The only (potentially) valid inferences that Karpik draws concern the history of Pāli, but even then he makes a number of unexamined assumptions about <i>when </i>Pāli was spoken. We—i.e. people who write about Buddhist history in academic journals—still <i>don't know </i>if the Buddha was a real person or not. His historicity certainly fits certain religious presuppositions, but the arguments in favour of it all involve <i>interpreting scripture</i>.</p>
<p>Drewes is not arguing for one position over another here. He is arguing that we don't have enough information to take <i>any </i>position. As historians, we may choose to indulge in speculation when evidence is lacking, but this has to be <i>clearly marked</i> as such so as not to confuse readers. An inference drawn from interpreting evidence is significantly more meaningful than speculation based on interpreting scripture or speculation designed to mask a lack of evidence. </p><p>Drewes points out that that this distinction is seldom if ever drawn in Buddhist Studies. Certainly, Karpik does not make this distinction. At the very least, speculative conclusions must be hedged ("it appears...", "it seems...", "it may be the case..."). Notably, Gombrich (2018) does this. Karpik's choice of language suggests <i>certainty</i>, i.e. that this is a valid conclusion based on clear evidence. How can <i>anyone </i>be certain that their interpretation of scripture amounts to a fact? </p>
<p>Similarly, Jonathan Walters (1999: 248) notes:</p>
<blockquote>I think it is fair to say that among contemporary historians of the Theravāda there has been a marked shift away from attempting to say much of anything at all about “early Buddhism”… more recent scholars have tended to regard early Buddhism as unknowable. </blockquote>
<p>Walters goes on to demonstrate the kinds of historical facts that can be obtained from studying suttas. They are records of <i>something </i>after all. The argument is over what they are records of and when. Long experience of dealing with religious texts tells us that the parsimonious approach is to take the texts as reflecting the beliefs of the community that <i>wrote down </i>the stories. For example, we could say with some confidence that the authors of the Pāli canon believed that the Buddha was an historical character. But then we have to put this in the context of their belief system, their worldview. Karpik appears to share that Iron Age worldview and treat it as self-evident and this blinds him.</p>
<br />
<p style="text-align: center;"><b>On Historicity</b></p>
<p>There are numerous facts that can be stipulated for the sake of exploring this issue. There certainly was a period of Indian history, beginning in the seventh or sixth centuries BCE and extending over several centuries, known as <i>the Second Urbanisation</i>; the first urbanisation being the Indus Valley civilisation. The cities named in Pāli suttas correspond in many ways to archaeological sites associated with the Second Urbanisation (though most were only found with the help of the Chinese pilgrim Xuanzang's seventh century travelogue). </p>
<p>All this tells us is that the stories in the suttas were composed after the second urbanisation was well underway, when all the named cities were well established and prosperous. That is to say, some time in the latter half of the first millennium BCE. Since they don't mention Asoka, we may infer (though we don't <i>know</i>) that the composition of new suttas in Pāli had ceased by the mid-third century BCE at the latest. Though composition of Buddhist texts <i>per se</i> in India continued apace while there was life in Buddhism. </p>
<p>The archaeology of the Second Urbanisation has a striking feature that Karpik might have cited in support of his thesis but did not. This is the "two cultures" hypothesis. The exposition of this hypothesis in Geoffrey Samuel (2008) is useful and still the best I have read. Based largely on the distribution of ceramic technology, we see two distinct cultures in Northern India at this time: one in the west consistent with the Brahmin's home territory (the Kurukṣetra or Āryavarta); and one centred on the central Ganges Valley consistent with the cities of the second urbanisation. It seems to me that the relative uniformity of the material culture of the region is a sign that we might expect the kind of linguistic uniformity that Karpik proposes. Since this is evidence from the actual time he wishes to discuss, it is surprising that Karpik overlooks it. Still, none of this evidence supports Karpik's assumptions about the Buddha. </p>
<p>Similarly, the geography described in Pāli suttas, the fauna and flora, are all quite accurate where they pertain to the material world. Of course, the Pāli literature is a religious literature and as such it does not limit itself to describing the material world. Alongside descriptions that appear consistent with a modernist worldview, we can read in detail about places such as <i>Brahmaloka</i>, numerous <i>Devalokas</i>, and <i>Niraya</i>, the Buddhist hell. Brahmās, devas, and asuras are every bit as "real" as human beings in Pāli suttas. Our human world, which is incidentally <i>flat</i>, is said to be comprised of four continents arranged symmetrically around Mt Meru. Alongside descriptions of elephants and cattle, we read about nāga, yakkha, gandhabba, kiṃnāra, and many other supernatural species. </p>
<p>While modern scholars, including Karpik, are apt to exploit this natural/supernatural distinction and interpret natural and supernatural descriptions on different criteria, it’s not clear from the texts themselves that the authors of the texts made this distinction. There is no shift in linguistic register for example when describing Sāvatthī or Brahmāloka; or between elephant and <i>yakkha</i>. If we look at the Buddhist traditions of Asia and Southeast Asia, living Buddhists tend not to make this distinction, either. </p><p>The worldview of the Pāli authors, like other Iron Age societies we know about, was suffused with supernatural entities and magical forces. Part of the appeal of the figure of the Buddha was his "shamanic" ability to master the supernatural, to travel to a <i>devaloka </i>or <i>brahmaloka </i>and converse with the inhabitants. And so on. The Buddha of the Pāli canon regularly performs miracles and magical feats. </p>
<p>If the Pāli descriptions of the material world were truly "authentic" then we would have to accept the proposition that their descriptions of the supernatural world are <i>also authentic</i>, since the texts themselves don't make any distinction between them. </p>
<p>Karpik and the others who argue for the historical authenticity of the Pāli suttas tacitly bracket out the Pāli texts and passages that don't conform to their view of history and pretend that they don't matter. They also pretend that making such distinctions is uncomplicated, mere common sense. They proceed as though the criteria by which they make this distinction need not even be stated, let alone justified. </p><p>The idea that the Buddha is "historical" or that the texts are "authentic" requires a <i>biased </i>and <i>motivated </i>reading of the texts which eliminates anything "non-historical" or "non-authentic" (without ever offering, let alone discussing formal definitions); and the corollary is that whatever is left from this motivated winnowing is "reliably historical and authentic". That is to say, it is only by consciously exercising a <i>modern </i>bias that such scholars can make and sustain historical claims through interpreting this ancient literature. </p>
<p>There are numerous problematic absences in the archaeological record. As already noted, no physical evidence from the relevant period has ever been associated with <i>any </i>person named in the Pāli suttas, let alone the Buddha. If there was ever a king of Magadha named Ajātasatthu, for example, he left no evidence behind: no artefacts, no architecture, no coins, no inscriptions, and he is not mentioned outside of Buddhist scripture. There is no external corroboration of his existence from non-Buddhist literature of the period. Nor of any other character mentioned in the suttas.</p>
<p>Arguments from absence are notoriously weak since "the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence". On the other hand, and this is David Drewes' point, the absence of evidence means we cannot draw any definite conclusions. As historians we must respect such epistemic limits. Where the historical record is silent we are left with uncertainty. Speculating to fill this gap is certainly fun, but taking our own speculations as facts is not consistent with good methodology. Karpik does not seem to understand this. </p>
<p>We can contrast this with the situation for Asoka. His dates are frequently cited as absolute and other events are dated relative to his dates. However, these dates are far from certain. The reconstruction of the names of Greco-Bactrian kings in Edict no. 14 is certainly plausible and even persuasive. Moreover, there are numerous inscriptions whose text is plausibly attributed to Asoka. There are artefacts from the time period that correspond to a wealthy and powerful king. The pillar edicts must have been enormously expensive to make and suggest the kind of wealth that only an emperor could command. The consensus, based on this evidence, is that Asoka was an historical person who lived in the mid third century BCE (with some error bars). No such evidence for the historicity of the Buddha has ever been presented and Karpik certainly does not add to our knowledge in this respect. Rather he <i>assumes</i> the historicity of the Buddha and proceeds as though his presupposition is a self-evident truth. </p>
<p>When we look at Buddhist historiography, a lot of it is stuck in the Victorian Imperialist conceit known as the "great man of history fallacy". This the idea that history is a description of the lives of a series of so-called "great men" who shaped their times. This is how Victorian gentleman scholars saw <i>themselves</i>. Enriched by the British Empire (a vast and merciless pirate enterprise dedicated to robbing the world), they saw no value in women, people of colour, or the working classes: these classes of people were simply there to be manipulated and exploited by "great men". History is a canvas, our lives are the pigments, and great men the artists. </p><p>In this fallacy, great men operate outside the usual constraints of society, rather in the manner of a Nietzschean <i>übermensch </i>(or its modern equivalent, the self-interested "Randian hero"). This fallacy is universally repudiated by modern historians outside of Buddhist Studies. However, in Buddhist Studies, many authors simply cannot imagine the history of Buddhism in any other paradigm except the great man fallacy. And those who are not focussed on the Buddha are almost invariably fixated on Nāgārjuna or some other magical figure who is imagined as having no connection to Indian history, generally. Buddhism is presented as the story of a series of influential men without any attempt to contextualise them (often because they are not really historical, either). </p>
<p>One result of this overall bias in Buddhist Studies is that differences great and small within Pāli texts, and between them and other early Buddhist texts, are routinely glossed over in favour of the idea of "an underlying unity". And, this "underlying unity", is then supposed to be evidence that points to historicity of the Buddha. I have never understood the "underlying unity" argument since, having read the suttas, it is apparent that <i>no such unity exists</i>. There is far too much pluralism and internal contradiction within the Pāli literature for this argument to be coherent. By contrast, the arguments for the earliness of the <i>Suttanipāta </i>seem rest on on the heterogeneity of the Pāli canon; i.e. because the <i>Suttanipāta </i>(or parts of it) is different, it must be early. So much for "underlying unity" if the past was actually <i>more heterogeneous </i>than the present. </p>
<p>While there are minimal attempts to see the great man, known as "the Buddha", in his social, political, and economic context, such attempts are inevitably in the service of asserting the Buddha's historicity. No attempt is made to consider social, political, or economic factors in the birth of Buddhism, and the fact is that very little such information exists. Karpik doesn't bother with archaeology, even when it would support his case. Indeed, Buddhist historians typically shy away from causal explanations entirely, preferring descriptive accounts that have <i>no explanatory value</i>. Very few Buddhist Studies scholars are interested in <i>explaining Buddhism </i>and<i> </i>its developments, or the relations between Buddhists and other sects. Several scholars (notably Gombrich and Bronkhorst) have discussed the relationship between so-called "early Buddhism" and the religion of the Late Vedic period, but even this often takes the form of <i>speculating </i>about the influence of Brahmanism on <i>the Buddha </i>(rather than on Buddhism). A work like Ronald Davidson's (2002) history of Tantra that discusses socio-political contributions to the emergence of Tantra in Indian religions is extremely rare and thus valuable. But then scholars of Pāli are unlikely to ever look at is, since its outside their silo. </p>
<br />
<p style="text-align: center;"><b> Pāli</b></p>
<p>Another unexamined assumption in Karpik (2019) is that Pāli is old enough to have existed at the putative time of the Buddha. Karpik accepts the consensus that emerged from the Bechert conference on the dates of the Buddha, which concluded that the Buddha died ca. 400 BCE and thus lived in the fifth century BCE. These dates are entirely based on interpreting normative Buddhist texts and there is no evidence whatever of Buddhism from the fifth century BCE. Evidence of Buddhism begins to appear around the time of Asoka, in the 3rd century BCE. </p>
<p>In fact, the oldest extant Pāli text is from the fifth or sixth century CE (Stargardt 1995), some 800-1000 years after the putative death of the Buddha (based on the Bechert consensus). Buddhaghosa composed his commentaries in Pāli, but he was also from the fifth century. The idea that Pāli existed prior to the fifth century CE is conjectural and largely based on normative Theravāda religious tradition. This is <i>not </i>to say that Pāli is not older, but that there is some uncertainty that <i>must </i>be acknowledged by those who chose to write on this topic. Even if we stipulate the historicity of the Buddha (for the sake of argument) the idea that Pāli goes back to the Buddha's time is still a matter of popularly accepted conjecture rather than a matter of established fact. </p>
<p>By comparison, the evidence for texts written in Gāndhārī is very much older, with some manuscripts and inscriptions dated to the second century BCE. The bulk of the Gāndhārī corpus, such as it is, dates from the early centuries of the Common Era (after which the use of Kharoṣṭhī script ceased in India). The Gāndhārī literature, as fragmentary as it is, is obviously much older and at the same time much more diverse, than the Theravāda canon, since it includes Mahāyāna texts. </p>
<p>For example, we have a partial and fragmented birchbark manuscript of the quintessential Mahāyāna text, <i>Aṣṭasāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā</i>, written in Gāndhārī using Kharoṣṭhī script that is carbon-dated to ca 70 CE ± ~50 years (Falk & Karashima 2012, 2013). Moreover, there is a Chinese translation of this text dated to 179 CE. Again, this is considerably older than the first evidence for the use of Pāli. But this is still not evidence from the fifth century BCE.</p>
<p>The Chinese <i>never </i>received transmission of a coherent body of literature reflecting a Buddhist canon. A physical canon, in the sense of an actual collection of all the texts in the catalogues, didn't exist in China until after the eighth century CE and then it was a local creation based on centuries of bibliographic scholarship. During the first few centuries of the Common Era, texts arrived in China in piecemeal fashion, seemingly at random. As the trickle became a flood, resulting in thousands of translated texts, still no existing canon or <i>sutrapiṭaka </i>arrived whole. While the Chinese did receive the <i>idea </i>of a canon with traditional categories—sutra, vinaya, abhidharma, śāstra, etc—they did not receive <i>an exemplar </i>of such a thing. This is in stark contrast to the countries proselytised by Theravādins. Burma, Sri Lanka, Laos, and Thailand all received and preserved the same canon of texts.</p>
<p>In the end the Chinese had to <i>create their own canon</i>, and this took several centuries to attain a satisfactory internal coherence. Tibetans also had to <i>invent their own canon </i>from scratch and received perhaps 10% of the extant Pāli <i>suttapiṭaka </i>and then as individual texts rather than as part of a canon. Notably the extant Gāndhārī manuscripts, copied in the centuries spanning the beginning of the Common Era, don't seem to form a canon either. Gāndhārī <i>Āgama </i>texts were not translated into Chinese until the fourth or fifth century and even then the different <i>Āgama </i>collections arrived and were translated separately. If there was a Pāli canon in India, it seems not to have been available to any Chinese pilgrims. These simple facts are inconsistent with the Theravāda version of history. </p>
<p>So why do scholars continue to cite the earlier existence of Pāli and the Pāli canon as an <i>uncontested fact</i> and (in the case of Wynne 2006) refer to dissenting opinions (like mine) as "vacuous"? As far as I can see this claim is based on interpreting the <i>Mahāvaṃsa</i>, a traditional Theravāda (i.e religious) history probably composed in the fifth century CE in Sri Lanka (i.e. hundreds of years and thousands of miles away from the time and place it purports to describe), but purporting to describe a history going back to the Buddha. As with canonical Pāli texts, there is no distinction between natural and supernatural in the <i>Mahāvaṃsa</i>. Modernist scholars tease out the aspects that don't overtly mention the supernatural and treat them as straightforwardly true. This is a methodological bias. It is anachronistic to say the least, since it assumes that ancient authors made modern distinctions that are certainly not reflected in the Pāli literature.</p>
<p>As far as I can see, the dating of Pāli is not based on evidence, it is based on a biased interpretation of scripture. Again, this is <i>not </i>to say that Pāli was not spoken in the second urbanisation, only that this is not an argument from evidence. It is speculative and should be clearly marked as such. Such speculations seem more plausible to religieux than they do to historians for obvious reasons. </p>
<p>Buddhists Studies seems to exist in a methodological vacuum (aka the "silo mentality"). Many scholars appear to think, for example, that Buddhist Studies is not part of Religious Studies and shares no methods or theory with the broader field. While it is true that early Buddhism specialists now routinely study the Chinese <i>Āgama </i>translations, this is largely in the service of interpreting Pali and little or no attempt is made, at least by Pāli scholars, to understand Chinese Buddhism or Chinese culture. Having had to make some attempts in this direction, I can only say that after 10 years I have barely scratched the surface. </p>
<p>Meanwhile Jonathan Silk (2015, 2021, 2022) has raised serious doubts about the idea that philological methods developed to interpret the Bible are straightforwardly applicable to Buddhist texts. But then Silk mainly writes about Mahāyāna texts rather than Pāli, so Pāli scholars simply ignore him. Most scholars of Early Buddhism appear to think that Buddhism is exceptional, even unique, and best studied in isolation from questions of history, anthropology, sociology, and ethnology. </p>
<p>Anyone who has studied Pāli grammar <i>knows </i>that it is a composite language. Grammatical suffixes are (mercifully) simpler than in Classical Sanskrit, but there are numerous alternative forms of declensions, such as ablatives in -<i>ā</i>, -<i>asmā</i>, and -<i>amhā</i><i>. </i>Pāli shows clear influence from at least two Middle Indic languages. For example, forms like <i>seyyathā </i>(Skt <i>tadyathā</i>)<i> </i>or <i>yebhuyya </i>(Skt <i>yad bhūya</i>) do not conform to the general rules of Pāli phonology. <i>Se</i> and <i>ye </i>derive from Sanskrit pronouns <i>tad </i>and <i>yad</i>;<i> </i>and in Pāli we expect, and generally find, <i>so </i>and <i>yo</i>). Such forms are currently explained as coming from the "Māgadhī Prakrit" since parallels are found in the Asoka Edicts associated with Magadha. </p>
<p>Karpik suggests that a good analogy for the varieties of language spoken in the North India ca 400 BCE would be US versus British English. This clearly does not work for extant Gāndhārī and Pāli texts written down some centuries later (i.e. the actual evidence). The relationship between these two is more like that between the Scandinavian languages. A Swede and a Norwegian can converse without too much difficulty and both can read Danish. However, they struggle to understand spoken Danish. Similarly, a working knowledge of Pāli is not sufficient to read Gāndhārī (I've tried), and as spoken languages the two were probably mutually unintelligible. One has to specifically <i>learn </i>Gāndhārī in order to understand it. </p>
<p>Pāli also shows signs of influence from Sanskrit, both in loan words such as <i>brāhmaṇa </i>and in Sanskritised grammatical inflexions. The Brahmanical influence on Buddhism is obvious, and easily explained by pointing out that many of the legendary followers of the Buddha are said to be Brahmins, not least Sāriputta and Moggallāna. It's also evident that Buddhists felt they had to compete with Brahmanism to some extent, and hence Pāli suttas are constantly pointing out the faults of (non-Buddhist) Brahmins. Such critiques are far more common and more thoroughgoing than, say, critiques of the Nigaṇṭhā sect. Here again, the Nigaṇṭhā sect is identified with Jainism but never referred to as such in Pāli: another <i>speculation </i>often treated as an established fact. </p>
<p>Some attempts seem to have been made in antiquity to standardise the language of the suttas, but some parts of the <i>Suttapiṭaka </i>seem to have failed to undergo this same process. For example, we find numerous “Māgdhisms” in parts of the <i>Suttanipāta</i>. While the retention of odd inflexions is asserted to be evidence of antiquity, it is equally plausible to me that the text is the same age as all the rest but simply escaped the rather clumsy standardisation we see elsewhere. While it may have been <i>canonised </i>late, reflected in its status as a miscellaneous text, this does not make the <i>Suttanipāta </i>"early". </p>
<p> Moreover, despite the emic view, the Theravāda sect itself does not really go back to the mythical First Council (weirdly, these councils are routinely treated as historical, even by sceptics). An etic view of the Theravāda tradition tells us that is a late an offshoot of the Vibhajjavāda movement and has undergone repeated reinvention. The ordination lineage of Sri Lanka died out <i>twice </i>and had to be reintroduced from Burma. The Sri Lankan Theravādins embraced both Mahāyāna and Tantra before Medieval purges created the reformed movement that we now think of as Theravāda. This movement is largely focussed on <i>Abhidhamma </i>thought as expressed in Buddhaghosa’s <i>Visuddhimagga </i>and later commentarial works composed in Sri Lanka and Burma. There is nothing very “original” about Theravāda Buddhism. Like other Buddhist sects, Theravādins moved away from reliance on <i>buddhavacana</i>; preferring teachings closer to their own time. We should also note that while the rubric “Theravāda” is often used in an essentialised, monolithic way, there are Theravāda lineages that don’t recognise each other’s ordinations. We have to be wary of Buddhist modernist claims, even when they come from seemingly orthodox quarters. <br /><br /></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><b>Conclusions</b></p>
<p>Stefan Karpik makes some interesting linguistic arguments. Some of which may well change how we view the history of Pāli. Though experts in Middle Indic languages seem to be unpersuaded to date. This is not my area of expertise so I can only wait with interest to see how this field develops. I am certainly open to his conclusions and sympathetic with this aspect of his project. <br /><br />If my experience with the <i>Heart Sutra </i>is any indication, Buddhist Studies experts (including those focussed on philology) can be completely wrong about important things. Literally everyone was wrong about the <i>Heart Sutra </i>, for example. <i>It happens</i>.</p>
<p>That said, when Karpik shifts from drawing linguistic inferences to drawing historical inferences, his methods are <i>fundamentally</i> flawed and his conclusions appear to simply repeat his own pre-existing beliefs and prejudices. When examined, these assumptions and biases vitiate all of his attempts at revising history in the direction of modernist Theravāda orthodoxy. These assumptions include belief in the historicity of the Buddha, belief that the historical Buddha spoke Pali. We also have to include the two contradictory beliefs that we can take the Pāli literature at face value and that we can, at the same time, exclude all the supernatural elements of that literature. There are more unexamined assumptions about how later evidence may be interpreted as evidence of an earlier time. </p><p>What's missing from Karpik's articles is any evidence whatever from the <i>relevant </i>time or place as he defines it, i.e. from Northern India in the fifth century BCE. </p>
<p>Those of us who write about the history of Buddhism must pay attention to the methods of modern historiography. We cannot, for example, simply plough on without any attempt to identify and counter our own <i>manifest</i> biases. Part of the problem is the conceit that an education in philology makes one an expert in historiography, anthropology, and archaeology. It does not. To paraphrase Mary Midgley (1979), in the field of Buddhist Studies there is now no safer occupation than talking bad history to philologers, except talking bad philology to historians.</p>
<p>As noted above, the very great irony here is that Karpik's views on Pāli are compatible with virtually any view on the historicity of the Buddha<i>.</i> It wouldn't make any difference at all to the linguistic argument if Karpik simply dropped the issue of "the Buddha's language" entirely. And it would make such arguments infinitely more plausible if he did. </p>
<p>These problems should have been picked up by an academic editor or in peer-review and addressed prior to publication. Unfortunately for Karpik, his editor shares exactly the same biases and prejudices, so he seems not to have been challenged on what seem to me to be egregious methodological errors. The OCBS may wish to consider whether it wishes to publish an <i>academic </i>journal or some other kind of publication. If JOCBS is an academic journal then <i>academic standards apply</i>. The editor should not use the journal as a vehicle to promote one religious sect or any religious views. Articles with obvious, unaddressed bias should be sent back to be revised, especially if they otherwise merit publication. </p>
<p>I opened with a famous quote from (the young) Wittgenstein: "What can be said at all can be said clearly, and whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.” </p><p>I have endeavoured here to say clearly what can be said. Historians cannot speak of "the language of the Buddha", since we do not and, in all probability, cannot know what language he spoke (or if he was even a real person). We can only speak of the language of the texts that have come down to us. And by Wittgenstein's dictum we <i>must not </i>speak of "the language of the Buddha", except to say "we don't know what language the Buddha spoke". If we wish to speculate beyond the evidence, this must be clearly marked and distinguished from facts, and cannot be subsequently relied on as an established fact.</p>
<p>Assumptions, knowledge, belief, and speculation have to be clearly distinguished and identified for the readers of academic articles. No one reads an academic article to find out what the author <i>believes</i>; we read them to find out <i>what the author can prove</i>.</p>
<p>Finally, I want to emphasise that mine is an <i>epistemic </i>claim, not a metaphysical claim. The message is "we don't know" not "he/it didn't exist". With my historian hat on, I have no opinion on the existence of the Buddha. One may speculate on such metaphysical issues, but one should not try to pretend that such speculations amount to history. </p><p>Ironically, given the amount of ink spilled and the apparently strong feelings on the matter, in the end the issue of what language the Buddha spoke has little historical significance. It appears to be raised only in furtherance of an agenda that seeks to legitimise a religious view of the past. While religious Buddhists lap this up, those of us who participate in the academic discussion of the history of Buddhism have an obligation to pay attention to and <i>use </i>established historical methods. </p>
<p style="text-align: center;">~~oOo~~</p>
<br /><br /></div>
<p style="text-align: center;"><b>Bibliography</b></p>
<p class="hang"><i>JOCBS = </i>Journal of the Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies</p>
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Jayaravahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13783922534271559030noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19327107.post-57123923651382419392023-12-22T08:03:00.006+00:002023-12-22T08:03:50.240+00:00How Xuanzang Saw Dhāraṇī <div style="text-align: justify;"><p style="text-align: center;"><b>Introduction</b></p><p>In his writings, D. T. Suzuki seems obsessed by the unwelcome presence of a magical spell in his beloved <i>Heart Sutra</i>. From a long diatribe, this sentence stood out when I read his works some years ago: </p>
<blockquote> Another thing which makes this presence of a Mantram in the <i>Hṛidaya </i>more mystifying is that the concluding Mantram is always recited untranslated as if the very sound of the Sanskrit-Chinese were a miracle working agency. (Suzuki 1971: 229)</blockquote><p>He also says the mantra “taken in itself has no meaning, and its vital relation to the Prajñāpāramitā is unintelligible” (1971: 236). Donald Lopez (1988: 120) was more neutral in his assessment:</p>
<blockquote>The question still remains of the exact function of the mantra within the sūtra, because the sutra provides no such explanation and the sādhanas make only perfunctory references to the mantra. </blockquote><p>As I noted in Attwood (2017), the spell in the Heart Sutra is not a <i>mantra</i>, it is a <i>dhāraṇī,</i> though the Chinese term <i>zhòu </i>呪 (or <i>zhòu </i>咒) is ambiguous. In T 227, for example, Kumārajīva translated the Prajñāpāramitā "epithets" <i>mahāvidyā</i>,<i> anuttarā vidyā</i>, and <i>asamasamā vidyā </i>as <i>dàmíng zhòu</i> 大明呪, <i>shàng míng zhòu</i> 上明呪, and <i>děng děng míng zhòu</i> 等等明呪. When Xuanzang copied these into the <i>Heart Sutra</i> (T 251) the three epithets became four and <i>míng zhòu</i> 明呪 was read as two words or simply reduced to 呪/咒, i.e. dà shén <i>zhòu</i> 大神咒, <i>dà míng zhòu</i> 大明咒, <i>shàng míng zhòu</i> 無上咒, <i>děng děng zhòu </i>無等等咒.</p><p>Note that both <i>shén zhòu</i> 神咒 and <i>míng zhòu </i>明呪 appear to translate <i>vidyā </i>and it's not clear what Xuanzang was thinking here. </p>
<p>Now, <i>zhòu</i> 呪/咒 on its own is ambiguous. It means "incantation, spell" and could correspond to <i>vidyā </i>as was intended here, or it could be read as <i>dhāraṇī </i>or <i>mantra</i>. Later in the <i>Heart Sutra</i> when it says: <i>jí shuō zhòu yuē </i>即說咒曰 "<span style="font-family: "Times Ext Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">the incantation that says:"</span>, <i>zhòu </i>呪/咒 probably does not mean <i>vidyā</i>, it probably means <i>dhāraṇī</i>. Only knowing the original context of the passage in the <i>Pañcaviṃśatisāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā </i>makes this clear. (We always knew about this source: it is mentioned in the four earliest <i>Heart Sutra </i>commentaries).</p><p>While I have written about mantra and <i>dhāraṇī </i>many times, including my book <i><a href="https://www.lulu.com/shop/jayarava/visible-mantra-visualising-writing-buddhist-mantras/paperback/product-1dnpwpe8.html?page=1&pageSize=4">Visible Mantra</a></i>, I was aware that there was a gap in my knowledge with respect to Xuanzang's view of <i>dhāraṇī</i>. Since it is my contention that Xuanzang composed the <i>Heart Sutra</i> and selected the <i>dhāraṇī </i>to include in it, it was with considerable interest that I read the recent publication by Richard D. McBride II:</p>
<blockquote>(2020) "How Did Xuanzang Understand Dhāraṇī?: A View from his translations." <i>Hualin International Journal of Buddhist Studies</i> 3(1): 318-347.</blockquote>
<p>McBride has written about <i>dhāraṇī </i>many times before (e.g. 2005, 2011, 2018) and this new paper is welcome extension of his work in this area. What emerges from this study is a basic idea of how Xuanzang understood <i>dhāraṇī</i>, and thus I can finally make some comments on the function of the <i>dhāraṇī </i>in the <i>Heart Sutra </i>from <i>his </i>point of view. Partly, I'm pleased because McBride's description could hardly be more perfect for my revisionist history. In cases like this one has to be wary of confirmation bias. However, I think the view that Xuanzang composed the <i>Heart Sutra </i>is now the only possible conclusion. No other person is so closely associated with the <i>Heart Sutra</i> and, especially after Watanabe (1990), no one else is even in the frame as a suspect. So while we cannot yet prove it, the only viable conjecture is that Xuanzang composed the <i>Heart Sutra </i>and other evidence shows that this happened around 655 ± 1 year. Where this conjecture contradicts the historically dominant narrative, we can also show that the narrative is at best implausible and at worst simply false. I know of no reliable fact that contradicts this conjecture. I will take it as read, but leave open the possibility that new evidence may emerge implicating someone else.*</p><p></p>
<blockquote style="font-size: x-small;">* Note that I am aware of recent attempts by Charles Willemen to implicate Zhú Dàoshēng 竺道生 (ca. 360–434), but his repeated publication of the same speculations doesn't amount to anything. He has not made any plausible link to Zhú, just noted a rather vague connection between Zhú and Kumārajīva. His method does not eliminate all the other people who vaguely knew Kumārajīva. Watanabe (1990) thoroughly disproved the idea of early translations now lost and made it clear that T 250 is based on T 251 and therefore composed later. T 250 is not mentioned in the catalogues until 730 CE.</blockquote>
<p>In the work we are considering, McBride (2020) translated and studied seven of Xuanzang's translations of <i>dhāraṇī </i>texts. From these he identified three main purposes for <i>dhāraṇī</i>. However, McBride also discusses the rituals accompanying the use of <i>dhāraṇī</i>, noting that they<i> </i>are generally simple and lack the expected features of Tantric mantras. </p>
<p></p><blockquote>A close reading of these seven spell <i>sūtras </i>translated by Xuanzang suggests that the famous translator recognized three interrelated purposes of <i>dhāraṇī</i>: (1) providing benefits and bliss to living beings; (2) furnishing a proficient means of dealing with demonic, illness-causing entities; and (3) producing conditions conducive to advancement on the bodhisattva path. (2020: 320). </blockquote><p>The article then explains each of these three purposes or "themes" in more detail. While this essay is partly a review, I will also expand on how I see this fitting into the history of the <i>Heart Sutra</i>. </p>
<p>Before getting into McBride's themes, there two important issues to briefly discuss (here I will expand on McBride's discussion a little, adding my own observations). These are the idea of <i>dhāraṇī </i> as a mnemonic and a traditional four-fold analysis of <i>dhāraṇī</i></p><br />
<div style="font-weight: bold; text-align: center;"><b>Dhāraṇī as Mnemonic</b></div>
<p></p><p>McBride (2020: 320) notes:</p><blockquote>In Xuanzang’s translations, <i>dhāraṇī </i>did not function as codes that encapsulate the doctrine of a <i>sūtra</i>, they were powerful and efficacious spells and incantations. </blockquote><p></p>
<p>It is well known that the term <i>dhāraṇī </i>has been used in the sense of "mnemonic". This was related to the term <i>dhāraṇī</i> applied to the acrostics based on the Gāndhārī alphabet: <i>a ra pa ca na </i>etc. These first appeared in Gāndhārī (Melzer 2014) and were transmitted in all kinds of Mahāyāna texts. However, sense was rapidly lost as Gāndhārī was translated into Sanskrit and knowledge of the Gāndhārī alphabet was lost by around the second century. This knowledge was not recovered until Richard Salomon (1990, 1995) published his seminal articles on the topic. </p>
<p>Melzer (2014: 63) describes the first <i>arapacana </i>acrostic "The surviving fragments of the poem praise the achievements and qualities of the Buddha in simple and often repetitive vocabulary." By contrast, the <i>arapacana </i>acrostic in the <i>Pañcaviṃśatisāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā</i> is intended to be a meditation practice (see Conze's 1975 lammentable translation, p. 160-2 and 589). Each <i>akṣara</i> (roughly syllable) stands for a word reflecting some aspect of emptiness. For example, the <i>akṣara a </i>expands into the word <i>anutpanna </i>"unarisen" and this in turn expands to the line: <i>akāro mukhaḥ sarvadharmāṇāṃ ādyanutpannavāt </i>"The syllable <i>a</i> is the face of all dharmas because they are originally unarisen".</p>
<p>As I noted in a previous blog post <a href="https://jayarava.blogspot.com/2017/12/astasahasrika-insight-and-ongoing.html"><i>Aṣṭasāhasrikā: Insight and Ongoing Transformation</i></a> (2017), there seem to be two aspects to <i>prajñā</i>: the actual insight and the preservation or retention of it: </p>
<blockquote>And as a result of having been taught and putting it into practice two things happen. They gain personal insight (<i>sākṣātkurvanti</i>) into (the) nature (<i>dharmatā</i>) and carry it on (<i>dhārayanti</i>).</blockquote>
<p>The root √<i>dhṛ—</i>from which we derive the present indicative form <i>dhārayati</i><i>—</i>means "carry, maintain, preserve, practice, undergo." With respect to the mind it can mean "remember". Here we are using the causative form, so the sense is "causing to remember (i.e., memorising)" or "maintenance". </p><p>The term <i>dhāraṇī</i> is, at the very least, etymologically related, though we must be wary because Buddhists often used terms in ways not indicated by the etymology. The <i>dhāraṇī </i>then, in some form, reflects the change that is preserved after an insight. And to some extent, this involve remembering the insight. We see a similar contrast between <i>samādhi </i>and <i>dhāraṇī </i>in Prajñāpāramitā.</p>
<p>This mnemonic function is the basis of a Tantric hermeneutic, prominent in the <i>Mahāvairocana Abhisaṃbodhi Sūtra </i>and in Kūkai's exegesis of the <i>Heart Sutra.</i> The idea is to analyse mantras not as a string of <i>words</i> but as a string of <i>syllables</i>. Translation is not merely irrelevant here, but changes the syllables and renders the spell useless. Hence we see attempts to preserve the sound using Chinese characters purely for their phonetic value, as in the <i>Heart Sutra dhāraṇī</i>.</p>
<p>Another caveat here is that, while Pāli and Sanskrit contain a number of verbs used to mean "remembering" (e.g. <i>smarati</i>, <i>dharayati</i>, etc), they have no noun meaning "a memory". At least since of Freud, Europeans have understood a memory to be a quasi-independent entity with its own will. Hence the idea that a repressed memory can change our behaviour. All this is absent from Buddhist texts. </p>
<p>All of this is to say, that this mnemonic function of <i>dhāraṇī</i> is not what is going on in the <i>Heart Sutra </i>or the <i>dhāraṇī</i> texts studied by McBride. Although it is very popular, especially with Tantric exegetes, the idea that the <i>dhāraṇī </i>somehow "encodes the message of the text", or has a mnemonic function, is not applicable here. </p>
<p>When Tantric Buddhists adopted the <i>Heart Sutra</i>, they complete recontextualised it. In a sense, this was only possible because the <i>Heart Sutra </i>had no Indian roots and there was no strongly established Prajñāpāramitā interpretation. All exegetes seem to treat the <i>Heart Sutra </i>as a tabula rasa on which they can impose their preferred religious interpretation. In this vein, there is at least one "Christian" interpretation of the <i>Heart Sutra</i>. Anyone can say more or less anything about the <i>Heart Sutra</i>. </p><p><br /></p><p>
</p><p style="text-align: center;"><b>The Four Types of Dhāraṇī</b></p>
<p>A commonly invoked traditional explanation of <i>dhāraṇī </i>is the fourfold analysis found, for example, the Dharmakṣema’s (385–433) translation of the <i>Bodhisattvabhūmi </i>(<i>Pusa dichi jing</i> 菩薩地持經, T no. 1581) and Bodhiruci’s (fl. 508–527) translation of *<i>Daśabhūmika-sūtra-śāstra </i>(<i>Shidijing lun </i>十地經論, T no. 1522). There are:
</p><ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>dharma <i>dhāraṇī</i> (<i>fa tuoluoni</i> 法陀羅尼)</li>
<li>meaning <i>dhāraṇī </i>(<i>yi tuoluoni </i>義陀羅尼)</li>
<li>spell <i>dhāraṇī </i>(<i>zhou tuoluoni </i>呪陀羅尼)</li>
<li>acquiescence <i>dhāraṇī </i>(<i>ren tuoluoni</i> 忍陀羅尼) (McBride 2020: 321)</li></ul>
<p>While Xuanzang makes use of this classification elsewhere, and Kuiji (T 1710; 33.542.a13 ff)* references it in his commentary, the <i>dhāraṇī </i>texts being considered here all fall into the third category. As noted, the meaning of <i>zhòu </i>呪/咒 is ambiguous. It may include <i>vidyā</i>, <i>dhāraṇī</i>, and <i>mantra</i>; as well as any other term for a magical spell. Though as we will see the <i>dhāraṇī </i>texts under consideration are not Tantric in character. </p><p><span style="font-size: x-small;"></span></p><blockquote><span style="font-size: x-small;">* Note that in the translation of Kuījī's commentary by Shih and Lusthaus (2001) they routinely translate <i>zhòu </i>呪 as "mantra". In the discussion of the epithets (2001: 122-123), where Kuījī discusses the four kinds of <i>dhāraṇī </i>they temporarily change to translating <i>zhòu </i>呪 as "dhāraṇī" then they switch back to translating it as "mantra". </span></blockquote><p></p>
<p>Having put these ideas to one side, we can now focus on the attitudes we find in the <i>dhāraṇī</i> texts translated by Xuanzang. However, it becomes apparent that, McBride's three themes substantially overlap:</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><b>The Three Themes</b></p>
<p><b>(1) Benefits and Bliss</b></p>
<p>McBride's first theme is the benefits and bliss (<a href="http://www.buddhism-dict.net/cgi-bin/xpr-ddb.pl?q=利樂"><i>lìlè </i>利樂</a>) of reciting the <i>dhāraṇī</i>:</p><blockquote>The most prominent recurring theme in Xuanzang’s translations of <i>dhāraṇī </i>is the idea that <i>dhāraṇī </i>are preached and their associated procedures are explained for the benefit of and to invoke or cause peace and bliss for all living beings. ( McBride 2020: 321)</blockquote><p>There are many examples of this. However, we also find McBride (2020: 324) saying of the benefits:</p>
<blockquote>Xuanzang’s translation emphasizes that the possession and preservation of the spell renders the one who chants it or carried it on his body invincible and unassailable to natural calamities, demonic infestations, weapons, poisons, curses, and unsolicited spells used against someone.</blockquote>
<p>That is to say, protection from demons, which he treats as a separate theme, is included as a <i>benefit </i>and could be cogently discussed under this heading also. In the <i>Sūtra on the Dhāraṇī for Bearing Banners and Seals </i>(<i>Sheng chuangbeiyin tuoluoni jing </i>勝幢臂印陀羅尼經, T no. 1363), we find this passage:</p>
<blockquote>O World-Honored One, because we desire [to give] benefits and bliss to all sentient beings, we seek to realize unsurpassed, perfect bodhi, to have compassionate vows pervade our thoughts, and accomplish equal enlightenment (<i>dengzhengjue </i>等正覺). (McBride 2020: 322)</blockquote>
<p>Again, this appears to invoke the third theme of the <i>dhāraṇī </i>assisting one on the bodhisatva path. We have to think of the themes as closely related and overlapping. Another representative passage cited by McBride (325) also shows the cross over:</p>
<blockquote>If good sons and good daughters preserve [this <i>dhāraṇī</i>] and preach it for others with an utmost mind (sincere mind), all unwholesome ghosts, gods, dragons, yakṣas, humans-yet-not-humans, and so forth, will not be able to harm [them]. All manner of beneficial and blissful matters will increase day and night.</blockquote>
<p>So some of the principal "benefits" (<i>lì </i>利) of <i>dhāraṇī </i>practice are precisely the second and third themes, protection from demons, and making progress on the bodhisatva path. </p><br />
<p style="text-align: left;"><b>(2) Demons and Disease</b></p>
<p>This theme reflects an ancient worldview. As McBride (326) says </p>
<blockquote>In India and Central Asia, as well as China and East Asia, illness and disease were generally believed to be caused by all manner of spirits, demons, and creatures. </blockquote>
<p>This use of <i>dhāraṇī </i>is not limited to monks. Even lay people can employ <i>dhāraṇī </i>texts for this purpose (McBride 2020: 328). This particular use also incorporates fire rituals, though these appear to be distinct from the Tantric <i>homa </i>ritual. Xuanzang describes several such rituals in his translations, for example (331):</p>
<blockquote>Furthermore, if one is ill for a long time and does not seem to be getting better, or if unwholesome ghosts come into his house, he should select a hundred and eight grains of kunduruka incense, and before this image enchant each grain one time and casts them into the fire until they are all consumed. And again, one selects a white thread and makes twenty-one spell-knots, [chanting] one spell per one knot, binds it on the crown of the compassionate face just as before, and after one night loosen it. If it is bound to the neck of an afflicted person, he will be cured of his affliction and the evil spirits (unwholesome ghosts) will be dispersed.</blockquote>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEik7zenv5ZXwiRCodyGLPTj6Y8brfJSXpeyqXISgdA6YnYtj1Jh_8wW54WT20cEtL1MZ5pNs6SI9C1byYIDx79VbhC3idqDgLMzq0Ox0XxD53nhdHQrkiexmtGOYZwA7-_6iUKMBe-nk4Qbo492NWFk5wqJFs87oh021-EmorExHlRfiOsOGsN_/s320/Double-Coin-Knot.jpg" style="clear: right; margin: 0px 0px 10px 20px;"><img border="0" data-original-height="240" data-original-width="320" height="129" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEik7zenv5ZXwiRCodyGLPTj6Y8brfJSXpeyqXISgdA6YnYtj1Jh_8wW54WT20cEtL1MZ5pNs6SI9C1byYIDx79VbhC3idqDgLMzq0Ox0XxD53nhdHQrkiexmtGOYZwA7-_6iUKMBe-nk4Qbo492NWFk5wqJFs87oh021-EmorExHlRfiOsOGsN_/w172-h129/Double-Coin-Knot.jpg" width="172" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Chinese Double Coin Knot</span></td></tr></tbody></table>
<p>McBride includes several rituals involving the intriguing practice of making a <i>spell-knot</i> (z<i>hòu jié</i> 呪結). The Chinese practice of making decorative knots goes back at least to the Warring States Period (ca 403-221 BCE) when such knots were depicted on bronze vessels. There is a huge variety of such knots and each one has its own symbolism (As a starting point, see the Wikipedia entry on <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_knotting">Chinese knotting</a>).</p>
<p>Although his analysis never seems to have gained much traction, I am still drawn to Ariel Glucklich's (1997) account of such magical procedures which I wrote about in 2008 (<a href="https://jayarava.blogspot.com/2008/06/mantra-magic-and-interconnectedness.html">Mantra, Magic, and Interconnectedness</a>). Glucklich (1997: 12) says:</p>
<blockquote>Magic is based on a unique type of consciousness: the awareness of the interrelatedness of all things in the world by means of simple but refined sense perception... magical actions... constitute a direct, ritual way of restoring the experience of relatedness in cases where that experience has been broken by disease, drought, war, or any number of other events. </blockquote>
<p>It is, of course, a well established aspect of the tradition of the <i>Heart Sutra</i> that Xuanzang chanted the text as a spell to repel demons. The story is recounted in the hagiography of Xuanzang attributed to Yàncóng 彥悰 (fl. 688), i.e. <i>Dà Táng dà Cí’ēnsì sānzàng fǎshī chuán xù </i>«大唐大慈恩寺三藏法師傳序» "A Biography of the Tripiṭaka Master of the Great Ci’en Monastery of the Great Tang Dynasty" (T 2053). There are several translations of the <i>Biography</i>, but the recent one by Li Rongxi (1995) is the most reliable. It's also mentioned in the preface of T 256, though this version has many different details. </p>
<p>Jeffrey Kotyk (2019) and I (Attwood 2020) have both critiqued the story of Xuanzang acquiring the <i>Heart Sutra</i> from a sick man (or monk) before he went to India. We both think that the <i>Heart Sutra </i>was composed only after Xuanzang returned from India—ca 654-656 CE to be precise. The story about acquiring the <i>Heart Sutra</i> before this time was part of a deliberate campaign to create an India backstory for the text to make it seem authentic; a campaign that included forging a Sanskrit text.</p><p>The <i>Biography </i>also records a letter from Xuanzang to Gaozong (dated 26 December 656 CE) which was a response to the successful live birth of a son to Wu Zhao after a difficult pregnancy (this was Li Xian 李顯 26 November 656 – 3 July 710, later Emperor Zhongzong 中宗). During the pregnancy, Wu Zhao seems to have consulted Xuanzang who recommended various methods for assuring that prince Li Xian 李顯 survived. For example, Xuanzang recommended that the infant was ordained as a Buddhist monk.</p>
<p>Thus the <i>Biography </i>shows Xuanzang using the <i>Heart Sutra</i> twice: once in response to malign spirits, and once in response to Wu Zhao's difficult pregnancy. </p><p><br /></p>
<p><b>(3) The Bodhisatva Path</b></p>
<p>Finally, McBride (2020: 335-336) notes that some of the <i>dhāraṇī</i>'s promise help on the path to liberation for anyone who takes up the <i>dhāraṇī</i>, memorises it, repeats it, etc:</p>
<blockquote>All the spiritual benefits of preserving (and chanting) this <i>dhāraṇī</i> are the conventional promises found in many mainstream Mahāyāna <i>sūtras</i>: always receive a male body, always be able to find spiritual mentors, not regress on the bodhisattva path, practice for the benefit of self and others, not regress in the practice of the ten perfections, and so forth. </blockquote>
<p>In other words, these texts see themselves in the context of Mahāyāna rather than Vajrayāna Buddhism. As McBride notes</p>
<blockquote>The ‘procedure’ or ‘method’ (<i>fa </i>法) one must receive (<i>shou </i>受) to draw on the power of this <i>dhāraṇī</i> is to make six vows that resonate with standard bodhisattva vows.</blockquote>
<p>This is particularly prominent in the <i>Sūtra on the Six Approach Dhāraṇī in Six Approaches </i>(<i>Liumen tuoluoni jing </i>六門陀羅尼經, T 1360). Which says that the <i>dhāraṇī </i>works with vows that are similar to the well known bodhisatva vows. The fifth vow, for example is:</p>
<blockquote>Regarding <i>pāramitās </i>I possess [that] which I have embraced, extensive wholesome roots in all mundane and transmundane [realms], I vow that all living beings will speedily realize the fruit [fruition reward] of unsurpassed knowledge. (McBride 2020: 337)</blockquote>
<p>To be honest, I'm not entirely convinced by this translation because the first part is not a well formed English sentence. However, I agree that the vocabulary resembles other versions of bodhisatva vows. </p><p>These, then, are the main themes that McBride identifies. I want to expand on one more issue addressed by McBride, which I have just mentioned: Xuanzang does not see <i>dhāraṇī </i>as tantric. </p>
<br />
<p style="text-align: center;"><b>Ritual Context</b></p>
<p>One extremely useful contribution in this paper is that McBride (2020: 320) makes clear that Xuanzang does see or use <i>dhāraṇī </i>in a Tantric context.</p>
<blockquote>All of Xuanzang’s translations of <i>dhāraṇī </i>texts function like simple ritual manuals that emphasize the efficacy of the <i>dhāraṇī </i>introduced in the text... His translations are primarily straight-forward and simple ritual texts that encourage the preservation and recitation of a particular <i>dhāraṇī</i>.</blockquote>
<p>Later McBride (2020: 339) expands on this:<br /></p><blockquote>Xuanzang’s translations of <i>dhāraṇī </i>clearly demonstrate that ritual activity, or the mere existence of <i>dhāraṇī</i>, cannot be used to define, differentiate, or postulate the existence of ‘esoteric Buddhism’, without severe qualifications.</blockquote><p></p><p>Here is where I would normally cite <i>The Weaving of Mantra</i> by Ryuichi Abe. Abe argues that to be considered tantric a magic spell has to exist in a tantric context. For example, it must be conferred in the elaborate <i>abhiṣeka </i>ritual and repeated only in the context of a visualization practice (<i>sādhana</i>). Moreover, mantra corresponds to the voice of the <i>ādibuddha </i>and cannot be meaningfully separated from the <i>mudrā </i>and <i>maṇḍala </i>representing the body and mind of the <i>ādibuddha</i>. The message of liberation always involves coordinated actions of body, speech, and mind.</p><p>Instead of Abe, McBride cites a similar argument from Gregory Schopen (1982):</p>
<blockquote>‘...if by “Tantric” we mean that phase of Buddhist doctrinal development which is characterized by an emphasis on the central function of the guru as religious preceptor; by sets—usually graded—of specific initiations; by esotericism of doctrine, language and organization; and by a strong emphasis on the realization of the goal through highly structured ritual and meditative techniques. If “Tantric” is to be used to refer to something other than this, then the term must be clearly defined and its boundaries must be clearly drawn. Otherwise the term is meaningless and quite certainly misleading’. </blockquote>
<p> This is to say—notwithstanding the later assimilation of it by Tantric Buddhists—the <i>Heart Sutra </i>is not naturally a Vajrayāna text. Ritual and magic were very much part of mainstream Buddhism. An old friend who studied Chinese Buddhism once said to me that Buddhism succeeded in China because Buddhism had better magic. While this oversimplifies to some extent, it is still aposite. And while it is interesting that Tantric Buddhists took to the <i>Heart Sutra</i> and even composed <i>sādhanas </i>around it, the Tantric commentaries of, say, Kūkai and Vimalamitra are very different indeed. And coming, as they do, at least a century after the first evidence of the text in China, they don't really shed any light on the origins of the text or Xuanzang as the author of it.</p><br />
<p style="text-align: center;"><b>Conclusion</b></p>
<p>The information that McBride has gleaned from the <i>dhāraṇī</i> texts that Xuanzang chose to translate suggest something about his motivations for including a <i>dhāraṇī</i> in the <i>Heart Sutra</i> along with excerpts from the <i>Large Sutra</i>. Or at least, it gives us insight into how he thought the <i>dhāraṇī </i>would be used. It's rare for me to read a paper that is so directly relevant and which has few, if any, methodological problems. It's an elegant, straightforward, readable paper with no obvious religious or interpretive agenda. And this is refreshing.</p><p>In this view, the ritual use of <i>dhāraṇī </i>promises "benefits and bliss"; the two principle benefits being (1) the ability to ward of malign supernatural entities (including those that cause disease) and (2) making progress on the bodhisatva path. </p><p>That the <i>Heart Sutra </i>might be a <i>dhāraṇī </i>text is not a new idea. It was proposed by Fukui Fumimasa in 1987 (cited in Nattier 1992: 175). Of course this is not the whole story. Perhaps it is best to say that the <i>Heart Sutra resembles </i>a <i>dhāraṇī</i>, in the same way that it also <i>resembles </i>a <i>digest text</i> (<i>chāo jīng</i> 抄經). At this point, I think we can say that the <i>Heart Sutra</i> is completely unique in Buddhist or Chinese history. </p><p>Xuanzang may have composed the <i>Heart Sutra </i>for multiple purposes. The <i>Biography</i> suggests that it was composed to protect Wǔ Zhào 武曌 and her infant son. Unlike some other aspects of the story, this seems entirely plausible. The <i>Heart Sutra </i>might also have been a kind of promotional literature for his proposal to retranslate all the Prajñāpāramitā texts. To do this he needed both Gaozong's (reluctant?) permission but also imperial funding for the enterprise. The <i>Heart Sutra</i> shows off how Xuanzang intends his translation to be a refinement of Kumārajīva's. Four years later (ca 599 CE), Xuanzang was granted use of a lesser palace away from the capital and a staff and he set to work on the translation for which he is most famous: the <i>Dà bōrě jīng</i>大般若經 *<i>Mahāprajñāpāramitā</i>, which spans three whole volumes of the Taishō edition of the Chinese Tripiṭaka (for reference, <i>all</i> of the other Prajñāpāramitā translations preserved in the Taishō fit a single volume).</p><p></p><p></p></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">~~oOo~~</div><br /><br />
<p style="text-align: center;"><b>Bibliography</b></p>
<p class="hang">Attwood, J. (2017). "‘Epithets of the Mantra’ in the Heart Sutra." <i>Journal of the Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies</i>12: 26–57</p>
<p class="hang">———. (2019). "Xuanzang’s Relationship to the Heart Sūtra in Light of the Fangshan Stele." <i>Journal of Chinese Buddhist Studies</i> 32: 1–30. </p>
<p class="hang">———. (2021): "The Chinese Origins of the Heart Sutra Revisited: A Comparative Analysis of the Chinese and Sanskrit Texts." <i>Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies</i> 44: 13-52. </p>
<p class="hang">Glucklich, Ariel. <i>The end of magic</i>. New York, Oxford University Press, 1997.</p>
<p class="hang">Kotyk, Jeffrey. (2019). “Chinese State and Buddhist Historical Sources on Xuanzang: Historicity and the Daci’en si sanzang fashi zhuan 大慈恩寺三藏法師傳”. <i>T’oung Pao </i>105(5-6): 513–544. </p>
<p class="hang">Li, Rongxi (1995). <i>A Biography of the Tripiṭaka Master of the Great Ci’en Monastery of the Great Tang Dynasty. </i>Numata Center for Buddhist Translation and Research.</p>
<p class="hang">Lopez, Donald. (1988) <i>The Heart Sutra Explained: Indian and Tibetan Commentaries</i>. Delhi: Sri Satguru Publications.</p>
<p class="hang">McBride, Richard D. (2005) "Dharani and spells in medieval sinitic Buddhism." <i>Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies </i>28/1: 85-114.</p>
<p class="hang">———. (2011). "Practical Buddhist Thaumaturgy: The Great Dhāraṇī on Immaculately Pure Light in Medieval Sinitic Buddhism." <i>Journal of Korean Religions </i>2(1): 33-73. </p>
<p class="hang">———. (2018). “Wish-fulfilling Spells and Talismans, Efficacious Resonance, and Trilingual Spell Books: The Mahāpratisarā-dhāraṇī in Chosŏn Buddhism”. <i>Pacific World</i>. 20:55-93. [Website] </p>
<p class="hang">———. (2020) "How Did Xuanzang Understand Dhāraṇī?: A View from his translations." <i>Hualin International Journal of Buddhist Studies</i> 3(1): 318-347.</p>
<p class="hang">Melzer, Gudrun (2014), "A Paleographic Study of a Buddhist Manuscript from the Gilgit Region." In <i>Manuscript Cultures: Mapping the Field</i>, edited by Jörg Quenzer, Dmitry Bondarev, and Jan-Ulrich Sobisch, 227-274. Berlin, München, Boston: De Gruyter. </p>
<p class="hang">Nattier, Jan (1992). "The Heart Sūtra: a Chinese apocryphal text?" <i>Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies</i> 15 (2) 153-223.</p>
<p class="hang">Salomon, Richard. (1990) "New Evidence for a Gāndhārī Origin of the Arapacana Syllabary." <i>Journal of the American Oriental Society </i>110(2): 255-273.</p>
<p class="hang">Salomon, Richard. (1995) "On the origins of the Early Indian Scripts." <i>Journal of the American Oriental Society</i> 115(2): 271-279.</p><p class="hang">Schopen, Gregory. (1982). "The Text of the Dhāraṇī Stones from Abhayagiriya: A Minor Contribution to the Study of Mahāyāna Literature in Ceylon." <i>Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies </i>5(1): 100–08.</p>
<p class="hang">Suzuki, D. T. (1971). <i>Essays in Zen Buddhism : third series</i>. Red Wheel/Weiser.</p>
<p class="hang">Watanabe, Shōgo. (1990). “<i>Móhē bānrě bōluómì shénzhòu jīng</i> and <i>Móhē bānrě bōluómì dàmíngzhòu jīng</i>, As Seen in the Sutra Catalogues.” <i>Indogaku Bukkyōgaku Kenkyū </i>39-1: 54–58. [= 渡辺章悟. 1990. 「経録からみた『摩訶般若波羅蜜神呪経』と『摩訶般若波羅蜜大明呪経』」印度学仏教学研究 39-1: 54–58.]. My English translation is <a href="https://www.academia.edu/104982479/Watanabe_Sh%C5%8Dgo_1990_The_M%C3%B3h%C4%93_b%C4%81nr%C4%9B_b%C5%8Dlu%C3%B3m%C3%AC_sh%C3%A9nzh%C3%B2u_j%C4%ABng_and_the_M%C3%B3h%C4%93_b%C4%81nr%C4%9B_b%C5%8Dlu%C3%B3m%C3%AC_d%C3%A0m%C3%ADngzh%C3%B2u_j%C4%ABng_as_seen_from_the_Records_of_Buddhist_Scriptures_translation_from_Japanese_to_English_">here</a>.</p>
Jayaravahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13783922534271559030noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19327107.post-25364711973407724482023-12-08T10:50:00.001+00:002023-12-22T20:23:29.083+00:00Prolegomenon on the Interpretation of Buddhist Scripture: Introduction<div style="text-align: justify;">
<p>For the last decade or so, my exploration of Buddhist ideas generally has been overtaken by intensive study of the <i>Heart Sutra</i>. My focus has moved from blogging to publishing articles in academic journals. My project has looked at aspects of the history, philology, and philosophy of the <i>Heart Sutra </i>and Prajñāpāramitā generally. Getting to the point of being able to regularly publish articles has involved more than one steep learning curve. I have no training in history, philology, or philosophy. I learned by reading everything I could get my hands on. </p>
<p>An ongoing frustration that I have is that there are no good textbooks on how to do any of these activities that are specific to Buddhist Studies. Indeed, in reading hundreds of articles and dozens of books I have often been struck by the lack of any clearly articulated methodology or theory. This is peculiar for a field of academic study. Most academic disciplines, most especially in the humanities, have been deeply involved in discussing methods and emphasising the need to examine the theoretical basis for the methods. This is partly a response to the clearly articulated methods of scientific enquiry and the relatively new desire to produce (more) objective approaches to topics like history. </p>
<p>Textbooks for Buddhist Studies mainly <i>describe </i>Buddhist beliefs and to some extent Buddhist practices, but they really don't spend any time at all on methods for studying Buddhism or on critical thinking about such beliefs and practices. Part of the problem is that Buddhist Studies is inherently multi-disciplinary. Any given article will likely employ ideas and practices from a range of disciplines such as history, historiography, historical linguistics, comparative linguistics, translation studies, sociology, psychology, anthropology, and philosophy. </p>
<p>In general, Buddhist Studies scholars don't acknowledge these distinctions in our writing, but take a "pick and mix" approach, employing whatever suits our purpose. For this reason alone a lot of Buddhist Studies scholarship is tendentious, i.e. intended to promote a particular point of view. When an author does bring in specific ideas from outside of Buddhist Studies, the results are often incomprehensible to non-specialists in that field. At one point it was, for example, very popular to compare Buddhist ideas with Derrida. But for anyone not versed in the distinctive thought of Derrida, and the obscurantism of all the post-modernists, such works are a complete mystery. And I don't think this was always an accident. I think some authors take an obscurantist approach in order to seem more profound than they actually are. </p>
<p>There is also the widespread problem that many academics in Buddhist Studies are card-carrying Buddhists who accept certain (often sectarian) religious ideas as givens. In all of the very learned and technical discussions of Nāgārjuna, for example, I have yet to see any scholar really interrogate the unspoken assumptions of Nāgārjuna that seem <i>glaring </i>to me. The leading writers on Madhyamaka all seem to be convinced that Nāgārjuna speaks only truth and that he <i>makes no assumptions whatever</i>. This might (just) be acceptable in a Buddhist theologian writing for a religious audience, but it reflects a catastrophic failure for an academic historian or philosopher. Examining assumptions is the bread and butter of academic scholarship. So the question becomes why is this activity almost entirely absent from studies of Buddhist history and philosophy? </p>
<p>While I have learned a lot from reading within Buddhist Studies, in order to make progress I have inevitably had to branch out and consult textbooks from other disciplines. This is fine, as far as it goes; I've always read quite widely. However, general texts on historiography or philosophical methods seldom include examples from, or aposite to, Buddhist Studies. One can consult general books on how to write history, for example, but these don't use examples from our discipline. So one is always having to translate concepts into the domain of Buddhist Studies. It's not always easy. </p>
<p>As I began to branch out, I also began to see how impoverished our field really is. We seem to have relied on scholars coming from other backgrounds (where they get appropriate training). The results have been patchy, to say the least. Nowadays, we have a whole generation of scholars who have specialised early in Buddhist Studies and so they don't bring the expertise that comes from specialising in, say, history or philosophy.</p>
<p>I am not an expert. I dabble. I'm a <i>generalist</i>. Though I do think my recent work on the <i>Heart Sutra </i>rises to the level of expertise. Still, a lot of the time I end up writing an essay, not because that is the topic I wanted to write about, but because it was a topic I wanted to read about but could not find anything written already. So, I spend time gleaning information from a wide range of sources and pull it all together into the kind of thing I wanted to read. People who give advice about writing often say that we should imagine a representative reader. For a lot of these essays I'm my own audience; I'm the reader that I'm trying to appeal to. <br /><br />This work is laborious and ideally done by experts. But most of the experts are busy doing other things. By now there are probably a dozen <i>encyclopedias of Buddhism </i>for example. Vast amounts of time, effort, and money go into these projects. But how many encyclopedias do we really <i>need</i>? Especially when there is no textbook on Buddhist historiography or any other relevant methodologies. There are several works on how Buddhists practice epistemology, but none on how students of Buddhism in 2023 should do so. Sometimes it seems that the perspective is that if we just outline what Buddhists wrote in texts the job of Buddhist Studies is done. There is no need to provide commentary or analysis beyond what is stipulated in Buddhist traditions. </p>
<p>Recently, I have become particularly interested in the subject of how we read and interpret Buddhist scripture. This is a very popular activity amongst rank and file Buddhists these days. Moreover, writing commentary on scripture is one of the major ways that Buddhists communicate about Buddhism. And yet this is all done on an ad hoc basis. I might not even have noticed this had I not become an expert on the <i>Heart Sutra</i>. I'm now in a position to evaluate in detail the things that are said about the text. And my evaluation is that writing on the <i>Heart Sutra </i>is almost universally poor, tendentious, and religious rather than scholarly in character. Most writing on the <i>Heart Sutra </i>asserts a strange worldview in which truth is communicated in the form of express contradictions and paradoxes. No one ever seems to mention that such forms of communication are completely absent from general Buddhist thought (even Nāgārjuna uses logic and avoids contradiction), expressly repudiated in early Buddhist texts, and on further investigation can be seen to be based on traditional misunderstandings of Prajñāpāramitā and tendentious modern scholarship. </p>
<p>The absence of any methodological critique leaves the field open to abuse by fraudsters and hoaxes. I believe, for example, that the bulk of what Edward Conze contributed is fraudulent and misleading. While, privately, many scholars say they agree with me, this has not changed the blind acceptance and excessive praise of Conze in Buddhist Studies generally. The fact that Conze was a racist, misogynist, elitist <i>asshole </i>with messianic delusions is incidental, but also true. However, we generally expect academics to weed out such assholery over time. In Buddhist Studies this asshole is still widely revered. And publically many scholars continue to treat Conze as a neutral contributor and argue that he was a pioneer and thus allowed considerable licence. When I think of pioneer Buddhist Studies scholars I think of people like Etienne Lamotte or Thomas Rhys Davids. I would call Max Muller a "pioneer" in that he sincerely made attempts to further knowledge of Sanskrit literature in Europe and at the same time had many of the flaws of his generation. In my view, Conze was entirely disingenuous, where he was not simply wrong. </p>
<p>While the interpretation of scripture is a popular activity, the standards of commentary available vary wildly and there are no agreed criteria on which to assess any particular claim. While Christian theologians have long explored the problems associated with reading and interpreting scripture, there are, to my knowledge, no such resources for Buddhists. </p>
<p>The hermeneutics or interpretation of the Bible have been the subject of intense study over the centuries and have produced innumerable works of both general and sectarian scholarship. While theologians take many aspects of Christian doctrine for granted, they have still produced scholarly works such as John Meier's four volume, <i>A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus </i>(see <a href="https://jayarava.blogspot.com/2023/07/meiers-historicity-criteria.html">Meier's Historicity Criteria</a>). Such works have considerable merit since they are pluralistic and encourage critical thinking (albeit within religious limits). The methods they discuss were developed for theologians. Nowadays, partly through the influence of Protestantism, lay Christians are also encouraged to read and interpret scripture. </p>
<p>The situation for Buddhists is quite different. There are no general or scholarly works on how different ways to read and interpret Buddhist scripture. Some Buddhist theologians have published works which offer a particular interpretation of scripture (i.e. <i>apologetics</i>), though these are all designed to lead readers to specific sectarian conclusions rather than offering them tools that might enable them to come to their own conclusions. And this despite noticeable influence of Protestantism on Buddhism. </p>
<p>Of course, there are some studies of how Buddhists themselves have interpreted scripture in the past. But these are descriptions of pre-modern reading practices and they seldom involve any critical appraisal of the approaches, and are usually so arcane as to offer very little guidance to the modern reader. In most cases, such approaches to reading scripture have little value in the modern context since we don't accept some of the givens the ancients took for granted. The point of this project would be to produce a guide to reading and interpreting Buddhist scripture for twenty-first century readers, scholars, and theologians.</p>
<p>One of the problems that we have in Buddhism is that many academics are apologists for a sectarian approach to Buddhism. For example, almost all of the works that interpret Nāgārjuna are written by people who openly and explicitly accept a Nāgārjunian worldview. Indeed, the leading interpreters of Nāgārjuna's writing are card carrying Mādhyamikas (which is what people who accept Madhyamaka metaphysics call themselves). Where there is any difference of opinion amongst them, and there are a number of points of disagreement amongst them, it is based firmly within a Nāgārjunian worldview. To my knowledge, no scholar has investigated and evaluated the axioms that underpin Madhyamaka. So all readings of Nāgārjuna that we commonly encounter are <i>naive </i>readings. </p>
<p>For Buddhists, there is no body of work that outlines general principles of scriptural interpretation. There are no parallels to magisterial works such as Meier's <i>A Marginal Jew</i>. This means that there is no rational counterweight to the proliferation of conflicting religious apologetics. It increasingly seems to me that the capable scholars of Buddhism are few in number and for the most part they are absorbed in their own sub-field. Many of the Buddhist Studies scholars I've met recently have echoed my own complaint that I publish, but no one ever seems to critically engage with my work. There are simply not enough capable scholars in the field and at the same time far too many who are following (consciously or not) a religious agenda. On the other hand, if there were enough capable scholars, I'd never have had the opportunity to publish my articles on the <i>Heart Sutra</i>. </p>
<p>The aim of this project, then, will be to produce an <i>introduction to </i>the issues, sources, and methods of reading and interpreting buddhist scriptures and to highlight resources that contribute to understanding the topic. The idea is to ground the reading of Buddhist texts in some generally applicable principles that disparate readers can use as the basis of cross-sectarian discussions. These principles may be used by both academic and religious students to make their interpretation of scripture more nuanced (and perhaps even more persuasive). </p>
<p>I do have preferred interpretations of the texts I read. However, the aim here would not be to defend or promote my particular view. Rather, I wish to create a resource for those who read and think about Buddhist scripture. I'm trying to pitch this a the level of educated Buddhist readers and university undergraduates studying Buddhism or comparative religion. I hope it will be generally useful to anyone who wants to go beyond passively consuming Buddhist ideology when they read Buddhist scripture. </p>
<p>In the first place, this project involves identifying the intellectual tools that I have picked up piecemeal in my scholarship. I will supplement this with reference to the literature on Christian hermeneutics, with Meier as a reference point. I will try to use real world examples to illustrate points. </p>
<p>At present we see many of these principles being applied in an <i>ad hoc</i> fashion and without any reference to the broader literature on scriptural interpretation. As such, Buddhist Studies has not benefited from the depth and breadth of research on hermeneutics in Christian Studies. The only relevant exposition I'm aware of in the field of Buddhist Studies is the brief and unreferenced passage in Nattier (2003: 63-70). As a preliminary, I'm planning an academic paper which compares three approaches to the biography of Xuanzang. I will show that authors on this topic <i>employ </i>hermeneutic principles in an <i>ad hoc </i>and seemingly unconscious fashion. Most authors seem to comprehend, for example, that a corroborated fact is more reliable than an uncorroborated fact. But this has never been stated as a general principle that can be invoked by way of explanation. </p>
<p>At present I am conceptually dividing the project into four broad topics, which in addition to this introduction will become four blog essays: (1) Issues, (2) Sources, (3) Methods, and (4) Resources. My usual approach is to sketch out the broad outlines and then fill in the details. These blog posts will be my coarse-grained notes on what I think is important from the outset. I can already see that this is a huge topic and one that might take several years to reach fruition. Ideally, I'd like to publish a textbook on interpreting Buddhist scripture. </p>
</div>
<p style="text-align: center;">~~oOo~~</p><br />
<p class="hang">Meier, John P. (1991). A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus. 4 Vol. New York: Doubleday.</p>
<p class="hang">Nattier, J. (2003) <i>A Few Good Men: The Bodhisattva Path According to the Inquiry of Ugra </i>(<i>Ugraparipṛcchā</i>). University of Hawai'i Press. </p>
Jayaravahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13783922534271559030noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19327107.post-10629394822707847862023-11-17T12:38:00.004+00:002023-12-22T20:46:21.239+00:00Why Did Buddhists Abandon Buddhavana?<div style="text-align: justify;">
<p>I doubt there is a Buddhist alive today who does not revere the words of the Buddha (<i>buddhavacana</i>), at least in some form. The extent to which Buddhist doctrines are considered authentic is the extent to which they are considered to have been enunciated by the Buddha, whether we think this means an historical person or some form of deity. </p>
<p>While academic historians argue against the historicity the Buddha (e.g. Drewes 2017), Buddhist theologians produce apologetics for the authenticity of the Pali suttas as <i>buddhavacana </i>(e.g. Sujato and Bramali 2014). Indeed, the idea that the Pāli suttas are the word of the Buddha is still current in many Buddhist sects. There is a kind of consensus that if early Buddhist texts don't contain all the words of the Buddha, they at least preserve some of them. This is accompanied by varied speculations about which words those are. Accompanying this are various arguments about what the Buddha's "original teachings" were, including some that seek to exclude well-known Buddhist doctrines about karma, rebirth, and ātman. </p>
<p>Despite the different opinions about how it is constituted, everyone seems agreed that the highest value can be assigned to <i>buddhavacana </i>and that the fact of being spoken by the Buddha is still the most important measure of authenticity. I don't think there is anything controversial about this statement, but it does raise some interesting questions.<br />
</p><p>That said, readers may be puzzled by my title today. Did Buddhists really abandon <i>buddhvacana</i>? </p><br />
<p style="text-align: center;"><b>Evolution of Doctrine</b></p><p>Despite the forgoing argument, it is a notable fact of Buddhism that Buddhist doctrines evolved both gradually and, at times, suddenly. By the beginning of the Common Era we see multiple competing versions of the major genres of Buddhist text: <i>Sutra</i>, <i>Vinaya</i>, <i>Abhidharma</i>, and <i>śāstra</i>. While there is some inter-sect commonality in the <i>Sutra </i>genre, the seven extant <i>Vinaya </i>texts show considerable differences, while the extant <i>Abhidharma </i>texts have very little in common except for the general idea of cataloguing dharmas. </p>
<p>At the level of sect we see the emergence of competing heterodox interpretations of doctrine such as <i>sarvāstivāda </i>and <i>pudgalavāda</i>. Both of these are now routinely represented as being Buddhist heresies but, in their own time, were entirely mainstream and respectable. And this is only with respect to texts produced by India. Outside of India far more radical changes occurred as Buddhism was syncretised with local worldviews and beliefs. </p><p>As far as I can see, all Buddhist sects gradually moved away from buddhavacana and adopted novel doctrines over time. Even the venerable Theravāda tradition—whose own mythology includes the claim to have preserved the entire oeuvre of the Buddha in the very language that he spoke—moved substantially away from those texts. Modern Theravāda is actually based on the writings of Buddhaghosa, a fifth century commentator, and on medieval sub-commentaries on <i>Abhidhamma</i>, such as the <i>Abhidhammattha Saṅgaha</i>. The practice of meditation died out in Theravāda sects and had to be reinvented in the eighteenth century. Indeed, some Theravādins have argued that liberation from rebirth is impossible in the absence of a living Buddha.</p>
<p>We also see radical departures from early doctrines, such as the Madhyamaka metaphysics of Nāgārjuna. Basic Buddhist ideas such as the distinction between <i>saṃsāra </i>and <i>nirvāṇa </i>(roughly the distinction between continuing to be reborn and not being reborn) are replaced by slogans like "<i>saṃsāra </i>and <i>nirvāṇa </i>are the same thing". To be very clear, this makes no sense in general Buddhist terms. The whole idea of Buddhist soteriology turns on the difference between being reborn and not being reborn. If we repudiate this, then we repudiate Buddhism. And those who study Nāgārjuna's gnomic utterances seem to revel in this repudiation and take this to be a higher form of truth which they grandiloquently name <i>paramārtha-satya </i>"the truth of ultimate meaning". </p><p>Note that although Prajñāpāramitā is routinely presented as a radical break in the Buddhist tradition along with Madhyamaka, recently several scholars (esp Huifeng and I) have begun to see considerably more continuity than the historically dominant explanations allow. The idea of withdrawing attention from sensory experience so that it ceases, leaving the practitioner in a state of contentless alertness, is central to Aṣṭa. And we can find ample parallels to this in Pāli. Many of us have now commented on the parallels with the <i>Cūḷasuññata Sutta </i>(MN 121), for example. It now seems wrong to me to think of Prajñāpāramitā as culminating in Madhyamaka. Note that, as far as anyone can tell, Nāgārjuna does not cite any Prajñāpāramitā texts. Nor do they appear to have the same message.</p>
<p>Thus, while Buddhists certainly do valorise <i>buddhavacana</i>, at least some of them strenuously repudiate it and claim we should replace it with Nāgārjuna-vacana; at the same time trying to convince us, despite the obvious contradiction, that <i>buddhavacana </i>and Nāgārjuna-vacana are one and the same thing despite apparently making contradictory claims. Either <i>saṃsāra </i>and <i>nirvāṇa </i>are the same or they are not, and Buddhist soteriology (that is to say the possibility of escaping from <i>saṃsāra </i>by <i>not being reborn</i>) is dependent on them not being the same. </p><br />
<p style="text-align: center;"><b>Whither Buddhavacana?</b></p><p>It is a brute fact of Buddhist history that, for all the high-toned talk about <i>buddhavacana</i>, no Buddhist sect in history was ever satisfied with it. Whether they drifted away or were propelled at speed, all Buddhist sects gradually replaced <i>buddhavacana</i> with their own doctrines. </p><p>We partly know this because the sects all moved in different directions and some of the vehement polemics that they composed denouncing each other have survived. The Pāḷi <i>Kathavatthu</i>, for example, records Theravāda complaints against other Buddhists and was probably composed at a time when they themselves were decisively moving away from buddhavacana and developing their unique and distinctive <i>Abhidhamma </i>tradition. </p>
<p>After many years of consuming Buddhist studies literature, including hundreds of articles and dozens of books, I cannot recall a single account of Buddhist history that did more than note the evolution of the doctrine in various directions. The well-documented, centuries-long, intra-Buddhist conflicts over doctrine are played down, if they are discussed at all. And no explanation for the changes ever seem to be offered. Scholars seem to say "things changed" and then have nothing to say about why things changed. </p><p>I would be very surprised indeed if changes in Buddhist doctrine could not be related to causes. This is what historians do, after all. Just listing a series of changes is not very interesting if we cannot say anything about what led to the change and how the change was reflected in other aspects of the attendant culture. </p><p>Why are modern Theravādin bhikkhus like Sujato and Brahmali so anxious about the issue of authenticity that they go to the trouble of publishing a lengthy quasi-scholarly defence of the authenticity of the Pāli suttas? Is there some real possibility of inauthentic Buddhist teachings? Well, yes there is from a Theravāda point of view; almost every other sect of Buddhism could be seen as inauthentic if they believe (as the bhikkhus seem to) that the Pāli represents <i>buddhavacana </i>and other Buddhist texts do not. </p><p>The issue is addressed head on in the <i>Aṣṭasāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā </i>(<i>Aṣṭa</i>). The first thing that happens is that the Buddha asks Elder Subhūti to deliver a sermon on Perfect Insight to the bodhisatvas (which here seems to mean the monks assembled in the audience since no other people are present). Elder Śāriputra wonders whether Subhūṭi will speak from his own insight, or whether he will rely on the anubhāva of the Buddha. Elder Subhūti replies that everything a disciple of the Buddha says is a product of the Buddha's <i>anubhābva</i></p>
<p>The word <i>anubhāva </i>is difficult to translate since the etymology is unhelpful (it means something like "after-being". However, the word is clearly used in a sense that suggests that the Buddha has a kind of puissance or power by which words spoken by his disciples are, in effect, <i>buddhavacana</i>. Every word that Elder Subhūti speaks, in this view, is something the Buddha might have said.</p>
<p>So the open question is this: If early Buddhists genuinely believed themselves to be in possession of authentic <i>buddhavacana</i>, and they thought this included (by implication) a complete and nuanced description of the Buddhist path, why do we now have a massive plurality of versions of the the Buddha path? </p><p>Or, more simply, why did Buddhists come to feel unsatisfied with <i>buddhavacana </i>and replace it with the ideas of lesser figures who came later. How did some Buddhists come to substantially repudiate <i>buddhavacana</i>. Why did Buddhists abandon <i>buddhavacana</i>? </p>
<p>I don't know the answer and I'm not aware of any salient discussions. </p><br />
<p style="text-align: center;"><b>A Suggestion</b></p>
<p>Some time ago, I tried to publish an article which gave a unified explanation for why doctrines that sought to explain karma proliferated. This was knocked back by a stout Theravādin defence from the editor and reviewers and I felt so disheartened that I let it drop. I don't think I was wrong, I think that causal explanations are not seen as valid in Buddhist Studies, so it seemed pointless to continue trying to offer one. </p>
<p>I think Buddhists noticed certain problems in early Buddhist doctrine and responded. In particular I noted that there was a problem I called "action at a temporal distance". Let's say that I make a great donation to a Buddhist monastery and earn a vast amount of merit (<i>puṇya</i>, aka "good karma") in the process. Some Buddhist texts say "I am the heir of my actions", i.e. the person who experiences the consequences is the same as the one who acts. And this can stretch across lifetimes. This is the main theme of the Jātaka and Avadāna literature and one of the main ways that Buddhists talk about morality. </p><p>At the same time, however, most readings of the doctrine of dependent arising say that I am not the same person from moment to moment, let alone from lifetime to lifetime. So the one who experiences the consequences is not the same as the one who acts, but only arises in dependence on their actions. </p>
<p>If the action of giving is a discrete event which lasts for a few seconds (maybe) and then ceases, how can that be the condition for some effect in the future given dependent arising? The standard formula is </p>
<blockquote>This being, that becomes. When this arises, that arises.<br />This not being, that does not become. When that ceases, this ceases. </blockquote>
<p>I argued that this means that the condition has to be present for the effect to arise, and if it is absent the effect ceases or never arises in the first place. The Theravādins in academia disagreed with this extremely enough to reject my article outright, but it is undoubtedly how proponents of <i>sarvāstivāda </i>understood it. </p>
<p>Thus Buddhist morality tales and Buddhist metaphysical texts tell a very different story about continuity over time. Standard modern interpretations of karma don't acknowledge this dichotomy and thus do not explain it. When I looked at historical accounts of karma I did not find a good explanation, but I did perceive a pattern. </p><p>In my rejected article I tried to show how various historical Buddhist sects responded to this problem. For example, the Sarvāstivādins took a fundamentalist view of dependent arising. </p>
<p>In this view, if something is able to act as a cause, it must be present. That is to say, if my past actions are causing me to experience something (or anything) now, then they must <i>still be present </i>in some form (the nature of this presence is not discussed). Interpreted metaphysically, which is not obligatory, this means that a past condition must still exist (<i>asti</i>) if it is functioning as a condition. And if something I do now is to have future consequences, then it must continue to be present. Again, this is just a literal reading of the dependent arising formula, albeit it in an optional metaphysical framework. Hence the doctrine (<i>vāda</i>) of always existent (<i>sarva-asti</i>) phenomena (dharma). </p><p>Nowadays, I would separate out "presence" and "existence" because I think the discussion was probably intended to refer to the presence or absence of sensory experience, which is only loosely connected to the existence of objects. </p>
<p>In the article, I made similar arguments for <i>pudgalavāda</i>, <i>kṣanavāda </i>(doctrine of moments), and <i>śūnyavāda </i>(doctrine of absence). And I argued that they were all solutions to the same problem: how karma can operate at a temporal distance (how can consequences manifest if the condition has ceased).</p><p>It is precisely this kind of explanation that is absent from Buddhism and from academic Buddhist Studies. And the response I got from academia suggested that my attempt to give such a causal explanation of doctrinal evolution was unwelcome. I dropped the article and didn't even bother to put it on academia.edu along with my other failures, though several blog posts leading up to the article are still here.</p>
<p>Assuming that there is any merit in this suggestion (and I remained convinced that there is), we can say, in some cases and to some extent, why early Buddhists abandoned <i>buddhavacana </i>(as they all did). In this case it was because there was a conflict between Buddhist morality and Buddhist metaphysics. </p>
<p>If I am right about this conflict (which no one else seems to have noticed), then the idea of a big bang origin to Buddhism from the insights and utterances of <i>one man</i> is undermined. There is an expectation of great religious figures that they present a coherent set of ideas, attitudes, and practices. Whether this is expectation is reasonable is debatable, but here we see problematic incoherency in what passes for <i>buddhavacana</i>. </p>
<p>It is simply a mistake to think of ideas like karma and rebirth as emerging from the mouth of the Buddha fully formed without any interactions with other religions. We know that Buddhists absorbed and adapted ideas from Jainism and Brahmanism, for example. It seems to me more likely that Buddhists operated in a milieu in which karma and rebirth were givens, and proposed new explanations of these phenomena that were not initially coherent. After a centuries long process of winnowing (assisted presumably by the decline and disappearance of heterodox sects), Buddhists settled on the best explanation available and retrospectively called that <i>buddhavacana</i>.</p><p>As a result I would say that we have to acknowledge that <i>buddhavacana</i> os a contested term, in the sense that Buddhists fought over what counted as <i>buddhavacana</i>. There is no general agreement, whether historically or presently, on what constitutes <i>buddhavacana</i>. The concept is also contested in the sense that Buddhists found the <i>buddhavacana</i> they inherited unconvincing or otherwise unsatisfactory and replaced it with other words that they labelled <i>buddhavacana</i>, a practice that is arguably still current. </p><p>And if there is this level of ambiguity and conflict about <i>buddhavacana, </i>where does that leave arguments about the historicity of the Buddha which is so closely tied to it? I submit that, for historians at least, David Drewes' contention that we should stop talking about "the historical Buddha" because the idea is incoherent, is on the right track. And I add that the concept of <i>buddhavacana </i>is also incoherent in practice.<br /></p>
</div>
<p style="text-align: center;">~~oOo~~</p>
<p>P.S. It occurred to me after I wrote this yesterday to spell out that any example of so-called <i>buddhavacana </i>could well have attained that label <i>post hoc </i>(after the fact): the text was composed, by whoever, and <i>then </i>attributed to the Buddha. </p><p>This also led me to consider the <i>post hoc ergo propter hoc</i> fallacy, i.e. since Y follows X in sequence, X is the cause of Y (also stated amongst scientists as "correlation is not causation"). It made me think about the proposition: a text is called <i>buddhavacana by Buddhists, </i>therefore it must be "words spoken by the Buddha" (the caveat being... <i>except when we have reason to think it isn't</i>). In other words, we know it's not true that every text labelled <i>buddhavacana</i> by Buddhists could possibly be <i>buddhavacana</i>. We know, for example, that Buddhists continued to apply the label long after the time we guess that the Buddha might have lived. And to find justifications for doing so, including inventing new Buddhas, making the Buddha an eternal deity, and so on. We have no idea when the label was first used. </p><p>P.P.S. Thanks for reading. I'm not blogging much these days because I'm mainly focussed on publishing peer-reviewed articles on the <i>Heart Sutra</i> at present. I do post more often on my <a href="https://www.facebook.com/groups/2505739569515455">Facebook <i>Heart Sutra</i> group</a>. Any day now, I'm expecting galley proofs for two companion articles, one of which presents revised editions and translations; the other compares the Sanskrit and Chinese texts in unprecedented detail and tries to explain <i>why </i>they are different. Next up is a major article on the dates of the <i>Heart Sutra</i> (hopefully in 2024) and then I think I'm done. I'd like to put it all in a book, but not sure about who the audience would be anymore since I no longer have any sense of who would be interested in an accurate history, reliable editions, and a coherent interpretation of this weird little text that has come to dominate my life. </p><p><br /></p><p style="text-align: center;"><b>Bibliography</b></p>
<p class="hang">Drewes, David. (2017). "The Idea of the Historical Buddha". <i>JIABS </i>40: 1-25.DOI: 10.2143/JIABS.40.0.3269003<br /></p>
<p class="hang">Sujato and Brahmali (2014). <i>The Authenticity of the Early Buddhist Texts</i>. Self-published via Lulu.com</p>Jayaravahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13783922534271559030noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19327107.post-86863838161773988762023-09-01T10:47:00.003+01:002023-12-23T00:02:38.020+00:00Myth vs History<div style="text-align: justify;">
<p>I recently came across the text of a talk by Elizabeth Wilson, an academic historian. Her academic website says: "I work on the religions of South Asia; my main specialization is in Buddhist Gupta-era narrative literatures". So we might expect Wilson to have a fairly sophisticated approach to narratives and the historicity of religious narratives. And yet, I find her saying:</p>
<blockquote>The historical Buddha lost his mother when he was just a baby. Legends describe the awakened Buddha ascending to the heaven
where his mother had taken birth as a goddess due to her good karma. He gave her the greatest gift that he could offer: the gift of how to transcend death,
the path that he discovered sitting under the foot of a tree on the day that he awakened to the truths of Buddhism.</blockquote>
<blockquote><a href="https://www.academia.edu/104145053/Meditative_mothering_How_Buddhism_honors_both_compassionate_caregiving_and_celibate_monks_and_nuns">https://www.academia.edu/104145053/Meditative_mothering_How_Buddhism_honors_both_compassionate_caregiving_and_celibate_monks_and_nuns</a></blockquote>
<p>What draws my attention here are two phrases: "historical Buddha" and "Legends describe". Are we talking about <i>history </i>or are we talking about <i>legend</i>? Wilson seems to conflate the two. For example, the source for the fact that "the historical Buddha lost his mother as a baby", is exactly the same source as the legend that describes Māyā Gotamī ascending to the <i>Tuṣita devaloka</i>. It is not that we turn to Buddhist <i>history </i>texts for one kind of information and to Buddhist <i>legendary </i>texts for the other. The <i>same sources</i> are cited for both kinds of fact. How does that even work? </p>
<p>Now Wilson's talk is quite light in tone, which suggests that I should not take it too seriously. On the other hand, it was uploaded to <i>academia.edu</i>, which suggests that she wanted her academic colleagues to know about it and take it seriously. In what follows, I take Wilson somewhat seriously and (fair or not) as a representative of a particular approach to academic Buddhist history. </p>
<p>Before going further, I need to say a few words about how I understand myth. </p>
<br />
<p><b>Myth</b></p>
<p>Generally speaking, myths are a collection of stories told by a pre-modern people, culture, or society. The myths of a people express their views about the universe and their place in it. Characters and events in myths are often interpreted as having symbolic rather than realistic value. For example, the characters in myths are often considered to be personifications of certain valuable qualities. Another way of saying this is that values are conveyed in the form of stories about a person whose behaviour exemplifies those values. Myth covers the origins of the world (cosmogony) and the content of it (cosmology). It may include accounts of where people came from and more specifically the origin story of the audience. As such, myths express the identity and values of the culture. Most myths contain substantial references to the supernatural, often in the form of "minimally counterintuitive" elements, such as animals or other non-human beings that have human characteristics such as speech. </p>
<p>The stories in myths contribute to a larger scale narrative. Each story contributes to a "story arc" that describes the history of the universe. In fact, Michael Witzel (2012) has proposed that myths, which vary considerably from culture to culture, follow one of two story arcs. One is prevalent amongst aboriginals in Australia, New Guinea, the Andaman Islands, and sub-Saharan Africa. This is by far the older tradition, since the people who share it cannot have been in contact more recently than about 50,000-70,000 years before the present. The other story arc is prevalent in Europe, Asia, the Americas, and pretty much everywhere else, but still goes back at least before the peopling of the Americas (so around 20,000-30,000 years). In this essay, I'll focus on the latter story.</p>
<p>An outline of this story arc that I <a href="http://jayarava.blogspot.com/2013/12/origins-of-worlds-mythologies.html">previously cited in 2013</a>, goes like this: </p>
<blockquote>In the beginning there is nothing, chaos, non-being. Sometimes there are primordial waters. The universe is created from an egg or sometimes from a cosmic man. </blockquote>
<blockquote>The earth is retrieved from the waters by a diver or fisherman. (Father) heaven and (mother) earth are in perpetual embrace and their children, the gods, are born in between them. They push their parents apart and often hold them apart with an enormous tree. The light of the sun is revealed for the first time. </blockquote>
<blockquote>Several generations of gods are born and there is infighting. The younger generation defeat and kill the elder. One of the gods kills a dragon and this fertilises the earth. Slaying the dragon is often associated with an intoxicating drink. </blockquote>
<blockquote>The sun fathers the human race (sometimes only the chieftains of humans). Humans flourish but begin to commit evil deeds. Humans also begin to die. A great flood nearly wipes out humanity which is re-seeded by the survivors. </blockquote>
<blockquote>There is a period of heroic humans and particularly the bringing of culture in the form of fire, food. The benefactor is a hero or sometimes a shaman. Having survived and now equipped with culture, humans spread out. Local histories and local nobility begin to emerge and then dominate. Consistent with their being four ages of the world, everything ends in the destruction of the world, humans and gods. In some stories this destruction is the prelude for cyclic renewal.</blockquote>
<p>I grew up with both Polynesian and European myth, and have subsequently become familiar with myths from India and Iran. Witzel's story rings true to me. Despite considerable diversity, the <i>collections of myths </i>across Asia, Europe, and the Americas generally follow this same story arc, but the characters and events may vary. The conserved feature is the plot: creation, first-generation gods, second-generation gods, heroes (demigods), ordinary humans. </p>
<p>Of course, Witzel is not the first to notice broad thematic consistency in world mythology. Carl G. Jung also noticed this and conjectured that all of our minds are supernaturally connected via a "collective unconscious". Jung's bullshit was eclectic and was probably influenced by his reading of the Vedanta and/or Neoplatonism. In any case, Witzel's conjecture is more parsimonious and I think Occam's razor applies: if we can explain something like global commonalities in myth <i>without </i>invoking the supernatural or inventing entities such as the "collective unconscious", then that explanation should be preferred. </p>
<p>We can distinguish myth, which is ahistorical, from legend, which is thought (even if only apocryphally) to have some basis in history. An example of an edge case might be the stories of King Arthur. Arthur is clearly an heroic human being who has considerable supernatural assistance from Merlin. Many believe that Arthur was based on some historical figure, although they don't necessarily agree on which. The foundations of this belief are far from solid. Much the same can be said about the Buddha. Many people believe that the stories in Buddhist suttas are based on the real adventures of a man in the early Iron Age in India, that is, around the middle of the first millennium BCE. </p>
<p>For reference, I now live in an area that was dotted with Iron Age settlements, which are clear in the archaeological record. That said, not one single character or event has come down to the present from that period in Britain. We know a little about how such people lived from archaeology, but nothing at all about individuals. We certainly do not have any religious teachings from that period.</p>
<p>Buddhist myth is strange in that the story arcs don't apply. The Buddhist cosmogonic story, for example, is not particularly Buddhist. Rather it appears to mainly be fragments of Brahmanical myth and some elements of what I take to be chthonic or aboriginal myth (the stories of the original inhabitants of the central Ganges valley prior to the arrival of Indo-European speakers). Scholars such as Richard Gombrich have pointed out that in some cases, such as the <i>Tevijjā Sutta</i> (DN 13), Buddhist myth is presented as a parody of Brahmanical belief. In any case, the standard Buddhist cosmogony and cosmology is not Buddhist per se. It has been assimilated, with minor changes, from a Brahmanical community.</p>
<p>Gods and other supernatural figures are an important part of Buddhist myth. Many stories feature devas, asuras, or Brahmās which come from Vedic myth. They also feature animistic gods such as yakkha, nāga, and kiṃnāra that seem to be chthonic. But as far as I can see, there is no story arc of the universe in the Buddhist mythos. The myths of Buddhism tend to focus on the career of the Buddha within a Brahmanical cosmos. This suggests that, despite appearing to come from one ethnic group (i.e. Sakya or Sakka "the Strong"), Buddhists did not adopt the mythology of that group. </p>
<p>With this in mind let us consider some elements of Buddhist myth that Elizabeth Wilson invokes. </p>
<br />
<p><b>The Myth of the Buddha's Mother</b></p>
<p>The main sources for Wilson's stories are early Mahāyāna texts like the <i>Lalitavistara </i>or the <i>Mahāvastu</i>. Here the stories of the Buddha are considerably more elaborate and contain more supernatural elements compared to the same stories in earlier literature. </p>
<p>The early death of Māyā Gautamī is part of this story. It includes such supernatural events as the Buddha emerging from his mother's side, taking seven steps, and then delivering a Buddhist sermon immediately after his birth. No part of this story is "historical". All of this material is of the same type, on the same level, and has the same level of historicity. Which is to say, it is <i>ahistorical</i>, (i.e. not historical)</p>
<p>On the other hand, elements of this myth are noticeably absent in an earlier version of the Buddha's biography, found in the <i>Ariyapariyesanā Sutta </i>(MN 26). There, the Buddha's mother <i>is still alive </i>when he leaves home as an unmarried youth. The Buddha myth developed over time and in a particular direction. I think there is some teleology here as the myth of the Buddha seems to have developed to appeal more to Brahmins, by assimilating more and more of their mythos. This was so broadly accepted that no one now questions the name Gautama, an ostentatiously Brahmin name associated with raising cattle, applied to a man from an agrarian society. </p>
<p>A lot of the myth of the Buddha's birth for example seems to involve avoidance of what anthropologists call "pollution". Ritual pollution can be incurred by contact with whatever causes pollution. The opposite, ritual purity, is maintained by avoiding contact with pollutants. Having been polluted, one can be restored to purity by public ritual acts.The particular kinds of ritual pollution in the Buddha myth again suggest Brahmin sensibilities. </p>
<p>For example, the Buddhist myth references Brahmanical taboos around bodily fluids, especially when it comes to women's bodies. In these <i>patriarchal</i> myths, women's bodies are an inherent a source of ritual pollution. Arguably, for example, the Buddha is born "through his mother's side" in order to avoid mentioning the word <i>vagina</i>, but more importantly it enables the magical Buddha to avoid the pollution inherent in contact with the associated bodily fluids. That kind of thinking is not evident in, say, early Buddhist suttas. It gradually crept into Buddhism, and it clearly invokes the mores of Brahmins. The apotheosis of this negative emotion towards bodies can be found in Śāntideva's quasi-Buddhist <i>Bodhicāryāvatāra</i>, in which he <i>rages </i>against "the body" in extremely crude terms; what we might call the "body-is-a-sack-of-shit" doctrine. It's quite important for the buddha myth that the Buddha bring no baggage with him into this life, because otherwise he could not attain liberation. </p>
<p>As I noted, in the <i>Ariyapariyesanā Sutta</i>, the Buddha's mother is alive and well when he leaves home. We can see this fact in two ways. It's quite typical to see this portrayed as <i>earlier </i>on the grounds that it is less sophisticated. I've made this case myself. However, I now think it equally plausible that it represents a contemporaneous minority opinion. Either way, despite the later universality of the story, some Buddhists, at some time, did not share the myth of Māyā dying following the birth of the buddha-to-be. </p>
<p>This part of the Buddha myth has parallels in Christianity. The mother of Jesus was a "virgin". Scholars have long noted that the word translated as "virgin" really just meant "a young woman". Still, the idea that Mary was a <i>virgin </i>is so entrenched that it is now an indispensable part of Christian mythology. If Mary was a virgin then no polluting sex, or sexual fluids, were involved in the conception of Jesus. Rather his conception was "immaculate" or ritually pure. The purity of the mother guarantees the purity of the son. </p>
<p>The myth of Māyā was shaped to fit the myth of the Buddha, and it was apparently modified as time went on and the ideas about the Buddha changed. Let's now look at some aspects of the Buddha myth. </p>
<br />
<p><b>Buddha</b></p>
<p>I want to draw attention to a part of Witzel's outline of the mythic arc.</p>
<blockquote>There is a period of heroic humans and particularly the bringing of culture in the form of fire, food. The benefactor is a hero or sometimes a shaman. </blockquote><p>I want to consider the Buddha qua benefactor of humanity as a "hero" and as a "shaman". </p>
<br />
<br />
<p><b>Buddha as Hero</b></p>
<p>In the mythic story arc, following creation we see two generations of gods, with the second generation creating humanity and at times interbreeding with them to create demigods (e.g. Herakles). This first generation of humans directly interact with the gods and are envious of them. Heroic figures arise to take something from the gods to benefit humanity. </p>
<p>The paradigmatic human hero of Greek myth is Prometheus. In Māori myth it is Māui. Both Prometheus and Māui stole fire from the gods. In Indian myth it is Yama, who found the way to rebirth amongst one's ancestors. Heroes benefit all humanity, although often at great personal cost: Prometheus is chained to a rock for eternity, where an eagle tears out his liver everyday. Maui is crushed in the vagina of Hinenui-te-po (the great lady of the night), the Māori psychopomp, while trying to steal the secret of immortality from her. </p>
<p>Stealing fire from the gods is a common theme. Fire-using amongst genus <i>homo </i>starts millions of years before the emergence of modern humans, so there is no question of this being a legend. Neither Prometheus nor Māui are based on <i>some guy </i>who "invented fire". And note the gender bias here, the hero is always a <i>man</i>, which suggests to me that these stories were invented and transmitted amongst men. Did women have their own stories about their own heroes? </p>
<p>Yama is interesting in this context because he did not steal fire. Yama was a human being who discovered the way to being reborn amongst one's male ancestors (the <i>pitāraḥ </i>"fathers") after death. That is to say, Yama discovered rebirth. Again, this is not to suggest that <i>some guy </i>called Yama, was literally the first man to undergo rebirth. Rather, this probably reflects the assimilation of rebirth from the remnants of the Indus valley civilisation by the Vedics as they settled into their new home. I've rather speculatively referred to this as a meeting of the water tribe (Indus) and the fire nation (Vedic).</p>
<p>Buddhists made Yama into the King of Hell. As the man who discovered and inaugurated rebirth, Yama is responsible for untold suffering. The principal goal of Buddhism is to end rebirth, so the man who started it deserves special attention. Even though his role in rebirth is never mentioned by Buddhists, their treatment of him is consistent with such knowledge being possessed in the past.</p>
<p>The contrast between Buddha and Yama is interesting since no one has ever, to my knowledge, argued that Yama was a real person. Of course, the stories about Yama are relatively crude in Buddhism, and he never attained the level of interest and focus that Buddha did for Buddhists. </p>
<p>The Buddha as hero, discovers the way to end rebirth, the opposite of immortality. So the Buddhist myth is kind of strange in wanting to end the kind of immortality associated with rebirth. </p>
<br />
<p><b>Buddha as Shaman</b></p>
<p>It's some time since I explored the literature of shamanism, but what stands out in my memory is that the shaman is always a <i>liminal </i>figure. They stand <i>between </i>this world and the supernatural world. Unlike ordinary people, they can move from one world to the other. This means that they are not entirely part of the tribe, but nor are they an outsider. </p>
<p>The Buddha notably has numerous supernatural powers: clairvoyance, clairaudience, the ability to travel to the devaloka and brahmaloka, the ability to fly, and many more. And as time goes on, Buddhist descriptions of the Buddha become more and more magical. </p>
<p>It's quite common for the Buddha's followers to ask where someone was reborn after death and the Buddha was said to have the supernatural ability to see this. And of course, he can also see when someone is not reborn anywhere, when they have attained liberation from rebirth. As such the Buddha has at least some of the functions of a shaman. For many Buddhists, the point of Buddhism is to provide access to the supernatural or at least to supernatural knowledge of "reality". </p>
<p>Early Buddhists portray the Buddha as dying and not being reborn, which was the main goal of Buddhism at first. After some generations, it is apparent that new generations of Buddhists were not reconciled with the disappearance of the Buddha from our world. One can almost hear the cries of "O Buddha, why have you abandoned us?" In any case, Buddhists began to invent many new ways of meeting a Buddha. One could meet a Buddha in a meditation-induced vision for example. Buddhists also invented other universes with living Buddhas that could communicate with us. Other Buddhists conjectured that the living Buddha was just an avatara of a supernatural being beyond time and space, the Dharmakāya Buddha. Some allowed for past Buddhas to manifest in the present. Some invented a new class of supernatural being, the bodhisatva, who could be enlightened but also choose to be reborn so as to be available to help all sentient beings escape from rebirth (some wags have noted that this is logically equivalent to the elimination of sentient life on earth). </p>
<br />
<p><b>Conclusion</b></p>
<p>In a <a href="https://www.academia.edu/36121418/The_Idea_of_the_Historical_Buddha_JIABS_2017_">2017 article for JIABS</a>, David Drewes argued that academic historians should not talk about "the historical Buddha" because the term "historical" is meaningless when we cannot link the character in Buddhist stories to any historical events, so he is not "historical" in the usual sense of that word. Even the widely-cited dates for the Buddha are guesses based on vague information in normative religious texts. In fact, no character from the early Buddhist texts can be considered "historical" since <i>none of them </i>can be linked to any facts or events. The first truly historical person in Indian history is the Emperor Asoka, and even his dates have an element of uncertainty.</p>
<p>The naive use of normative texts as historical sources is rife and ongoing in Buddhist Studies. When scholars use texts like the <i>Lalitavistara </i>as sources of historical "facts", they have left the academic reservation and ventured into the realm of religious apologetics. The <i>Lalitavistara </i>is an explicitly religious text, full of magic and miracles. It has little or no historical value. To use this as a source of information about the "historical Buddha" is nonsensical. It can tell us something about the religious values and aspirations of the authors, but then we don't really know where or when or by whom it was composed. The idea that we can pick and choose, separating our historical facts and leaving the myth behind is naive. In the end such distinctions are subjective. </p>
<p>If the source says that the Buddha was born through his mother's side, took seven steps, and then delivered a Buddhist sermon, we can't validly conclude "the Buddha was born" and then some mythic elements were added, and therefore the Buddha is historical. If the source says <i>that</i>, then we are clearly in the realm of myth, of the symbolic representation and personification of values. Other details about the Buddha's life—e.g. his wife and child—are from the same source and exist on the same level. It's all myth. There is nothing wrong with myth, but it's <i>not history</i>. </p>
<p>Moreover, Buddhist normative sources are not univocal on these issues. As noted, the idea that the Buddha had a wife and child is not included in the biography in the <i>Ariyaperiyesanā Sutta</i>. Moreover, his mother is very much alive in that version. This means we have to consider the relations between conflicting religious narratives, something that is rarely if ever done. The <i>Ariyapariyesanā </i>biography is simpler, and this is interpreted as meaning that it is more <i>primitive </i>and thus earlier, and thus more authentic (more historical). The assumption here is that stories always get more complex over time and that a simpler version of a story must predate the more elaborate version. But we don't know this because there is no way to corroborate such a conjecture. </p>
<p>The Buddha, like Yama, is a mythic figure. He is a god in all but name. The earliest texts do portray him as a man, but for every human encounter with the Buddha we also see encounters in which he is clearly supernatural or in command of supernatural powers. Stories about the supernatural can be seen in the context of the history of supernatural storytelling, but they are not historical per se. If the Buddha is portrayed as flying around, historians cannot conclude that once upon a time a human being could fly. In reality some animals or objects do fly, but we can explain this in terms of power to weight ratios and the generation of lift. We don't need a supernatural explanation to explain the flight of a bumble bee or a 747. A human being flying without any physical aids is not possible. </p>
<p>The argument here is that we have to take these texts in the round, rather than assuming we are competent to extract the historical from the mythic. The texts are not composed in such a way as to make this a viable procedure. Buddhist texts are full of magic, miracles, and other supernatural phenomena, mostly associated with the character of the Buddha. You wouldn't know it from reading popular accounts of Buddhism in English, but magic is inherent in the Buddhist worldview as we meet it in Iron Age texts. Magic is built into the stories; built into the character of the Buddha as hero and as shaman. Magic can't easily be extracted to leave only the non-magical elements, especially when they occur in the same passages. </p>
<p>To be an historical character, the Buddha would have to stand apart from religious, magical stories, but he can't. All the sources that supposedly describe his life are explicitly magical, explicitly supernatural, i.e. explicitly ahistorical. </p>
</div>
<p style="text-align: center;">~~oOo~~</p>
<br />
Jayaravahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13783922534271559030noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19327107.post-77354943486377713022023-07-28T09:45:00.004+01:002023-12-23T00:13:10.184+00:00The Lost Translations of the Heart Sutra <div style="text-align: justify;"><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeE3UYt6AlKEyy_IHeP5ho9PWMp5fTinPqVLpFMpyBSU_UWE0_-HRAErmczJY12LmJ5W51x1IqYW2PFFgZRxqtp2rxaCLiPiQG-H6cg3ZzLuzUONZ0pD9DHHWkKm5UJZSNIpe51Y9DB3zs5Du3ArBtjNu4409FBsFz9isIOzKZ4tL1TKgL2OBM/s440/3eaf7ab7f0a66b936b0bf6c65c4ff504_350__2.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="440" data-original-width="350" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeE3UYt6AlKEyy_IHeP5ho9PWMp5fTinPqVLpFMpyBSU_UWE0_-HRAErmczJY12LmJ5W51x1IqYW2PFFgZRxqtp2rxaCLiPiQG-H6cg3ZzLuzUONZ0pD9DHHWkKm5UJZSNIpe51Y9DB3zs5Du3ArBtjNu4409FBsFz9isIOzKZ4tL1TKgL2OBM/w159-h200/3eaf7ab7f0a66b936b0bf6c65c4ff504_350__2.jpg" width="159" /></a></div>If there is anything eternal, it may well be Buddhist anxieties about the authenticity, legitimacy, and authority. These anxieties seem to be present in the earliest strata of Buddhist writing and continue down to the present. One of the principle methods of making a text seem more authentic (etc) is to claim that it is <i>old</i>. There is a Buddhist heuristic that the older a text is, the more authentic it is. This is one reason that, for some people, the Pāli texts are seen as more authentic and thus more legitimate and more authoritative than other texts. <p></p>
<p>In the arena of <i>Heart Sutra </i>studies there is an old argument for the antiquity of the text, which is to cite the so-called "lost translations", and one in particular. This essay draws heavily on Watanabe (1990) an article, published in Japanese, but of which I have recently made an English translation, using ChatGPT and some other online translation apps. Watanabe was the first to make this argument and it was made in 1990, two years before Nattier stumbled on the fact that the Sanskrit text is a backtranslation. </p>
<p>We can see this trope of lost translations invoked, for example, in recent Zen Buddhist commentaries on the <i>Heart Sutra</i> by Red Pine (2004) and Tanahashi Kazuaki (2014). Both men cite a lost translation attributed to Zhi Qian 支謙 (fl. 222–254 AD) that enables them to date the <i>Heart Sutra</i> very early (first or second century CE). Tanahashi Kazuaki (2014: 62) says:</p>
<blockquote>Among the vanished texts, the most noteworthy is the rendition by Zhiqian [sic] of the third century. Traditionally regarded as the oldest Chinese translation of the <i>Heart Sutra</i>, this text was reportedly included in [Sengyou’s Catalogue]. </blockquote>
<p>"Sengyou's Catalogue" refers to the <i>Chūsānzàng jìjí</i> «出三蔵記集» (T 2145), compiled by Sēngyòu 僧祐 (445-518 CE). Amongst the resources employed by Sengyou were older catalogues, notably one by Dao-an 道安 (312–385) compiled in 374 CE (itself now lost). In the Dao-an section of Sengyou’s catalogue we find two texts listed: </p>
<blockquote>
<p class="hang">A. <i>Móhē bānrě bōluómì shénzhòu yī juàn</i> 摩訶般若波羅蜜神呪一卷 “Dhāraṇī of the Great Prajñāpāramitā”; one scroll. (T 2145; 55.31b9)</p>
<p class="hang">B. <i>Bānrě bōluómì shénzhòu yī juàn </i>(yìběn) 般若波羅蜜神呪一卷(異本) “Dhāraṇī of the Prajñāpāramitā”; one scroll (different version). (T 2145; 55.31b10).</p></blockquote>
<p> The astute reader will note that neither text is called a <i>Heart Sutra</i>; or a <i>sutra</i>, for that matter. It is less obvious, perhaps, that neither text is attributed to Zhi Qian. The term <i>shénzhòu </i>神呪 probably translates <i>dhāraṇī</i> or <i>vidyā</i>, but we don't know. Not only are there no Indic sources for these titles, the texts themselves were lost by the Tang dynasty. So these catalogue entries are almost everything we know about these two <i>shénzhòu </i>texts.</p>
<p>One may compare these with the two entries in the <i>Tuóluóní jí jīng</i> «陀羅尼集經» (T 901), translated by Atikūṭa 654 CE. I translate and comment on these entries in a blog post: <a href="http://jayarava.blogspot.com/2019/07/svaha-in-heart-sutra-dharani.html">Svāhā in The Heart Sutra Dhāraṇī</a> (5 July 2019) </p>
<p>I say almost everything we know, but there is a little more because the texts crop up in some later catalogues with the notation: "produced from the <i>Large Sutra</i>" (<i>Chū dà pǐn jīng</i> 出大品經), which is used to indicate the text is an extract from the larger work. Furthermore, in the <i>Zhòngjīng mùlù </i>(衆經目録) (also known as Yàncóng Lù 録), compiled and written under the guidance of Yàncóng 彦琮 (602 CE), both the A and B <i>shénzhòu texts </i>are classified as “separately produced” (<i>biéshēng </i>別生). This is a term used for locally produced Chinese Buddhist texts, and has also been applied to <i>chāo jīng </i>抄經 or digest texts. </p><p>And all this evidence from the catalogues is consistent with the comments of Kuījī (T 1710) and Woncheuk (T 1711) who both composed commentaries on the <i>Heart Sutra </i>in the late-seventh century. They clearly state that they don’t believe the <i>Heart Sutra </i>to be an authentic Buddhist sutra; rather, they both see it as a compilation of passages from other Prajñāpāramitā texts. Moreover, physical and literary evidence stops entirely in the mid-seventh century: earliest artefact is from 661CE, earliest literary mention is from 656 CE.
</p><p>So there are two processes to try to understand. How did the two <i>shénzhòu </i>come to be associated with Zhi Qian? And how did the <i>shénzhòu </i>texts come to be considered versions of the Heart Sutra? </p><br />
<p><b>Zhi Qian and Fèi Chángfáng</b></p>
<p> Following Sengyou, a series of three catalogues named <i>Zhòngjīng mùlù</i> «衆經目錄», by Fǎjīng 法經 (594 CE), Yancong 彥悰 (602 CE), and Jìngtài 靜泰 (663-665 CE), all list the two <i>shénzhòu </i>texts as "translator lost" (<i>shī yì</i> 失譯). However, in the midst of these we also have the <i>Lìdài sānbǎo jì </i>«歷代三寶紀» (T 2034) compiled by Fèi Chángfáng 費長房 (597 CE). The <i>Lìdài sānbǎo jì </i>is infamous amongst scholars for adding attributions to texts that were previously listed as "translator lost". Many of these attributions are false and the text is widely considered unreliable in matters of attribution. Fei's entry for the A text reads: </p>
<blockquote>摩詞般若波羅蜜呪經 <span style="font-size: x-small;">見宝唱録或直云般若波羅蜜呪經</span>〔支謙訳〕<br />
<i>Móhē bānrě bōluómì zhòu jīng</i>. <span style="font-size: x-small;">See the <i>Bǎochànglù</i>; in some cases it is just called <i>Bānrě bōluómì zhòu jīng</i></span>. Translated by Zhi Qian.</blockquote>
<p>Note the subtle change in the title. The character shén 神 "divine" has been dropped and the character jīng 經 "text, sutra" has been added. Still, everyone involved thinks this is the same text as found in Sengyou's Catalogue. Note that the <i>Bǎochànglù </i>is a reference to another catalogue that no longer exists: the <i>Liángshì zhòng jīng mùlù </i>«梁世衆經目錄» compiled by <i>Bǎochàng </i>寶唱 ca. 520-521. It's possible that <i>Bǎochàng </i>was responsible for this attribution, but Fèi Chángfáng made up so many attributions that the finger points squarely at him. Also note that, contra the <i>Zhòngjīng mùlù </i>catalogues, Fèi Chángfáng considers the version without <i>móhē</i> 摩詞 in the title to be a variant of the A text rather than a distinct B text. </p>
<p>As far as we can tell, then, Chángfáng simply made up this attribution. And there is no reason to suppose that Zhi Qian translated the <i>Móhē bānrě bōluómì shénzhòu</i> or the <i>Móhē bānrě bōluómì zhòu jīng. </i>Rather, such texts were likely just extracts from the <i>Large Prajñāpāramitā</i> text that circulated independently. Note that it is quite definite that the <i>Xīn jīng</i> (T 251) copied multiple passages from the <i>Móhē bānrě bōluómì jīng</i> «摩訶般若波羅蜜經» (T 223), translated by Kumārajīva in 404 CE, as does the <i>Dàmíngzhòu jīng </i>(see below). Assuming that all the catalogue entries relating to the <i>shénzhòu</i> texts are references to the same text, the appearance in Dao-an's catalogue dated 374 definitely rules out it being a <i>Heart Sutra</i>. The passages copied did not even exist until thirty years after this date.</p>
<p>That said, the attribution to Zhi Qian is cited in influential catalogues such as the <i>Neidian Catalogue </i>(<i>Dà Táng nèidiǎn lù </i>«大唐内典録» T 2149), compiled by Dàoxuān 道宣 (664) and the <i>Kaiyuan Catalogue </i>(<i>Dà Táng kāiyuán shìjiào lù </i>«大唐開元釋教錄» T 2154), compiled by Zhìshēng 智昇 (730). The latter was especially influential as it was used to reconstruct the Buddhist canon after the purges of 849 and eventually provided the organisational scheme followed by the Tasihō canon. </p>
<p>At this point, then, the <i>móhē</i> <i>shénzhòu</i> text has been identified as a translation by Zhi Qian, while the B <i>shénzhòu</i> (sans <i>móhē</i>) is either noted as "translator lost" or is said to be the same text with a different title, despite Sengyou's clear note that they were different. What we do not have anywhere in the picture is a <i>Heart Sutra</i> text. We turn to this mystery next. </p><br />
<p><b>Zhi Qian and the Heart Sutra</b></p>
<p>The key moment here is the appearance, already mentioned above, of the <i>Kaiyuan Catalogue </i>by Zhìshēng, in 730 CE. Something new happens in this catalogue, which is the first mention of a text that we know to be a <i>Heart Sutra</i>:</p>
<blockquote><p class="hang">A 摩詞般若波羅蜜呪經 或無摩詞学 見宝唱録〔支謙訳〕 <i>Móhē bānrě bōluómì zhòu jīng</i>. Some texts lack the Móhē characters; see the <i>Bǎochànglù</i>; (translator Zhi Qian).</p>
<p>B 欠 Missing.</p>
<p class="hang">C 摩詞般若波羅蜜大明呪經 亦云摩訶大明呪經 初出与唐 訳般若心経等 同本見経題上〔羅什訳〕 C. <i>Móhē bānrě bōluómì dàmíngzhòu jīng</i>. Also called <i>Móhē dàmíng zhòu jīng</i>, first produced in the Tang. A translation of the <i>Heart Sutra</i>, See the same Sutra title above. (Translated by Kumārajīva). </p></blockquote>
<p>Like Fèi Chángfáng and unlike the earlier catalogues, Zhìshēng considers the texts without <i>Móhē </i>to be a variant title rather than a separate text. </p><p>Text C, the <i>Dàmíngzhòu jīng, </i>is extant and included in the Taishō as T 250. This entry in the <i>Kaiyuan Catalogue</i> is the first mention of the text in history. The <i>Dàmíngzhòu jīng </i>is not included amongst the translations of Kumārajīva in any older catalogue. And this means that it was almost certainly not by Kumārajīva. Indeed, this has long been the consensus. Back in 1932, when listing all the Prajñāpāramitā texts, Matsumoto Tokumyo (1932: 9) noted <i>Er hat aber dieses Sūtra nicht übersetzt </i> “But he has not translated this sutra”. Conze adds the detail that it was translated by one of Kumārajīva's "disciples" a theme recently taken up by Charles Willemen in a series of rather silly articles. Willemen asserts, on the flimsiest evidence imaginable, that <i>Dàmíngzhòu jīng </i>was translated by Zhu Daosheng. But he presents no plausible evidence for this assertion. Indeed, we know that the <i>Heart Sutra</i> per se is not a translation. It was composed in Chinese, in the middle seventh century (actually between 654 and 656 CE).
</p><p>There is no doubt that this entry in the <i>Kaiyuan Catalogue</i>, dated 730 CE, is also the source of the conflation of the <i>shénzhòu</i>texts with the <i>Dàmíngzhòu jīng</i>, and combined with the idea that Zhi Qian translated the <i>Móhē </i><i>shénzhòu</i> text, it explains why some people believe in a lost translation of the <i>Heart Sutra </i>by Zhi Qian. To be clear, no such thing ever existed and the evidence for it was always weak. </p>
<p>From the absence of the <i>Dàmíngzhòu jīng </i>in earlier catalogues we can also infer it was composed <i>after</i> the composition of the <i>Xīn jīng</i>. And Watanabe adds that it was not translated from Sanskrit, but composed in Chinese. Thus not only is the <i>Dàmíngzhòu jīng </i>not a translation, it is not (and could not be) a translation by Kumārajīva.</p><br />
<p><b>Conclusions</b></p>
<p>Watanabe (1990) concludes from this that the idea of a lost translation of the <i>Heart Sutra</i> by Zhi Qian was simply made up. The text in question was not a <i>Heart Sutra </i>and was not associated with Zhi Qian. Moveover the <i>Dàmíngzhòu jīng </i>attributed to Kumārajīva was not associated with him, was not even a translation, and was produced after the <i>Xīn jīng</i>. </p><p>There is no reliable evidence of the <i>Heart Sutra</i> prior to the 650s CE. Moreover, Jan Nattier (1992) showed that the Sanskrit text was a back-translation from Chinese. The first mention of a Sanskrit text is in Woncheuk's commentary, but it is vague and could be a reference to the Sanskrit <i>Large Sutra</i>, since Woncheuk knew that to be the source of most of the copied passages. </p>
<p> All attempts at pushing back the existence to dates earlier the seventh century fail for lack of evidence. The oldest physical evidence of the <i>Heart Sutra</i> from anywhere in the world, is the inscription from Fangshan (see Attwood 2019) dated 13 March 661. The oldest literary mention occurs in letter dated 26 Dec 656, reproduced in Yancong's hagiography of Xuanzang (T 2053), but also preserved independently (See Kotyk 2020). This gives us the <i>terminus ante quem</i>. The earliest commentaries are Chinese texts from the late seventh century by Kuījī (T 1710), Woncheuk (T 1711), and Jìngmài 靖邁 (X 522). Note that the latter has received almost no scholarly attention.</p>
<p>We find evidence of the <i>Heart Sutra </i>in Tibet from roughly the eighth century, though this date is dependent on the attribution of Tibetan commentaries to Indian authors, some of whom are otherwise completely unknown, and some of whom are the most famous Buddhists who ever lived. And from India? There is no evidence of the <i>Heart Sutra</i> from India. No manuscripts, no inscriptions, no mentions in other texts. This is consistent with what we expect given that the Sanskrit text is a back-translation made in China. <br /> All the evidence points to the same conclusion: The <i>Heart Sutra</i> was composed in Chinese ca 654–656 CE, using copied passages from <i>Móhē bānrě bōluómì jīng</i> «摩訶般若波羅蜜經» (T 223) and a <i>dhāraṇī </i>from the <i>Tuóluóní jí jīng </i>«陀罗尼集經» (T 901) translated in 654 CE (giving us the <i>terminus post quem</i>). </p><p>It's interesting that translators like Red Pine and Tanahashi have drawn on Japanese scholarship where it suits their purposes, but have entirely ignored this very important work by Watanabe. The false idea of the lost translation by Zhi Qian plays into their anxieties about the authenticity of this sutra that is not a sutra. And they employ the idea uncritically despite a long standing consensus around Watanabe's solid debunking of it. It turns out that, despite being very popular, both Red Pine and Tanahashi belong with D. T. Suzuki and Edward Conze as <i>unreliable guides </i>to this text. </p>
<p></p><blockquote> I have produced a draft English translation of Watanabe (1990) and uploaded it for comment on <a href="https://www.academia.edu/104982479/The_M%C3%B3h%C4%93_b%C4%81nr%C4%9B_b%C5%8Dlu%C3%B3m%C3%AC_sh%C3%A9nzh%C3%B2u_j%C4%ABng_and_the_M%C3%B3h%C4%93_b%C4%81nr%C4%9B_b%C5%8Dlu%C3%B3m%C3%AC_d%C3%A0m%C3%ADngzh%C3%B2u_j%C4%ABng_as_seen_from_the_Records_of_Buddhist_Scriptures">academia.edu</a>. I will soon submit an article to an academic journal that discusses this material.</blockquote><p></p>
</div>
<p style="text-align: center;">~~oOo~~</p><p style="text-align: center;"><br /></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><b>Bibliography</b></p>
<p class="hang">Attwood, J. (2019). "Xuanzang’s Relationship to the Heart Sūtra in Light of the Fangshan Stele." <i>Journal of Chinese Buddhist Studies</i>, 32, 1–30. </p>
<p class="hang">Kotyk, Jeffrey. (2019). “Chinese State and Buddhist Historical Sources on Xuanzang: Historicity and the <i>Daci’en
si sanzang fashi zhuan</i> 大慈恩寺三藏法師傳”. <i>T’oung Pao</i> 105(5-6): 513.</p>
<p class="hang">Watanabe, Shōgo. 1990. “<i>Móhē bānrě bōluómì shénzhòu jīng </i>and <i>Móhē bānrě bōluómì dàmíngzhòu jīng</i>, As Seen in the Sutra Catalogues.”<i> Indogaku Bukkyōgaku Kenkyū</i> 39-1: 54–58.</p> <br />
<p><b>Extant Chinese Bibliographies</b></p>
<ol>
<li><i>Chūsānzàng jìjí</i> «出三蔵記集» (T 2145), compiled by Sēngyòu 僧祐 (445–518 CE)</li>
<li><i>Zhòngjīng mùlù </i>«衆經目錄». (T 2146), compiled by Fǎjīng 法經 (594 CE)</li>
<li><i>Lìdài sānbǎo jì </i>«歷代三寶紀» (T 2034), compiled by Fèi Chángfáng 費長房 (597 CE).</li>
<li><i>Zhòngjīng mùlù</i> «衆經目錄» (T 2147), compiled by Yancong 彥悰 (602 CE)</li>
<li><i>Zhòngjīng mùlù </i>«衆經目錄» (T 2148), compiled by Jìngtài 靜泰 (663-665 CE)</li>
<li><i>Dà Táng nèidiǎn lù </i>«大唐内典録» (T 2149), compiled by Dàoxuān 道宣 (664).</li>
<li><i>Gǔ jīn yìjīng tújì </i>«古今譯經圖紀» (T 2151), compiled by Jingmai 靖邁 (7th century).</li>
<li><i>Dàzhōu kāndìng zhòngjīng mùlù </i>«大周刊定衆經目錄» (T 2153), compiled by Míngquán 明佺 et al. (695).</li>
<li><i>Dà Táng kāiyuán shìjiào lù </i>«大唐開元釋教錄» (T 2154), compiled by Zhìshēng 智昇 (730)</li>
<li><i>Zhēnyuán xīn dìng shìjiào mùlù </i>«貞元新定釋教目錄» (T 2157) compiled by Upāsaka Yuán Zhàozhuàn 照撰, (800)</li></ol>
<p></p><p></p>Jayaravahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13783922534271559030noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19327107.post-73923971265860475062023-07-14T09:25:00.006+01:002023-07-17T01:48:44.817+01:00Meier's Historicity Criteria<div style="text-align: justify;">
<p>Historians of Buddhism face a difficult task, since the further we go back in time the sketchier the evidence of Buddhism is. Before about 500 CE there are few certainties and this is ostensibly a millennium after the life of the Buddha. Let me give an apposite example. It is widely asserted that the Pāli suttas are the oldest Buddhist texts we possess. This is largely based on a tradition found in the <i>Dīpavaṃsa</i> (a religious text) that the suttas were written down in Sri Lanka around the beginning of the Common Era. That is to say, the idea that Pāli texts were being written down at that time comes from a Pāli text; it comes from <i>within </i> a religious tradition and has not been corroborated.</p>
<p>When we turn to archaeology, however, we get a very different story. The oldest extant Pāli document is from the sixth century CE, while the oldest complete <i>sutta </i>is from the ninth century CE. By contrast, we have a partial and damaged manuscript of the <i>Aṣṭasāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā</i> from the first century CE. The oldest extant Prajñāpāramitā text is some 500 years older than the oldest Pāli text. Moreover, Prajñāpāramitā was also likely an oral tradition at first and, in my opinion, its origins lie in the pre-Buddhist forms of meditation leading to the cessation of sensory experience. </p>
<p>So which literature is really older? Which evidence is more reliable when it comes to history, religious tradition or archaeology? These are the kinds of questions that historians of religion seek answers to. The efforts broadly fall into two main processes: hermeneutics and criticism. Hermeneutics seeks to establish the <i>authority </i>of the text, based on its history, sources, and relations with tradition. Criticism, sometimes "higher criticism", seeks to establish the <i>authenticity </i>of the text based on the language and interpretation of the text. </p>
<p>Unfortunately, when historians of Buddhism write about this, each of them takes an <i>ad hoc</i> approach, eschewing formalised methods of evaluation and interpretation. This can rise to the level of a rejection of the concept of "methodology". My mentor Richard Gombrich, for example, likes to rail against methodology and says that his method is simply "conjecture and refutation". (The young Gombrich is credited as a proof-reader in Karl Popper's 1963 book <i>Conjectures and Refutations</i>). There's nothing wrong with this, per se, but it is too general to be useful in defining methods. In dealing with, say, the historicity of a given person we are often commenting on individual phrases and even words. </p>
<p>In the typical Buddhism Studies history, each piece of evidence, each relevant phrase, is presented and evaluated on an <i>ad hoc </i>basis. In some cases the reader faces a veritable avalanche of "facts" that are supposed to persuade the reader of the authenticity and authority of the words in question. Since each data point is assessed on a unique basis, the critical reader has the extremely laborious task of addressing each point individually. The idea here is to overwhelm the reader with evidence that is difficult to assess. </p>
<p>The <i>ad hoc </i>nature of hermeneutics in Buddhism Studies can be juxtaposed with the highly formalised and structured approach found in Christian Studies. This is partly due to the Protestant doctrine that everyone should read and interpret the Bible for themselves, and partly to the very strong feeling that everyone should come to more or less the same conclusions about the Bible. One way to accomplish both is to specify what methods are valid. </p>
<p>There are some works on Buddhist hermeneutics, but, as far as I can see, these relate to how ancient Buddhists practiced hermeneutics, not to how we as Buddhists and/or scholars should evaluate the historicity of Buddhist texts in the present. Moreover, it has become fashionable for Theravādin monks to write apologia for the authenticity of the Pāli texts. These efforts are quasi-scholarly. The authors have massive, unacknowledged bias in favour of traditional Theravāda beliefs, but beyond this proceed in a scholarly fashion to produce quasi-scholarly works that confirm their most cherished beliefs. </p>
<p>We see the same lack of insight in Nāgārjuna studies where apologist scholars uncritically adopt Nāgārjuna's worldview and then argue for the modern relevance of his conclusions. We almost never see a Nāgārjuna scholar doing the basic philosophical work of identifying the underlying assumptions of Nāgārjuna and putting them to the test. Nāgārjuna's definition of "real", for example, insists that real objects are permanent and unchanging. Since no object of any kind is permanent or unchanging, no objects are real. What we think of as "the real world" is, in fact, merely an illusion or a delusion, or perhaps both but, anyway, nothing really exists, since everything is contingent on something else. As a definition of "real" or "reality" this is completely incoherent, since it assumes from the outset that "real" is a meaningless category. Those who claim that Nāgārjuna "has no view" are simply blind to the axioms of Nāgārjunian thought because they have internalised the dogma and no one ever talks about it. No one ever talks about the way that Nāgārjuna distorts Buddhist thought away from established norms of the time or what might have prompted this. </p>
<p>The point is that there are no formal hermeneutics for Buddhists or scholars to apply. The only attempt to articulate something like this can be found in Jan Nattier's (2003) book <i>A Few Good Men</i>. However, Nattier provides no references for her "hermeneutic principles" meaning that the task of finding out about them is left to the reader. While I have found it very useful to have Nattier's articulation of these principles, I now want to use them in my work. Citing Nattier would probably satisfy most Buddhism Studies scholars, but I wanted to know more about where they came from. </p>
<p>To cut a long story short, the ideas like "the principle of embarrassment" come from Christian theology, especially from Protestant New Testament scholars concerned with the historicity of Jesus. Once I gave up searching for this ideas in a Buddhism studies context, things got a lot easier. One source in particular was repeatedly cited by authors who write on this topic: </p>
<blockquote>Meier, John P. (1991). <i>A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus</i>. 4 Vol. New York: Doubleday.</blockquote><p></p>
<p>In Meier we find a clear exposition and evaluation of the most common and/or useful criteria by which theologians have applied to the idea of an historical Jesus. While the obvious comparison might be the historicity of the Buddha, at present I'm more interested in Xuanzang as an historical character. The history of Xuanzang is typically—in a book like Sally Wriggins' (2004) <i>The Silk Road Journey with Xuanzang</i>—based on naïve readings of a narrow range of sources. I have been reading and making notes on a whole series of articles by Max Deeg critiquing the naïve use of historical sources for the life of Xuanzang. I'm also thinking about Jeffrey Kotyk's (2019) article that compares Buddhist and state histories and argues that, at the very least, we cannot understand Xuanzang as an historical character without considering <i>all </i>of the evidence. And into this mix has dropped the fascinating book chapter by Liu Shufen which argues for a very different picture of Xuanzang's later years under Emperor Gaozong. </p>
<p>Briefly, Liu (2022) argues that Xuanzang was held under house arrest by Gaozong for a number of years, and that during this time he was denied qualified assistants to help with translations. Indeed, his translation output dropped precipitously after the death of Emperor Taizong in 649. Moreover, Gaozong appointed a board of censors empowered to change Xuanzang's translations as they saw fit. These observations are based mainly on passages in the hagiography of Xuanzang attributed to Yancong (T 2053). </p>
<p>What I eventually want to do is write an article in which I analyse the historicity of Xuanzang according to criteria that I will state at the outset and apply even-handedly. To this end, I will here articulate Meier's hermeneutic criteria and give examples from my own published works or closely related publications. Meier articulates five primary and five secondary criteria which are tuned to recovering reliable historical information about Jesus from the Bible (and thus will require some tweaking for use in a Buddhist context). </p><br />
<p style="text-align: center;"><b>Meier's Criteria</b></p>
<p>Primary criteria</p>
<div>
<ol style="text-align: left;">
<li>the criterion of embarrassment</li>
<li>the criterion of discontinuity</li>
<li>the criterion of multiple attestation [aka corroboration]</li>
<li>the criterion of coherence</li>
<li>the criterion of rejection and execution [specifically related to reports of Jesus violent death]</li></ol>
<p>Secondary criteria</p>
<ol style="text-align: left;">
<li>the criterion of traces of Aramaic</li>
<li>the criterion of Palestinian environment</li>
<li>the criterion of vividness of narration</li>
<li>the criterion of tendencies of developing synoptic tradition</li>
<li>the criterion of historical presumption. </li></ol>
</div>
<p><b><br /></b></p><p><b>Primary Criteria</b></p><p><b>1. Embarrassment</b></p>
<p>When religieux write about their religion, they quite naturally portray it in the best possible light. Accounts of historical figures become <i>hagiographies </i>(from the Greek <i>hagios </i>"sacred, saintly"), that is, they are idealised accounts in which the characters become idealised vehicles for the values of the author. Thus in many Buddhist texts the Buddha is unfailingly good. He is not simply good, but his behaviour in the stories <i>defines </i>for Buddhists what good behaviour is. Scholars call this aspect of texts <i>normative</i>; it defines the norms of behaviour for Buddhists. This does not mean that Buddhists ever behaved the way the Buddha is portrayed as behaving. Indeed, there is ample evidence in the Vinaya to suggest that Buddhist monks were every bit as problematic as other human beings (I'll come back to this). </p>
<p>So, for example, when we read (per my 2004 article on the attitudes to suicide in Pāli suttas) that the Buddha taught a group of monks to meditate on death before going on retreat. On returning from retreat the Buddha finds that the monks have all committed suicide. <i>Whoops</i>. This reflects badly on the Buddha. It is an embarrassment. As a commentator, Buddhaghosa was obviously embarrassed, for example, and concocts a fanciful story in which it is secretly a good thing that the Buddha taught those monks the practice that drove them to suicide. </p>
<p>Another example of this is the story from the <i>Ambaṭṭa Sutta </i>in which the Sakya tribe are revealed to have practiced sibling incest marriages in the past (see Attwood 2012). Across Indian culture there are very strong social prohibitions on sibling incest (though in some parts of India first cousin marriages were and are common). This story doesn't simply reflect badly on the Buddha's tribe. It is one of the most taboo of all social conventions. "Sister-fucker" (Hindi <i>bhenchod</i>) is a very heinous insult for a man in modern India. So no one is going to simply make up a story about their ancestors practising sibling incest. </p>
<p>The criterion of embarrassment applied here makes the idea that Sakya's practiced sibling-incest marriages seem plausibly historical. In my article, I contrasted the strength of the incest taboo in India with the practice of sibling-incest marriages amongst Persian royalty as a way of consolidating power. Persian kings marrying their sisters may well have been following the example of Egyptian royalty who also practiced this. </p>
<p>However, this criterion has limitations. Clear cut cases of embarrassment are rare in religious literature for obvious reasons. Even if the embarrassing fact is true, there is no need to blurt it out. There are things that we simply don't talk about. So while we think this criterion is useful, there are not that many times we can apply it. </p>
<p>Moreover, what seems embarrassing for us may not have been embarrassing for the author. It is common to see people who encounter the myths of Buddhism to see the going forth of the Buddha in the standard account of his life (according to say the <i>Lalitavistara </i>or the <i>Mahāvastu</i>) in a negative way; the Buddha is seen to abandon his wife and baby to go off and become a wandering mendicant. This is sometimes seen as an indictment of his moral character. Even if we grant historicity to the myth of the Buddha we have to see the leaving home in context. In that version of the story, the Buddha lives with his family in a palace. The wife naturally, according to millennia old practice, goes to live with her husband's family. In that palace, Yasodharā lacks for nothing. She lives in luxury. Later, in this version of the story, the Buddha returns home and teaches Yasodharā and Rahula how to be liberated themselves. So it all turns out well in the end and there is no "embarrassment". We might go further and point out that other sources of biography, notably the <i>Ariyapariyesanā Sutta</i>, make no mention of the wife and baby, the Buddha appears to be an unmarried youth and, what's more, his mother lives to see him leave home rather than dying in the first week of his life." It is unlikely that the authors of either account thought of these details as embarrassing. It is only modern sensibilities that make it so. </p><br />
<p><b>2. Discontinuity</b></p>
<p>The idea here is to identify words or deeds attributed to an historical character that cannot be derived from their milieu or from later development of their religion. If we could identify such speech or actions in Buddhist texts, we might feel justified in supposing these to be attributable to the authors of the texts. </p>
<p>The problem for Buddhism is that its not a linear development from an existing culture. The authors of the texts attribute authorship to the Buddha. We only know the Buddha from normative Buddhist texts, since there are no contemporary records from other traditions that mention Buddhism or Buddhists.</p>
<p>The early Buddhist texts are the "Old Testament" of Buddhism, so, unlike New Testament scholars arguing about Jesus, there is no clear backdrop from which the Buddha emerged. That said, it is obvious that early Buddhists did draw on existing culture in formulating Buddhism. The presence of deva and asura figures is clear evidence of Brahmanical influence. The Buddhist doctrine of karma is likely an adaptation of an existing Jain doctrine. Mythic figures such as Yakkha and Nāga seem to be non-Indo-European and borrowed from some pre-existing chthonic animistic tradition. As I have noted (along with Anālayo), it seems very likely that key Buddhist meditation practices (leading to the <i>āyatana </i>states and to <i>śūnyatā-samādhi</i>) were also borrowed from a pre-existing tradition. There is also Michael Witzel's idea, articulated in my article (2012), that Buddhists borrowed from Iranian tradition.</p><p>This criterion will be much more difficult to apply in a Buddhist context, simply because the relations between Buddhists and their milieu were complex, but reliable sources don't exist. We are guessing a lot of the time. Moreover, the literature that later traditions produced was huge compared to the Bible. </p>
<p>A potential example is the word <i>paṭiccasamuppāda</i>. This word does not derive from existing traditions, so far as we have evidence of them. Such evidence as we have is extremely sketchy, however, and arguments from absence are weak. However, what about this word insists that the Buddha rather than the followers of the Buddha coined it? </p>
<p>Another problem that I don't think theologians face is that the first literature we meet is already translated, edited, and organised. In other words, the early Buddhist texts are the product of considerable literary effort on the part of early Buddhists. As already noted, the actual dates of the composition of the Pāli sutta are simply guesses based on normative traditions. The <i>archaeology </i>of Pāli texts does not begin until the 6th century CE. </p><br />
<p><b>3. Multiple Attestation or Corroboration</b></p>
<p>This criterion seems fairly self-evident: a historical event is more plausible if it is mentioned in two or more different sources. </p>
<p>A feature of Liu's (2022) thesis about Xuanzang is that the Yancong <i>Biography </i>contains numerous "facts" about him that are not recorded elsewhere. Liu appears to argue that in these cases the <i>Biography </i>is more valuable as an historical source. The criterion of multiple attestation, or what Nattier calls the "principle of corroboration", tells us the opposite. Where details are included in the Yancong Biography but not corroborated by other sources we must judge such details to be <i>less </i>plausible. This is is also Jeffrey Kotyk's (2019) criticism of the use that scholars have made of the <i>Biography</i>. </p>
<p>On the other hand, Kotyk (2019) notes the existence of another source for an event that is recorded in the <i>Biography</i>, namely the gift of a <i>Heart Sutra </i>in gold ink, accompanied by a presentation case (dated 26 Dec 656). This event occurs in a letter (often referred to by Sinologists as a "memorial") sent by Xuanzang to Gaozong to celebrate the first month of life of a royal prince born to Wu Zhao. The same letter is preserved as part of a collection of Xuanzang's letters preserved independently in Japan (seemingly not extant in China). Since this constitutes corroboration, Kotyk is minded to accept this event as plausibly historical. I agree. Furthermore, this is the earliest reliably dated attestation of the <i>Heart Sutra </i>anywhere in the world. The earliest artefact is from a few years later in the form of an Chinese inscription commissioned on 13 March 661. </p><br />
<p><b>4. The Criterion of Coherence</b></p>
<p>This criterion only comes into play after at least a first pass using the first three criteria. The aim is to establish a baseline of style or behaviour that allows us to compare a new passage with our existing understanding and judge how well it fits into the existing whole. </p>
<p>In a sense, this is a particular case of what Hans-Georg Gadamer calls the <i>hermeneutic circle</i>. Understanding the whole requires us to first understand the parts. But in order to fully understand each part, we have to know what contribution it makes to the whole. Each iteration clarifies our understanding of how it all fits together and what contribution each part makes. </p>
<p>The problem for Buddhists is, again, the complexity of Buddhist sources. </p>
<br />
<p><b>5. The Criterion of Rejection and Execution</b></p>
<p>This one is clearly specific to Christianity. The idea here is that the Jewish and Roman authorities would not have condemned and executed Jesus if they did not have cause. However, I'm not entirely sympathetic to this one. The Romans in Palestine are an example of authoritarian control by an foreign occupying power. Authoritarian regimes don't need logical reasons to persecute groups or individuals. As we know, such regimes routinely carry out show trials in which innocent individuals are convicted of crimes and punished. The idea that the Romans executed Jesus for cause is part of Christian mythology, but it's not corroborated by Roman sources. Tacitus is often mentioned as a source, but his mention of Jesus being executed by Pilate was written in 116 CE, a century after the fact. And Tacitus does not mention his sources. </p>
<p>A parallel here might be discerned in Buddhist discussions of the Buddha's last meal. The <i>Parinibbāna Sutta </i>appears to show him eating some dish which gave him food poisoning and led to his death. The criterion of embarrassment makes this detail seem a little more plausible, since being killed off by food poisoning is a rather ignominious death for a saint. </p><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><b>Secondary Criteria</b><br />
<p><b>1. Traces of Aramaic</b></p>
<p>The New Testament was written in koine Greek. Thus when we see traces of Aramaic, supposedly the language spoken by Jesus, this makes a given statement seem more authentic. As Meier immediately says, there are "serious problems" (178) with this criterion. </p>
<p>We see a similar analysis of Pāli, in which we often see evidence of another Prakrit which is close to the language used for the Asoka edicts in Magadha and for this reason called Magadhī. We see examples of Magadhī case endings in particular. </p>
<p>As in the case of Aramaic features in the Greek New Testament, the occurrence of Magadhī case endings in Pāli has been interpreted as evidence of the antiquity and therefore authenticity of the texts where they occur. </p><br />
<p><b>2. Palestinian environment</b></p>
<p>The idea here is that details in stories about Jesus that reflect the known customs, beliefs, and practices associated with Palestine in the first century, are more likely to be authentic. But it is easy for an author to interpolate such details from their own memory, from oral tradition, or from other sources. </p>
<p>The problem here, for Buddhism, is that we only have normative Buddhist sources for this. There is no contemporary literature that we can draw on. All we have for comparison is scant and fragmentary evidence from archaeology. Buddhist Stories are, for example, set in real cities. We know these cities existed because we have the remains of them. We can still visit the ruins (as I have done). </p>
<p>This criterion is more useful negatively. For example, we may say that the appearance of foreign ideas and customs should make us sceptical. As noted above, some of my speculations about the possibility that certain details of Buddhism might be explained if the Sakya tribe had originally come from Iran. Note that this is not the same as relating the Sakya tribe to the Iranian Saka tribe (no, the Sakya were not Scythians). </p><br />
<p><b>3. Vividness of narration</b></p>
<p>This criterion supposes that the kinds of vivid descriptions that we see of Palestine in some Biblical stories indicate an eyewitness account. </p>
<p>The problem here is that supplying vivid details is something that any competent storyteller does to make their account seem more plausible. The example that immediately comes to mind is the fact that Sherlock Holmes lived at 221B Baker Street, Marylebone, London. This address was not real at the time, although the road has since been extended and now does have a 221. The Sherlock Holmes Museum can be found at 239 Baker St. Again, <i>museums </i>are generally the place where we store and display <i>historical </i>artefacts. But Sherlock Holmes is ahistorical, he's a fictional character. </p>
<p>In his paper <i>Has Xuanzang ever been in Mathura?</i>, Max Deeg notes that a number of vivid accounts in Xuanzang's Record of the Western Regions, are not based on first hand accounts. Xuanzang did not go to Mathura, despite providing a vivid description of it. </p><br />
<p><b>4. Tendencies of developing synoptic tradition</b></p>
<p>Maier Considers this principle "highly questionable". This is because it involves subjective opinions about the internal development of the gospel literature. There were, for example, more Aramaic expressions and syntax in the earlier gospel by Mark, that were gradually eliminated in Matthew and Luke. </p>
<p>There is an exact parallel with Buddhist literature featuring Prakrits gradually being Sanskritised. Early Buddhist texts were composed in various Prakrits, but these tended to become standardised and increasingly Sanskritised. In some texts there is an argument as to whether they reflect a Sanskritised Prakrit, or a Sanskrit with some Prakrit features. And of course there are, by the fourth century, texts composed in Pāṇinian Sanskrit. And after this, Buddhists once again began to use Prakrit. Notably, many dhāraṇī appear to have been composed in a Sanskritised Prakrit, i.e. they have Sanskrit words, with an archaic Prakrit case ending in -e. A good example is the dhāraṇī in the Heart Sutra which uses the Prakrit masculine nominative singular -e ending: <i>gate gate pārasaṃgate bodhi svhāhā</i>. Note that bodhi is also in the nominative singular and <i>svāhā </i>is now considered indeclinable. </p>
<p>The problem for Buddhists, as for Christians, is that constructing such internal chronologies that have no corroboration from external sources is speculative and subjective. All too often Buddhists work on the axiom "older is more authentic" and the people claiming to have discovered internal structures and developments are apologists for a sectarian tradition whose identity and livelihood are tightly bound to the outcome of the inquiry. No Theravādin bhikkhu, for example, is going to undermine Theravāda orthodoxy, since in doing so they risk expulsion from their order or worse, they risk talking themselves into apostasy. <br /><br />So, for example, some Pāli texts contain elements of a living Prakrit that is similar to the language of the Asoka edicts from Magadha. We call that language Māgadhī. This is the Prakrit that emerged south of the Ganga around the kingdom of Rājagāha, then based in what is now Southern Bihar. We get many hints that there was considerably more linguistic diversity in the second urbanisation period ca. 600 BCE - 200 BCE. Arguments are made that the persistence of elements of Māgadhī in Pāli is evidence of antiquity amongst texts. These are combined with other speculative ideas, such as the idea that the use of certain poetic meters was prevalent in older material. </p>
<p>The problem is that the Pāli that has come down to us is the product of both translation (from various Prakrits into Pāli) and repeated editing (which is inevitable in the process of compilation). The Pāli suttas, for example, may well have relied on older traditions in some form, but they reflect Buddhism at the time the suttas were compiled and, even more than this, they reflect Buddhism at the time the suttas were <i>written down</i>. The trouble is that we don't know when Pāli was written down because the only evidence we have is from normative religious texts that have not been assessed using standardised hermeneutic principles. </p>
<p><br /><b>5. Historical presumption</b></p>
<p>The last criterion that Meier considers concerns opinions about where the burden of proof lies. One of the things that Richard Gombrich has said about this issue was: "We have no reason to doubt the traditional accounts." For Gombrich the burden of proof lies with those who distrust the normative sources. But this is problematic. If, for example, we take Gombrich's assertion that the Buddha was an historical person, how can we prove that he was not? We cannot prove a negative. Many religieux take a similar position to the historicity of the Buddha, claiming, for example, that the very existence of Buddhism or the literature of Buddhism, is all the proof we need that someone called Buddha lived. </p>
<p>However, Meier notes the standard objection to this approach: "The burden of proof is simply on anyone who tries to prove something" (183). For example, anyone who wishes to assert that the Buddha was an historical person bears the burden of proof. <br /><br />And, on the contrary, we have the argument by David Drewes that the Buddha has never been linked to any historical fact or event. There is no archaeology associated with the Buddha, and precious little even from that time beyond some sherds of pottery. The argument David Drewes makes is not that the Buddha was not historical. You cannot prove a negative. Drewes argues that there is simply no basis on which to make a conjecture because he does not consider the Pāli suttas to be a source of historical information. The suttas are normative religious documents that primarily reflect the religious ideas and ideals of the authors of the stories. If they are supposed to reflect the religious ideas of someone other than the author, then let us see that evidence. And let us evaluate the plausibility of that evidence according to standardised criteria. </p><br />
<p style="text-align: center;"><b>Conclusions</b></p>
<p>While not all of Meier's criteria are directly applicable to reading Buddhist texts, we have here a coherent account of how some scholars have tried to work with the literature of early Christianity to divine the historical Jesus. In most cases I can see how I would apply such criteria to working with Buddhist normative texts. And have given examples. </p>
<p>These essays of mine are really just my notes typed up into a coherent form. The field of New Testament hermeneutics has thrown up many different lists of criteria and many arguments about which is applicable and to what extent. </p>
<p>The benefits of standardising our evaluations of the historical value of our sources have obvious advantages for scholars amateur and professional, because we have a common basis of evaluation. To date, a lot of the work on historicity is piecemeal; each fact is presented and justified in an isolated fashion so that a refutation of the whole requires a refutation of each fact individually. This makes the arguments for the historicity of the Buddha or the Pāli suttas very arduous and it makes the claims for "authenticity" sketchy, at best. This is the principle advantage of eschewing methods. </p>
<p>The rejection of standardised methods seems to be a conscious thing in Buddhist Studies as though our methods are value-free. A key social studies criticism of science, which also purports to be value-free, or at least value-neutral, is that it is theory laden. Science proceeds from certain axioms and we cannot pretend that those axioms don't matter. This criticism is entirely fair and identifying those axioms has helped to improve the scientific process and make scientific inquiry more rigorous. </p>
<p>It's hard to imagine a more theory-laden scenario, however, than a religious (often one who has given up sex for their religion) writing an apologia for one of the central tenets of their religion. The idea that their writing is value-free or that it is not theory-laden is simply laughable. As Upton Sinclair said: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” How much more so when that person, on the basis of their religious convictions, lives in extreme self-denial, is accorded exalted social status, and is praised sycophantically by followers. </p>
<p>And this is the problem that hermeneutic criteria were meant to solve. How can we be confident that anything we read in a religious text has any connection to history in the complete absence of any contemporary archaeology that might shed light on the situation. We examine claims, weighing them against our stated criteria, and then highlight what seems to be the most plausible explanation or narrative. </p>
<p>Such a procedure does not produce certainty, however. We have to treat it in a Bayesian way: using information gleaned from sources to assign finite probabilities to each scenario, and then adjusting the probabilities as new information comes in. Meier emphasises that no single criterion used in isolation would be useful. Rather, we have to view each new piece of information in relation to all the criteria. </p>
<p>Again, this process of going from part to whole and back to the parts in an iterative cycle was identified by Gadamer as the historiographical process par excellence. This is our best way forward in trying to reconstruct history from partial and fragmentary information produced by a community of religieux. And this process is never finished. New information is emerging all the time. And very often this means that we have to weigh up everything anew. </p>
<p>For example, the Chinese origins of the <i>Heart Sutra</i> now seems certain because there is a mountain of evidence for the Sanskrit text being a back-translation from Chinese. How does this knowledge affect other conclusions that we have about the <i>Heart Sutra</i>? If the text is not authenticated as a genuine, <i>Indian</i>, Buddhist text, then on what basis <i>can </i>it be authenticated? Or if we are being more provocative, we might ask, Is the <i>Heart Sutra</i> an authentic Buddhist text at all? If we don't have clear and agreed upon criteria for having such a discussion, then it tends to be a waste of time. </p>
<p>Of course, even within New Testament scholarship the criteria themselves are contentious and contended. Meier's work is widely cited in their literature. Meier values some principles (embarrassment, discontinuity, corroboration) and devalues others (historical presumption). Other authors come to different conclusions. But at least they know which argument they are having and what is at stake. My sense is that parallel discussions in Buddhism and Buddhism Studies are largely incoherent and slaved to sectarian orthodoxy. I think we can do better than a series of disconnected, idiosyncratic asseverations of faith. Certainly, in amateur and professional Buddhism Studies we need to pay more attention to methods and methodology (the study of methods). </p><p style="text-align: center;">~~oOo~~</p><br /></div>
<p style="text-align: center;"><b>Bibliography</b></p>
<p class="hang">Attwood, J. 2004. "Suicide as a response to suffering." <i>Western Buddhist Review</i>, 4. </p>
<p class="hang">Attwood, J. 2012. "Possible Iranian Origins for Sākyas and Aspects of Buddhism." <i>Journal of the Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies</i>, 3, 47-69.</p>
<p class="hang">Liu, Shufen. (2022). “The Waning Years of the Eminent Monk Xuanzang and his Deification in China and Japan.” In <i>Chinese Buddhism and the Scholarship of Erik Zürcher</i>. Edited by Jonathan A. Silk and Stefano Zacchetti, 255–289. Leiden: Brill.</p>
<p class="hang">Meier, John P. (1991). <i>A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus</i>. 4 Vol. New York: Doubleday.</p>
<p class="hang">Nattier, Jan. (2003). <i>A Few Good Men: The Bodhisattva Path according to The Inquiry of Ugra (Ugraparipṛcchā)</i>. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press.</p>
Jayaravahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13783922534271559030noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19327107.post-75526267674053359212023-06-30T10:17:00.005+01:002023-07-10T14:46:53.547+01:00Notes on Xuanzang's Waning Years<div style="text-align: justify;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<p>The religious history of Xuanzang sees him going from triumph to triumph, hobnobbing with emperors, and generally being successful and loved by all. Xuanzang is the ideal Chinese Buddhist monk, highly educated, adept at Sanskrit and translation, a shrewd political operative, and so on. A typical Buddhist saint in many respects. </p>
<p>I was, therefore, intrigued by a new article by <a href="https://www1.ihp.sinica.edu.tw/CorrespondingAndAdjunct/Shu-fen_Liu">Liu Shufen 劉淑芬</a>, which paints a very different picture of the later years of Xuanzang's life. </p>
<blockquote>"... the conventional wisdom about Xuanzang's later years has been largely misinformed, and needs to be modified in light of more sensitive readings of data in sources like the [Yancong] <i>Biography</i>. (Liu 2022: 259)</blockquote>
<p>This is the latest in a series of articles by her on this topic. Liu brings out nuances that are easily overlooked, such as Gaozong keeping Xuanzang under virtual house arrest (657-658); or Gaozong appointing no less that seven officials to oversee Xuanzang's translation work. Moreover, after Xuanzang died his translation work was abandoned and his team of experts disbanded. </p>
<p>However, these events have to be seen alongside others such as a pregnant Wu Zhao asking Xuanzang to pray for her and her baby after she experienced difficulties in pregnancy. Not only does this seem to have occurred, but Xuanzang was able to temporarily ordain the new prince as a monk (to gain merit). </p>
<p>Liu points out that most commentators ignore the socio-political ructions during the early decades of the Tang dynasty. Liu's article prompts me to look again, particularly at the Yancong <i>Biography</i>. Her reading of the <i>Biography </i>and use of other contemporary sources is novel and draws out points that have long been overlooked, which makes it valuable. </p>
<p>However, Liu is reading the <i>Biography</i> in a relatively naive way, taking the text more or less at face value. By contrast, Jeffrey Kotyk (2019), who cites one of Liu's early contributions, has argued that we would be on safer ground reading the <i>Biography </i>as fiction based upon a true story (now long obscured and largely unrecoverable). Similarly, Max Deeg has shown that Xuanzang's <i>Travelogue</i> of his journey to the west often seems to serve purposes other than geography or history: Xuanzang was trying to exert a Buddhist influence over (a resistant, non-Buddhist) Taizong.</p>
<p>What I'm going to attempt in this essay is a critical reading of Liu (2022), in the light of Kotyk (2019) and some of Max Deeg's articles (2007, 2012, 2016). This is not simply an exercise, since the authorship of the <i>Heart Sutra</i> is an open question and the main suspect is Xuanzang. He certainly had the means and the opportunity. We can only speculate as to his motives, but a more nuanced picture of his later life might help. </p>
<p>The appeal of Xuanzang in the west has been partly due to the novel <i>Journey to the West </i>(<i>Xī yóu jì</i>; 西遊記), published in the 16th century, via Arthur Waley's 1942 abridged translation, <i>Monkey</i>, and the TV show of the same name, which aired throughout the English-speaking world (including New Zealand, where I grew up). It is also partly because Xuanzang's travelogue provided geographical information on ancient India accurate enough that nineteenth century British explorers used it to rediscover a number of lost Buddhist archaeological sites (this topic is explored in Charles Allen's popular history book, <i>The Buddha and the Sahibs</i>). </p>
<p>However, while Xuanzang himself was relatively popular in his lifetime, his translations were not popular either amongst the literati or the commoners. Nattier (1992) observed that where a translation of a text by Kumārajīva existed, a new translation by Xuanzang never replaced it. Xuanzang insisted on translating into Chinese prose that was considered turgid and ugly by the aesthetics of the day, but which modern commentators refer to as "accurate". Philologers praise Xuanzang because his sources are more visible than for any other Chinese translators. A Sanskrit source was, and still is, the most important criterion for authenticity of Buddhist texts in China. By contrast Kumārajīva's translations are still in use in modern Chinese-speaking places. </p>
<p>It is still common to see references to Kumārajīva as an expert in Chinese. For example, Felbur (2019: 2) refers to his "prodigious mastery of the Chinese language". However, this appears to be a pious fiction. During this period of translating T 223 and T 1509 (ca 400-404 CE), Kumārajīva's Chinese was poor enough for his collaborator, Sēngruì 僧睿 (371–438 AD) to record numerous complaints, notably: </p>
<blockquote>“The Dharma Master [i.e. Kumārajīva] has great difficulty with the Chinese language. In regard to translating, the Sanskrit is beautiful, but his translation can hardly be understood.” (Chou 2004: 293). </blockquote>
<p>Kotyk (2021) has also raised doubts about the level of understanding of Sanskrit in China, at any period. It is one thing to learn to read Sanskrit and translate it into another language. It is another thing entirely to compose in Sanskrit or to translate from Chinese to Sanskrit. The latter is particularly difficult because of the difference in grammatical information the writing system. A single verb in Sanskrit can have hundreds of forms which serve to indicate person, number, tense, and mood. In Middle Chinese, a single character representing a verb is used for all conjugations. Information on the person, number, tense, and mood often has to be implied from the context in Chinese, but is always explicit in the morphology of words in Sanskrit. </p>
<p>Liu broadly accepts accounts of Xuanzang's popularity with Emperor Táng Tàizōng 唐太宗 and dates the beginning of Xuanzang's troubles to the accession of his ninth son to the the Throne. However, Liu paints a considerably less flattering portrait of Xuanzang personally, than we find elsewhere. She notes, for example, that Xuanzang was unpopular because his translation methods were seen as suspect: </p>
<blockquote>“To make matters worse, Xuánzàng is said to have possessed a somewhat abrasive personality, particularly when it came to matters regarding translation, which ended up offending quite a few elite monks.” (Liu 2022: 259)</blockquote><p>Daoxuan 道宣 (596-667 CE), who also composed a biography of Xuanzang, "is said to have walked out of one translation session presided over by Xuánzàng in 645, and commented that while Xuánzàng’s translations were not of the finest quality, they did reflect his meritorious efforts.” (Liu 2022: 259). It seems that “Xuánzàng was on poor terms with more than a few of the era’s leading Buddhist monks”. (Liu 2022: 260). Buddhist histories often downplay Buddhist internecine conflicts, so this minority report is important in providing balance. </p><p><br /></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><b>Life After Tàizōng 太宗.</b></p>
<blockquote>“Xuánzàng’s stature at court changed dramatically following Taizong’s death .” (Liu 2022: 259)</blockquote>
<p>The Táng 唐 Dynasty was founded on the ruins of the short-lived Sui dynasty by the Duke of Tang, aka Lǐ Yuān 李淵, later Emperor Gāozǔ 高祖. He was succeeded his son, Lǐ Shìmín 李世民 who became Emperor Tàizōng 太宗 (4 September 626 – 10 July 649). On the demise of Tàizōng, and after some of the more obvious candidates were eliminated, his ninth son, Lǐ zhì 李治 became Emperor Gāozōng 高宗 on 15 July 649. </p>
<p>Although the Tang is routinely portrayed as a "golden era" of Chinese culture, the early decades are better characterised as a period of simmering tensions and outbreaks of insurrection as the stronger aristocratic clans continued to flex their muscles. One issue for Han Chinese was that the Lǐ 李 clan had Turkic blood. The Turks north of the Great Wall were a considerable factor in this region. It was only with the help of the Blue Turks, for example, that the first Sui Emperor reunified China after some centuries of disunity. Later, the rebel leader An LuShan would capture the capital Chang'an with the help of Turks. </p>
<p>However, not content to fight outbreaks of insurrection, the early Tang emperors carried on the disastrous campaigns against the Korean peninsula initiated by the Sui Emperors (who lost in the most spectacular fashion). They also extended the boundaries of the Empire west into Central Asia and did battle with marauding Tibetans. </p>
<p>Liu notes that even within the Lǐ 李 clan there were tensions. Gaozong was suspicious of officials appointed by Taizong and many of Xuánzàng’s patrons were amongst them. (Liu 2022: 259). The period 657-658 saw the persecution of noted "Taizong loyalists." I don't understand Liu's use of this term "Taizong loyalists" since at this point Taizong is dead. There was definitely factionalism in the court at the time. There were, for example, pro and anti Wu Zhao factions. </p>
<p> Throughout the early Tang there were plots and attempted coups by factions within the court, even within the ruling Li clan.</p>
<p>Under Gaozong, during the period 657-658, Liu argues that Xuanzang was "kept under surveillance" although it might be better termed "house arrest", since he was confined to his monastery or the palace respectively. Liu (2022: 263) notes that during 657, while living in the Imperial Palace at Luoyang, Xuánzàng was ill but was denied medical attention. He snuck out of the palace to consult a physician but was caught and reprimanded. </p>
<p>After having produced a large number of translations under Taizong, Xuanzang's output plummeted under Gaozong. Liu notes, for example, that Xuánzàng did no translation work in 655 (2022: 260). Early in 657, the court moved to Luoyang and Xuánzàng was compelled to go with them, and had only five assistants of his own. During the period 656-657, he completed only one translation and that only one scroll in extent (Liu 2022: 262). </p>
<p>On returning to Chang’an, Xuánzàng was ordered to reside at Ximing monastery but was not given a position or title. No members of his translation team based at Da Ci’en monastery were allowed to accompany him. Gaozong gave him ten "newly ordained" monks instead, but they could not have had the training necessary to do translation work. "In other words," says Liu (2022: 263), "the Ximing monastery was to serve as a place of confinement, and a non-productive one at that.” </p>
<p>From from 658-659, “Xuánzàng was only able to translate three short scriptures, and only when Gaozong gave permission for a short trip back to the Da Ci’en monastery.” (Liu 2022: 263).</p>
<p>On Xianqing 1.1.27 (1 Feb 656), following the debate with Lǚ cái 吕才 (606-665), which Xuanzang won, Gaozong appointed several court officials to supervise Xuanzang's translation project (Liu 2022: 261; see also Li 1995:263-4). These officials are all known to history (via the Old Tang Records and the New Tang Records). </p>
<ul>
<li><b>Yu Zhining</b> 于志寧 (588–665). Removed from office in 659 for not supporting Wu Zhao becoming Empress Consort. </li>
<li><b>Lai Ji </b>來濟 (610–662). Also opposed Wu Zhao; demoted and exiled in 657. </li>
<li><b>Xu Jingzong</b> 許敬宗 (592 – 672). Served in Sui Dynasty as well as Gaozu, Taizong, and Gaozong. He supported Wu Zhao's being made EC and also supported her son (Li Hong) becoming Crown Prince.</li>
<li><b>Xue Yuanchao</b> 薛元超 (622–683). A noted literary talent and mid-level official. An ally of Li Yifu. Exiled in 663, forgiven, promoted. Died of natural causes. </li><li><b>Li Yifu </b>李義府 (614–666). Noted poet and politician. A highly favoured ally of Wu Zhao who helped to eliminate her rivals. Exiled 658 after conflict with Du Zhenglun, but restored 659. Exiled again in 663 for corruption. Awarded posthumous honours in 692 by Wu Zetian. </li>
<li><b>Du Zhenglun</b> 杜正倫 (d. ca 658). Served in military under Taizong but exiled in 643. Restored and promoted by Gaozong. Exiled in 658 after conflict with Li Yifu and died soon afterwards. </li></ul>The decree as presented in Yancong's <i>Biography </i>suggests that these men would read the translations and "should there be any unfitting or improper expression, they should polish and improve them as required." (Li 1995: 264). That is to say, these men were empowered to change Xuanzang's translations as they saw fit. This may have been a contributing factor in the precipitous fall in translation output during this period. </div></div>
<p>We might euphemistically refer to this as an "editorial board", but "board of censors" might be more apt. I can see no superficial commonality between there men. Some opposed Wu and some supported her. They were all in favour when appointed, but were not always favoured. </p>
<p>A key moment in the history of the <i>Heart Sutra </i>is the letter from Xuanzang to Gaozong dated 26 Dec 656, which mentions the <i>Heart Sutra</i> for the first time, amongst a raft of other gifts for the new prince and his parents:</p>
<blockquote>"I dare to offer a copy of the Prajñā Heart Sutra in gold letters, one scroll and a case." <br />(輒敢進金字 «般若心經» 一卷并函 T 50; 2053.272b.12).</blockquote>
<p>During a difficult pregnancy, Wu Zhao asked Xuanzang to pray for the safe delivery of the baby. He agreed and suggested as an extra measure that the baby be given the rite of tonsure (technically making it a Buddhist monk). After the safe birth of Lǐ xiǎn 李顯, the rite was administered. </p>
<p>Liu notes that no court officials attended Xuanzang's funeral and five years later, in 669, Gaozong had Xuánzàng exhumed and reinterred at Shǎolíngyuán 少陵原 “in the hills outside Chang’an”. Some 10 km from the palace. </p>
<p>Li’s translation of the Yancong <i>Biography </i>at this point reads: “This was because the original tomb was too near the capital and was visible from the imperial palace, so the emperor was often grieved at the sight of it.” (339). However, Liu suggests “The ostensible reason for this decision was that the emperor wished to mournfully gaze on Xuánzàng’s small white stupa.” Thus Liu’s reading is the exact opposite of Li’s. </p>
<p>Liu argues that the reinterment was a slight. Reburial did occur, for example, when tombs were damaged or newly acquired clan wealth demanded a higher status monument for ancestors. But these don’t apply to Xuánzàng. This aspect of Liu's argument is the most speculative, it involves speculating about the motives of those involved, and thus the weakest part of it. </p>
<p>For example (264-5) She describes the lack of imperial presence at his funeral in Yuhua. And she implies from this that Xuánzàng was marginalised by both Gaozong and the Buddhist establishment. And yet she also notes “When Xuánzàng’s corpse was laid to rest on the 14th day of the 4th lunar month, the monastic and lay Buddhist worshippers of Chang’an commemorated his passing with a lavish funeral precession” (265). However, she overlooks the fact that Biography reports that these were paid for out of public coffers following an imperial edict to this effect (Li 1995: 337-338).</p><p>Note also <i>Biography </i>(Li 1995: 338): </p>
<blockquote>Being a person learned in the Way and highly virtuous, the master was deeply adored by the reigning monarch [i.e. Gaozong], who therefore issued decrees repeatedly in favor of him after his death. None of the ancients could be compared with him in this respect.</blockquote><br />
<p style="text-align: center;"><b>Critical Reflections</b></p>
<p>Liu uses a number of sources but relies heavily on the <i>Biography </i>of Xuanzang attributed to Huili and Yancong and completed in 688: i.e. <i>Dà Táng dà Cí’ēnsì sānzàng fǎshī chuán xù</i> «大唐大慈恩寺三藏法師傳序» (T 2053). She also draws on the Biography by Dàoxuān 道宣 (596–667).</p>
<p>One of the problems that I see with Liu's use of the sources is her uncritical acceptance of the date of translation of the Heart Sutra as 649 CE. This date is tied to the death of Tàizōng 太宗 in the same year and is part of a story that sees Taizong making a death-bed conversion to Buddhism under Xuanzang's guidance. Secular historians agree that this story is apocryphal. Taizong had a life-long antipathy towards Buddhism, even if he liked Xuanzang on a personal level. State support for Buddhism is a separate issue and continued even when emperors like Taizong and Gaozong were antipathetic to the religion. </p>
<p>The source of the 649 date is the <i>Kāiyuán shìjiào lù</i> «開元釋教錄» (T 2154) [hereafter Kaiyuan Catalogue]. This bibliography of Buddhist texts in Chinese translation was compiled 730 CE by Zhìshēng 智昇. No earlier source supports this date. Moreover, in the Yancong <i>Biography </i>Taizong dies on the 26th day of the fifth month of the 23rd year of Zhenguan (ca 10 July 649), but in the ninth month of the previous year (Sept 648) the <i>Biography </i>records the Emperor enquiring about the <i>Vajracchedikā Prajñāpāramitā</i> and encouraging Xuanzang to do a new translation. It seems likely that Zhìshēng took that story and replaced the <i>Vajracchedikā</i> with the <i>Heart Sutra</i>.</p>
<p>Keep in mind that the <i>dhāraṇī </i>in the <i>Heart Sutra </i>appears to have been copied from the <i>Tuóluóní jí jīng </i> «陀羅尼集經» (T 901), translated by Atikūṭa in 654 CE. This means that the <i>Heart Sutra</i> was likely composed after 654. </p>
<p>Note that the first literary mention of the <i>Heart Sutra</i> also occurs in the Yancong <i>Biography </i>assigned to the 5th day of the 12th month of the 2nd year of Xianqing (26 Dec 656).<br />
Kotyk argues that the Yancong <i>Biography:</i> </p>
<blockquote>"represents a form of Buddhist propaganda from the year 688—a time when Wu Zetian 武則天 (624–705) was the de facto ruler of the Chinese court—produced by Yancong with the aim of advancing the status of the <i>Yogācārabhūmi</i> and the Chinese monks associated with this text at court, while also rewriting some aspects of Emperor Taizong’s life in order to advance the contemporary rise of Buddhism."</blockquote>
<p>Much of the Yancong <i>Biography </i>describes Xuanzang in superlative or miraculous ways consistent with what Joseph Bulbulia has called “charismatic signalling.” The primary purpose of charismatic signalling is to provide a way to “align prosocial motivations” in large religious movements: “Charismatic culture supports cooperative outcomes by aligning powerful emotions, motivations, and intentions among potentially anonymous partners, toward collective goals.” (Bulbulia 2009: 545.)</p>
<p>The sick man story is inserted into a fairly standard Buddhist miracle tale. As outlined by Robert Campany, these involve “a compassionate, salvific, and clear intervention in human affairs by some powerful being, typically the bodhisattva or buddha on whom the sūtra focuses.” (Campany 1991: 30-1)</p><p><br /></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><b>Conclusion</b></p>
<p>I think Liu's observations of apparent hostility by Gaozong towards Xuanzang are important and I plan to begin incorporating them into my spiel on the <i>Heart Sutra</i>. That said, I am not entirely convinced by Liu's methods. I detect a tendency towards naïve acceptance of the Yancong <i>Biography </i>as a reliable historical source. My sense is that Liu is on the right track, but could be more explicit about how she interprets sources and why she thinks these observations are reliable.</p>
<p>I plan to write an academic essay (or perhaps two) in response to Liu. I would like to think more about her observations in the light of many articles by Max Deeg on the use of the <i>Xiyu ji </i>(Record of the Western Regions) which is attributed to Xuanzang. I would also like give some thought to the role of Wu Zhou/Wu Zetian in this story. After all, the <i>Heart Sutra </i>was composed in the same timeframe as the appointment of Wu Zhao to the position of Empress Consort.</p>
<p>I would also like to consider hermeneutic principles, the formal heuristics developed for obtaining reliable historical information from normative religious texts. These are seldom openly discussed in a Buddhist Studies context and I think making them more explicit would enhance Liu's contribution. </p><p>For example, Liu tacitly makes use of the hermeneutic <i>principle of embarrassment</i>. As she says, an event like the appointment of a board of censors to police Xuanzang's translations (which coincided with his house arrest and a precipitous drop in his output of translations) is deeply unflattering to him. Since the Yancong <i>Biography </i>is more of a hagiography, with a relentless positivity about Xuanzang, this imposition by Gaozong on Xuanzang, makes the story more plausible than it otherwise might be.</p>
<p>However, this must be balanced by other hermeneutic principles, such as the principle of corroboration. As Kotyk notes, the crossover between Daoxuan's more prosaic account of Xuanzang, and Yancong's superlative account, is the region we look to for reliable information. Liu repeatedly notes that details she relies on are only found in the Yancong <i>Biography</i>. She seems to say that this makes the work more important, but the lack of corroboration should have suggested the opposite, i.e. that the unique details in Yancong are less reliable than those which are corroborated by Daoxuan. </p><p>And with a more nuanced view of Xuanzang, I believe we will need to revise the history of the Heart Sutra to incorporate Liu's observations. </p>
<p style="text-align: center;">~~oOo~~</p>
<p style="text-align: left;"></p><blockquote><p style="text-align: left;"><i>Jayarava's Raves </i>is one of the longest running Buddhist blogs, having started in Nov 2005. At my peak I published one essay a week for five or six years running. My output has dropped but I haven't given up on blogging. Rather, I am more focused on publishing my observations and discoveries about the <i>Heart Sutra</i> in academic journals. I still enjoy writing essays and still write every day (this is the 604th essay I've written for this blog).</p><p style="text-align: left;"></p></blockquote><p style="text-align: left;"><br /></p><p style="text-align: center;"><b>Bibliography</b></p>
<p><b>Primary Sources</b></p>
<p class="hang"><i>Dà Táng dà Cí’ēnsì sānzàng fǎshī chuán xù </i>《大唐大慈恩寺三藏法師傳序》A biography of the Tripiṭaka Master of the Great Ci’en Monastery of the Great Tang Dynasty (T 2053). Translated into English by Li (1995).</p>
<p><b>Secondary Sources</b></p>
<p class="hang">Attwood, J. (2019). "Xuanzang’s Relationship to the Heart Sūtra in Light of the Fangshan Stele." <i>Journal of Chinese Buddhist Studies</i>, 32, 1–30. https://chinesebuddhiststudies.org/article/xuanzangs-relationship-to-the-heart-sutra-in-light-of-the-fangshan-stele/</p>
<p class="hang">Bulbulia, J. (2009) “Charismatic Signalling.” <i>Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature, and Culture</i> 3(4) : 518-551.</p><p class="hang">Campany, Robert F. (1991). “Notes in the Devotional Uses and Symbolic Functions of Sūtra Texts as Depicted in Early Chinese Buddhist Miracle Tales and Hagiographies.” <i>Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies </i>14(1): 28-72. </p>
<p class="hang">Chou, P. (2004). ‘The Problem of the Authorship of the <i>Mahāprajñāpāramitopadeśa</i>: A Re-examination.’ <i>Historical Inquiry</i> 34: 281-327.</p>
<p class="hang">Deeg, M. 2007. "Has Xuanzang really been in Mathura? Interpretation Sinica or Interpretation Occidentalia - How to critically read the records of the Chinese pilgrims." In <i>Essays on East Asian Religion and Culture: Festschrift in Honour of Nishiwaki Tsuneki on the Occasion of his 65th Birthday</i>, edited by Christian Wittern and Shi Lishan, 35–73. Kyōto: Editorial Committee.</p>
<p class="hang">Deeg, M. 2012. "Show Me the Land Where the Buddha Dwelled... Xuanzang’s Record of the Western Regions (<i>Xiyu Ji</i> 西域記): A Misunderstood Text?" <i>China Repor</i>t 48 (1-2): 89–113.</p>
<p class="hang">Deeg, M. 2016. "The political position of Xuanzang: the didactic creation of an Indian dynasty in the Xiyu ji." In “The Middle Kingdom and the Dharma Wheel: Aspects of the Relationship between the Buddhist Saṃgha and the State in Chinese History,” Vol. 1. <i>Sinica Leidensia</i>, 133: 94–139.</p>
<p class="hang">Eisenberg, Andrew. (2012) "Emperor Gaozong, the Rise of Wu Zetian, and factional politics in the Early Tang." <i>Tang Studies </i>30, 45-69.</p>
<p class="hang">Felbur, Rafal. (2019) "Kumarajiva “Great Man” and Cultural Event". In <i>A Companion to World Literature</i>. Edited by Ken Seigneurie, 1-13. Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons. </p>
<p class="hang">Jorgensen, John. (2002). "Representing Wŏnch'ŭk: Meditations on Medieval East Asian Biographies." In <i>Religion and Biography in China and Tibet</i>, edited by Benjamin Penny. Routledge.</p>
<p class="hang">Kotyk, Jeffrey. (2019). ‘Chinese State and Buddhist Historical Sources on Xuanzang: Historicity and the Daci’en si sanzang fashi zhuan 大慈恩寺三藏法師傳’. <i>T’oung Pao </i>105(5-6): 513–544. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/15685322-10556P01</p><p class="hang">Kotyk, Jeffrey. (2021). “The Study of Sanskrit in Medieval East Asia: China and Japan”. <i>Hualin International Journal of Buddhist Studies</i> 4.2 : 240–273; https://dx.doi.org/10.15239/hijbs.04.02.04</p>
<p class="hang">Li, Rongxi. (1995). <i>A Biography of the Tripiṭaka of the Great Ci'en Monastery of the Great Tang Dynasty</i>. Numata Center for Buddhist Translation and Research. </p>
<p class="hang">Liu, Shufen. (2022). “The Waning Years of the Eminent Monk Xuanzang and his Deification in China and Japan.” In <i>Chinese Buddhism and the Scholarship of Erik Zürcher</i>. Edited by Jonathan A. Silk and Stefano Zacchetti, 255–289. Leiden: Brill. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004522152_010</p>
<p class="hang">Nattier, Jan. (2003). <i>A Few Good Men: The Bodhisattva Path according to The Inquiry of Ugra (Ugraparipṛcchā)</i>. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press.</p>
<p class="hang">Wriggins, Sally Hovey. (2004). <i>The Silk Road Journey with Xuanzang</i>. Cambridge,MA: Westview Press. </p>
Jayaravahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13783922534271559030noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19327107.post-75389997412683175112023-04-14T10:54:00.002+01:002023-04-16T11:24:24.320+01:00Nattier's Response to Fukui on the Chinese Origins of the Heart Sutra<div style="text-align: justify;"> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5pEJsyWzr92HYp2v_qaSNgHlRnhfLX6VNGsJykOe8LVtcCDGvb32USYtdcOTmksxk7g0DsKAaqA2LCmV4e0ty98QddQ9DVeSQ5BvGx_nDLKEvE0jfwXfhBpDU8GRDLXlrtwwxCubu_H9IwaCKPeytaM_YizcRwSG7n086Ee-UfkNoyu5HAg/s640/JUN3916-2017.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="640" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5pEJsyWzr92HYp2v_qaSNgHlRnhfLX6VNGsJykOe8LVtcCDGvb32USYtdcOTmksxk7g0DsKAaqA2LCmV4e0ty98QddQ9DVeSQ5BvGx_nDLKEvE0jfwXfhBpDU8GRDLXlrtwwxCubu_H9IwaCKPeytaM_YizcRwSG7n086Ee-UfkNoyu5HAg/w200-h200/JUN3916-2017.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>When I first read Nattier's article, "The <i>Heart Sūtra</i>: a Chinese apocryphal text?" (1992), ca 2007, I found the case compelling. I could immediately see how the method was applied to the evidence and how this led to certain conclusions, namely that the <i>Heart Sutra</i> could only have been composed in Chinese. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Subsequently Huifeng and I independently published confirmation of Nattier’s research. We both applied the same method to other parts of the text and reached the same
conclusion. Nattier’s results from comparing versions of the “core section” apply to the text as a whole. Sixteen years and fourteen published articles later, I'm completely convinced by the evidence we have, that the <i>Heart Sutra</i> was composed in Chinese, on the model of a <i>chāo jīng</i> 抄經 (digest text). Although I have also <a href="http://jayarava.blogspot.com/2022/12/a-open-letter-to-buddhist-studies.html">stated</a> what kind of evidence would refute my view.<br /><p>I was, therefore, amazed to learn that the Chinese origins thesis is not only rejected amongst Japanese academics, but that they consider the thesis to have been <i>refuted</i>. The issue is difficult to understand because the principal documents are in Japanese and, as a non-Japanese speaker, I can only get glimpses of the arguments through translations and the occasional article published in English. Still, I have been afforded many such glimpses since 2007 and have begun to see the outlines of their arguments.</p>
<p>A key moment in the modern history of <i>Heart Sutra</i> studies was the 1994 publication of a rebuttal of Nattier (1992) by the theologian Fukui Fumimasa (1934–2017), who was not only a senior academic, but also head priest at a major Buddhist temple. Japanese society being what it is, an older man who has high status as an academic <i>and </i>as a priest enjoys a kind of prestige that we can scarcely imagine in Europe and her colonies. In effect, Fukui cannot be publicly contradicted. In Japanese academia such men are considered untouchable. Contradicting one of the big men would be career suicide for a Japanese academic. </p><p>Fukui’s denunciation of Nattier was, therefore, a <i>big deal</i>. And it set the tone for Japanese scholarship that followed. A number of articles by other Japanese theologians began to appear. As I say, non-Japanese speakers only get glimpses into the world of Japanese <i>Heart Sutra</i> studies. I'm piecing this together from fragments and hearsay.</p>
<p>By contrast, Jan Nattier was at the time an early-career academic, a youngish woman, and an American. From what I can tell, this combination of qualities meant that she was not taken very seriously in Japan, which may account for the patronising tone of Fukui's criticism. And yet, Tanahashi (2014: 77) reports Fukui's comment that Nattier (1992) "shook the Japanese academic world". Fukui is reported as saying (in Tanahashi's translation)</p>
<p></p><blockquote>"As the Prajñā Heart Sutra is one of the most revered sutras in Japan, it would be a matter of grave concern if this were proved to be an apocryphon produced in China." </blockquote><p></p>
<p>One might be forgiven for thinking that Fukui therefore took Nattier's article very seriously indeed. And yet, as we will see, his attempt as a rebuttal cannot be taken seriously. His assertions are full of misunderstood English idioms, trivial arguments that don't address the issues raised by Nattier, and many kinds of logical fallacy. </p><p>Note the essentially theological nature of Fukui's remark. That a text is "revered" is at best incidental to philology. Nor would it be "matter of concern" for philologists, let alone a <i>grave </i>concern, if the text was composed in China using extracts of other (genuine) Buddhist texts. The provenance is what it is. The ideal philologist (or historian for that matter) is concerned to establish the facts of the matter, where and to the extent that they can be established, and to present them in some kind of coherent framework that helps to answer questions about the text. Of course, in practice we never attain the ideal, but we do aim to make progress towards it. This is in fact one of the criteria for getting published, i.e. that the article makes progress. </p>
<p>It is the religious who worries about how the facts will look or, more to the point, who worries how <i>they </i>will look, if the provenance pointed to by the facts is not the traditional provenance. Because let's face it, being wrong about the most popular Buddhist text in Japan leaves Fukui et al with some explaining to do. The potential loss of face entailed may be literally unimaginable for a European. </p>
<p>That said, secular academics might also feel some embarrassment if they are forced to admit how very wrong they have been about the <i>Heart Sutra </i>and Prajñāpāramitā generally. They should certainly <i>be </i>embarrassed that none of them noticed mistakes in Conze's Sanskrit text, for example. Or that we still don't reliable editions of our basic texts. In Europe and her colonies, many academics in the field of Buddhist Studies are also religious. Perhaps not to the extent of being abbots or head priests in religious organisations, but they are believers who experience enhanced disappointment when some aspect of their religion is contradicted by facts.</p>
<p>In any case, despite the obvious flaws in the arguments of Fukui, no one stepped up to defend Chinese origins until Huifeng (2014) was published. European academics continue to display an intense reluctance to talk about the issue. Most prefer to support the status quo and continue to refer to the emic view of the <i>Heart Sutra</i> as an Indian text composed in Sanskrit. Jonathan Silk is widely considered a leading <i>Heart Sutra </i>scholar on the basis of his 1994 edition of the Tibet text as it occurs in the Kanjur (ignoring the Tibetan texts found at Dunhuang). And yet Silk is one of those who continue to refer to the "Sanskrit original" despite being shown, step by step, that the Sanskrit is a back-translation from Chinese. Another senior scholar privately told me, he's "not qualified" to assess our work, because he "doesn't know Chinese". Despite exposing T 250 as an apocryphon, Shōgo Watanabe also resists our conclusions about T 251 and promotes the idea that there is insufficient evidence and that we must return to the Sanskrit manuscripts. The mask slipped a little in 2019 when he criticised our conclusions as "unnatural". Not a term I ever expected to see in a scholarly context. </p>
<p>Thus Fukui has become the posthumous poster boy for orthodox Japanese theology which rejects Chinese origins and then scrambles around for reasons to reject it. Those who follow in his footsteps seem to genuinely think that Fukui refuted Nattier. I don't have direct access to Fukui's writing, he only wrote in Japanese, but I do now have access to an unpublished rebuttal of Fukui by Jan Nattier. And today, I'm typing up my notes on this. </p>
<br />
<p style="text-align: center;"><b>Nattier's Response</b></p>
<p>In 2019, I was corresponding with Jan Nattier about the <i>Heart Sutra</i> and she shared her unpublished response to Fukui (1994), which I read with interest. I urged Nattier to make this response more widely available and last week (Apr 2023) she kindly uploaded the response to <a href="https://www.academia.edu/99934922/Response_to_Fukui_Fumimasa_on_the_Heart_Sutra_1995">academia.org</a>. Re-reading it after four years I was again struck by how poorly Fukui did in trying to refute Nattier. And by this time I had also seen other articles that were said to be influential in Japan. I have subsequently published two formal critiques of other scholars work on the Heart Sutra (Attwood 2020, 2022), including a number of Japanese scholars. I also composed informal reviews of other works on my blog (cited in the bibliography below). </p><p>My method here is to use Nattier's response to take a back-bearing on how Fukui thought about the <i>Heart Sutra</i> with a view to better understanding his objections; and to show that he certainly did not refute our Chinese origins thesis. And with his methods he could never refute it. </p><br />
<p><b>Core Section</b></p>
<p>Nattier first raises what seems to be <i>the</i> central issue for Fukui, the notion of the "core" of the text. Nattier referred to the quoted passage that was the focus of her article as "the core passage". As she says, this term "core" was not intended as a value judgement, nor as a metaphysical statement, it is just that the section falls <i>in the middle </i>of the text, which Nattier divides up for methodological reasons. </p><p>In fact, <i>Heart Sutra </i>manuscripts tend not to divide the prose text up into sections at all. I haven't seen all the surviving manuscripts but I have seen a majority of them, and they are all like this. Both in Sanskrit and in Chinese. The famous Hōryūji manuscript has neither word nor sentence breaks, let alone paragraphs or sections. Each <i>akṣara </i>(roughly "a syllable") stands alone on the page. So all divisions of the text, for whatever reason, are <i>entirely arbitrary</i> and imposed on the text by scholars. </p>
<p>For Fukui, however, correctly identifying the "core" of the text requires a radical shift in outlook. For Fukui the core of the text is the "mantra", which strongly implies a Tantric outlook (Fukui was head priest of a Tendai temple, in which tantric Buddhism is practiced). He apparently claims to have shown that a shift in the general title of the text from <i>Duō xīn jīng</i> «多心經» to <i>Xīn jīng </i>«心經» can be interpreted as evidence that the emphasis shifted from the mantra to emptiness only in the fifteenth century.</p>
<p>Nattier notes that Fukui is making a theological argument rather than a scholarly one. For example, Nattier notes that if we are saying that some part of the text represents "the core" (as a value judgement) then it simply begs the question, "represents the core, <i>for whom</i>?" And Fukui has nothing to say about this. That the <i>Heart Sutra</i> means different things to different people, at different times, can be amply demonstrated by glancing at any two commentaries taken at random.</p>
<p>By "theological" here, I mean a religious outlook that aims to legitimise and authenticate some religious doctrine. Theology takes doctrine as a starting point; as a given. Theologians collect and collate evidence in support of that doctrine. As a science undergraduate I called this "cooking" the result, not sure of the origins of that phrase. Cooking a result amounted to making the data fit the expected norm. One did this in school, for example, to hide experimental failures that might adversely affect one's grades. It is of course, fatal to the process of doing science to allow cooking in real world situations. Theology seems to me to be entirely concerned with cooking the results.</p>
<p>Fukui apparently argues, and Nattier apparently agrees that <i>Xīn jīng </i>«心經» would have been interpreted as meaning "mantra text". As Nattier points out, even if <i>Xīn jīng </i>«心經» were perceived as meaning "mantra text" this does not translate into a belief that Buddhists were focused on the mantra. For example, Nattier reminds us, the undated commentaries by Kuījī and Woncheuk do not think in Tantric terms. They encompass Madhyamaka and Yogācāra thought, with a clear preference for the latter. Long before the fifteenth century, these earliest Chinese commentators focused almost all their efforts on explicating the emptiness doctrine (albeit it from a Yogācāra point of view).</p>
<p>We can short circuit this discussion by looking at my 2017 article: "‘Epithets of the Mantra’ in the Heart Sutra." There I showed that word <i>mantra </i>does not occur in the Chinese <i>Heart Sutra.</i> </p><p>Credit for this discovery goes to Nobuyoshi Yamabe. Rather than publish, he pointed it out to Jan Nattier in a letter. The observation made its way, at the last minute, into Nattier (1992) as footnote 54a (typesetting was a lot more clunky in the early 90s). Nattier added a few more examples to flesh out Yamabe's, and my contribution was to provide a comprehensive survey of the relevant texts.</p>
<p>I was able to show, per Yamabe, that where the <i>Heart Sutra</i> has <i>zhòu </i>咒 or <i>zhòu </i>呪 (same character written two different ways), the source text in Kumārajīva's <i>Large Sutra</i> translation (T 223) has <i>míngzhòu </i>明呪. By referencing the extant Sanskrit manuscripts we showed that Kumārajīva was translating <i>vidyā</i>, not <i>mantra.</i> Hence the epithets sections of the Sanskrit <i>Large Sutra</i> manuscripts refer to Prajñāpāramitā as <i>mahāvidyā</i>, <i>anuttarā vidyā</i>, and <i>asamasamā vidyā. </i>The Sanskrit <i>Heart Sutra</i> by contrast suggests (using very different syntax also) that Prajñāpāramitā is a <i>mahāmantra</i>, <i>mahāvidyāmantra</i>, <i>anuttaramantra</i>, and <i>asamasamamantra</i>. This can be explained as a simple mistranslation from Chinese into Sanskrit, but I don't see how it can be explained if the passage was copied from the <i>Large Sutra</i> in Sanskrit. Copying, in this way, ought to be inherently conservative. Even where scribal errors distort words, the syntax of a sentence should not change to something completely different. </p>
<p>Moreover, where the character <i>zhòu </i>呪 occurs on its own in the <i>Heart Sutra</i>, where it introduces the incantation, it almost certainly means <i>dhāraṇī</i>. This seems to be the case because the incantation that follows is <i>not a mantra</i>, since it has none of the characteristic features of a mantra. Rather, it has all the characteristic features of a <i>dhāraṇī</i>. Samuel Beal (1865) translated the word <i>zhòu </i>呪 as <i>dhāraṇī</i>, based on a Tang Dynasty commentary, long before the Sanskrit text was known in Europe.</p>
<p>We can be quite confident that the <i>Heart Sutra </i>was not a "mantra text" and does not contain a mantra. The answer to what kind of text the <i>Heart Sutra</i> is can also be found in Nattier's footnotes (48). Robert Buswell, also wrote to Nattier, and pointed to the possibility of the <i>Heart Sutra </i>being a <i>chāo jīng</i> 抄經, i.e. a "digest text" or "condensed sutra". A <i>chāo jīng </i>抄經 consisted of copied passages intended to convey the gist of a larger text. Many hundreds of these texts were produced in China, in one early medieval catalogue, <i>chāo jīng </i>抄經 make up around one in five Buddhist "translations" in circulation. European scholars have long overlooked this genre and the catalogues of Buddhist translations which are our main source of evidence about them when writing about the <i>Heart Sutra</i>.</p>
<p>Thus Fukui's first complaint is shown to be invalid. He not only mistakes the wording of the text, he also mistakes the meaning of the words. In responding to this, Nattier was far more accommodating than she needed to be and had the tools at hand to solidly refute Fukui. But perhaps the ideas in her footnotes still appeared to be unclear at that time. </p><p>Nattier then shifts to consider twelve more specific criticisms. </p><br />
<p style="text-align: center;"><b>Minutiae</b></p>
<p>The reader may have to bear with me to some extent, because, a) I have nowhere near as much patience as Nattier displays; and b) I've written about some of the issues raised by Fukui and resolved them in ways that refute his conclusions (before I knew what his conclusions are). </p><p>Having dealt with the issue of the "core", Nattier then moves onto considering several points made by Fukui with only her summaries of his complaints to guide us (given in <span style="font-family: arial;">Arial font)</span>. In reproducing what follows, Chinese transcriptions are converted to Pinyin and characters supplied.</p><p><br /></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"></span></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: arial;">A. There are no sources that state that the <i>Heart Sutra</i> is an apocryphal scripture (Jap. <i>gikyō </i>偽経), while sources accepting it as a translation by Xuanzang are voluminous. For example, an inscription dating from 672 credits Xuanzang with the translation of the <i>sūtra</i>. Nattier must show that this inscription is a forgery. If she cannot do so, her entire argument becomes unreasonable.</span> </blockquote><p></p><div><br /></div><div>It is entirely true that none of the traditional commentaries on the <i>Heart Sutra</i> refer to it as "an apocryphon", but so what? This is a plain old fallacy that logicians call an "argument from popularity" (<i>argumentum ad populum</i>)<i>. </i>It doesn't matter how many people believe something, popularity does not make a proposition correct or meaningful. </div><div><br /></div><div>It is surely a fact that, by the time the earliest artefacts appeared, it was widely <i>believed </i>in China that the <i>Heart Sutra </i>was a translation from Sanskrit by Xuanzang. A belief is not a fact, even if everyone we know believes it. A belief is an emotion about an idea. Note that we actually have an earlier inscription, the Fangshan Stele (13 March 661), that also credits Xuanzang as the translator. But, again, so what? This attribution has no bearing on Nattier's methods or conclusions. And we know that Chinese attributions cannot always be trusted. <p>Here Nattier (1992: 206, n.33) raises an issue that I also explored in Attwood ("The History of the Heart Sutra as a Palimpsest." 2020). Both Kuījī and Woncheuk did not see the text as a <i>sūtra </i>preached by the Buddha. Rather they refer to it as <i>bié shēng </i>別生 "separately produced", which means they didn't think of the text as a sutra preached by Śakyamuni. So not only is Fukui's argument inherently fallacious, it's simply wrong to say that no one ever questioned the authenticity of the text. </p><p>Nattier also points out that the <i>Biography </i>of Xuanzang (T 2053) composed by Yàncóng 彥悰; 688 CE), still naively used as a source historical evidence throughout the Buddhist world (see Kotyk 2019), doesn't mention Xuanzang translating the text. The general reader may not appreciate the impact of this absence. The <i>Biography </i>makes a point of describing all of Xuanzang's translations and the circumstances in which they occured. And that list coincides with other evidence of Xuanzang's translations. None of these mention Xuanzang translating the <i>Heart Sutra</i>.<br /><br />The first literary mention of Xuanzang as <i>translator</i>, apart form attributions on inscriptions (which date from Xuanzang's lifetime), occurs in the <i>Kāiyuán shìjiào lù</i> «開元釋教錄» (Record of Śākyamuniʼs Teachings Compiled During the Kaiyuan period. T 2154); compiled in 730 CE by Zhìshēng 智昇. Earlier catalogues don't mention this. </p>
<p>The inscription Fukui refers to is better known in English as the <a href="http://jayarava.blogspot.com/2016/01/the-oldest-dated-heart-sutra.html">Beilin stele</a>, and his thinking on this appears to be reproduced in Tanahashi (2014). Fukui and Tanahashi seem to be unaware of the Fangshan Stele which is somewhat older (661 CE) and attributes the <i>Heart Sutra </i>as a translation by Xuanzang during his lifetime. But so what? We have shown that the Chinese text is <i>definitely not</i> "a translation" and that the Sanskrit text definitely is a back-translation from Chinese. <i>Ergo</i>, the text was not "translated by Xuanzang" and we must seek an alternative explanation for the attribution.</p>
<p>In a telling note Nattier (6, n.11) points out that the phrase attributing the text to Xuanzang is ambiguous because "a substantial number of the canonical sutras that a labelled 'imperially commissioned translations' [<i>zhào yì </i> 詔譯] ... are not new translations at all, but only slightly touched-up renditions of versions that already existed in Chinese". Thus the tag <i>yì</i> 譯 might not necessary indicate "translator/translation" in the strict sense, but might stretch to the collator of a <i>chāo jīng</i> 抄經 (this is something a Sinologist needs to investigate by looking at attributions on other <i>chāo jīng </i>抄經). </p><p>In light of this comment, I went and looked at the attributions of some of Xuanzang's translations. The attribution of T 220 (Xuanzang's Prajñāpāramitā translations), for example, takes the standard form:</p>
<blockquote><p><i>Sānzàng fǎshī Xuánzàng fèng zhào </i><i>yì </i> 三藏法師玄奘奉 詔譯<br />
“Tripiṭaka Dharma-master Xuanzang translated with imperial authorisation.”</p></blockquote>
<p>The phrase 奉□詔譯 might also be read, "translated with the blessing of the Emperor" or "... by order of the Emperor". The space before the character <i>zhào </i>詔 "edict" is there as a sign of respect for the Emperor, although there was also a taboo against writing the name of the reigning emperor. Note that the Emperor paid for the translations, he paid for the upkeep of the monks involved, and he paid for the monasteries the monks lived in. Getting his approval was necessary because it came with the <i>financial </i>backing of the Chinese Imperium. The formal role of the state in supporting Buddhism meant that even emperors hostile to Buddhism, such as Tàizōng 太宗 (r. 626–649 CE) and Gāozōng 高宗 (r. 649–683 CE) were constrained to continue state support for the religion.</p>
<p>The attribution on the Fangshan Stele (661 CE), which predates the completion of T 220 by a few years, follows the same pattern. The attribution of the canonical <i>Xīn jīng</i> is different in the Taishō based. The main text says:
</p><blockquote><p><i>Táng sānzàng fǎshī xuán zàng yì</i> 唐三藏法師玄奘譯<br />
Tripiṭaka Dharma-master Xuanzang translated</p></blockquote>
<p>And a variant reads:</p>
<blockquote><p><i>Táng sānzàng fǎshī Xuánzàng fèng zhào</i> 唐三藏法師玄奘奉詔<br />
“Tripiṭaka Dharma-master Xuanzang, imperial authorisation.”</p></blockquote><p>The variant is obviously a simply scribal error where a copyist has omitted the expected character 詔. The main text is more interesting because <i>yì </i>譯 on it's own does mean "translation" (as well as translator, and "to translate" in all conjugations), but as Nattier says, it was also used for redactions of existing translations. And mention of imperial sponsorship is missing here. I don't know why. </p><p>In any case, the attribution has to be taken with a grain of salt, because we have shown that the Chinese <i>Heart Sutra </i>is not a translation from Sanskrit, it was composed in Chinese, using passages from T 223 and T 901. </p><p>Fukui's comment that "Nattier must show that this inscription is a forgery. If she cannot do so, her entire argument becomes unreasonable" is incoherent. Between us, Kotyk and I have shown that the <i>Heart Sutra </i>was composed ca 654-656 CE. To see an inscription of it in 672 is not some big reveal. The existence of the Beilin stele and the even older Fangshan stele simply tell us that the text must have existed by then and be attributed to Xuanzang by Chinese Buddhists. The attributions of Chinese Buddhist texts are still being checked and are often disproved, even now. </p><br /><blockquote><span style="font-family: arial;">B. Nattier's division of the Heart Sūtra differs from that of traditional Buddhist scholarship. There is no authority for her division, and it cannot be accepted.</span></blockquote><p>Again my response is, so what? As Nattier says, she divides the text this way for methodological reasons. Nattier acknowledges that she uses the term "core" before defining it, but the definition is there for anyone who kept reading. Moreover, her choice of "core" to label the core passage doesn't have the value laden interpretation in Nattier's mind that it appears to have in Fukui's. It's just <i>in the middle</i>.</p><p>Points B, C, D & E are variations on the theme "Nattier can't divide the text up that way because it is not traditional" and "Fukui valorises the mantra over the body of the text so Nattier is wrong about everything." In my view, Nattier is too generous in her discussion of these trivial complaints. I will skip over them.</p><br />
<blockquote style="font-family: arial;">F. The interpretation that "the mantra was added later to the core passage" is an error of the same kind. This kind of thinking is probably due to the interpretation that the core (<i>kakushin</i>) or essence (<i>honshitu</i>) of the sūtra is in the idea of emptiness. But this is an interpretation that was established only during the Ming dynasty, around the fifteenth century. Before that, the essence of the Heart Sūtra was correctly (<i>tadashiku</i>) [sic!] seen as ni the mantra at the end.</blockquote>
<p>Fukui seeks to understand the text primarily as a mantra, as befits his role as a senior cleric in a Tendai temple. As we have seen however, Fukui was comprehensively wrong about this: there <i>is</i> no mantra, Prajñāpāramitā is superlative <i>vidyā, </i>and the incantation in the text is a <i>dhāraṇī</i>. </p>
<p>Moreover, we can say with some confidence that the <i>dhāraṇī </i>was copied from <i>Tuóluóní jí jīng </i> «陀羅尼集經» (T 901), translated by Atikūṭa ca. 654 CE. </p><p>The transliteration of <i>dhāraṇī </i>using Chinese characters was a very hit and miss affair. There was some crossover where a <i>dhāraṇī </i>used Buddhist technical terms, however, no standards were ever adopted and each translator adopted a different, not always consistent, approach. As such the source text is often obscured and cannot be reconstructed with any confidence, even using Middle Chinese phonology. </p><p>Thus we can say that if a <i>dhāraṇī </i>in a Chinese source is identical to another source then they are likely the same <i>dhāraṇī </i>transcribed by the same translator. Either one copied the other, or both copied a third source. In the case of the <i>Heart Sutra dhāraṇī, </i>we find exactly the same <i>dhāraṇī </i>in the <i>Tuóluóní jí jīng </i>«陀羅尼集經». Similar dhāraṇī have been noted, but the dhāraṇī in the Heart Sutra is identical to the one in <i>Tuóluóní jí jīng</i> «陀羅尼集經». If we stipulate that the <i>Heart Sutra</i> is a text largely composed of copied passages, then it makes sense to think that the <i>dhāraṇī</i> was copied as well. And given that the <i>dhāraṇī </i>in the <i>Tuóluóní jí jīng</i> is identical to the one in the <i>Heart Sutra</i>, we can infer than the <i>Heart Sutra </i>author copied it from there. <br /><br />Note that inference also gives us a fixed date, 654 CE, before which the Heart Sutra cannot have existed because the <i>Tuóluóní jí jīng </i> «陀羅尼集經» was first translated into Chinese in that year, by Atikūṭa.</p><br />
<blockquote style="font-family: arial;">G. Taking as her basis the fact that sources documenting the existence of the Sanskrit <i>Heart Sūtra</i> in India prior to the eighth century are lacking, while there are many references to the Chinese <i>Heart Sūtra</i> prior to the eighth century, Nattier makes this a major reason for the argument that the Sanskrit text is a back-translation (<i>han'yaku</i>) from the Chinese. But how many sūtras are there for which we have evidence of their existence in India propor to the eighth century?</blockquote>
<p>Nattier is quite polite here, given that this assertion is an outrageous falsehood. This is a classical example of the <i>straw man fallacy</i>. As she patiently explains, Nattier (1992) <i>does not make this argument from absence</i>. The lack of evidence from India is circumstantial, not probative. Nattier knows, full well, that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. </p><p>The argument that the <i>Heart Sutra</i> is a back-translation is, in contrast to Fukui's blatantly false assertion, supported by numerous examples of the Sanskrit <i>Heart Sutra</i> paraphrasing the text of the <i>Large Sutra</i> and several of these paraphrases being blatantly non-idiomatic. I now often cite the occurrence of <i>avidyākṣaya</i> in the Sanskrit <i>Heart Sutra</i> as an illustrative example. Every other known Buddhist text refers to "cessation of ignorance" in the <i>nidānas</i> as <i>avidyānirodha</i> (<i>nirodha </i>is also the word used in Pāḷi and Gāndhārī texts). <i>Avidyākṣaya </i>can be explained as a plausible, but non-idiomatic, translation of <i>wúmíng jǐn</i> 無明盡. If it occured on its own, we might simply scratch our heads at this oddity (not that academics ever have). However, there is a <i>pattern </i>of this type of unexpected deviation from Buddhist norms across the whole of the Sanskrit <i>Heart Sutra</i>. I think Nattier (1992) establishes this beyond a reasonable doubt, but Huifeng (2014) and I have made this as certain as anything ever is in our field. </p><p>Fukui's last comment is another example of the argument from popularity fallacy. </p><br />
<blockquote style="font-family: arial;">H. Isn't it a contradiction to argue that the mantra is "a perfectly good Sanskrit mantra... a genuine Sanskrit mantra" while at the same time saying the grammar of the passage concerning the six senses is not right, thus having both good and bad grammar in one and the same text? Moreover, the conclusion of studies up to now is not that the mantra is "a flawless (<i>kanpeki</i>) Sanskrit mantra" as she says. And the fact that it is not her "own ear" to which the grammar of the passage on the six senses sounds wrong makes it lose its persuasiveness. </blockquote>
<p>Let me state right away, that <i>there is no grammar </i>in the "mantra" [not a mantra], it's just a list of words in the nominative singular case (of a Prakrit language). Of course, there is no mantra either, which does not help Fukui's case. </p>
<p>Nattier notes that this is an odd criticism. Fukui has once again misunderstood Nattier's idiom (which is ironic). The phrase "perfectly good" in idiomatic English means "adequate" rather than "flawless" as Fukui seems to think. When Nattier says that the mantra is "perfectly good Sanskrit" she doesn't mean it is flawless, she means it is <i>not gibberish </i>(unlike, say, some of Conze's Sanskrit sentences). </p>
<p>I'm not going to dwell on Nattier's response because I've already shown that Fukui's views on the mantra are wholly mistaken, or at least, the kind of idiosyncratic sectarian reading of the <i>Heart Sutra</i> we would expect from a senior Tendai priest in the last century. </p>
<p>There is no requirement that a Sanskrit text be well formed across the board. Bad grammar occurs in the ancient world too, and it often occurs in patch. On the other hand Sanskrit <i>Heart Sutra</i> is chock full of grammatical mistakes, both ancient and modern. I have published many articles on this topic. If I can see those mistakes, anyone can. </p>
<p>The last comment refers to Nattier again crediting one of her colleagues, Richard Salomon (a widely acknowledged expert in Sanskrit and Prakrit inscriptions) with providing helpful information (see 1992: 214, n.57). She does this a lot in Nattier (1992). </p>
<p>As it happens another independent like me (I don't know his name) recently wrote to Paul Harrison about a related matter, and he noticed a counter-example to one of our examples (out of 22 examples in Attwood 2022). A compound like <i>na cakṣuḥ-śrotra-ghrāṇa-jihvā-kāya-manāṃsi </i>is rare, but an example of it has been found in the <i>Large Sutra</i>. </p><p>The contrast here is interesting. Harrison's interlocutor gives us a model for how one refutes an argument: one gives evidence that contradicts the conclusion. I took up and asserted the idea that compounds like <i>cakṣuḥ-śrotra-ghrāṇa-jihvā-kāya-manāṃsi</i> don't occur in Prajñāpāramitā when they are being negated; the texts prefer to negate each term individually: <i>na cakṣuḥ na śrotra</i>, etc. I had a good pole around the Large Sutra in Sanskrit to see if I could find any counter-examples and could not. A single counter-example weakens our claim. We may still, I think, generalise that this syntax is the most common way of saying it, but we were wrong about this distinction being an absolute. If our argument had been based on this fact alone, we would have been refuted at this point. But this particular argument is incidental and we have published a mountain of much better evidence that Fukui appears to ignore in favour of lesser arguments, which get worse. </p><p><br /></p>
<blockquote style="font-family: arial;">I. At first glance Nattier's work abounds in persuasiveness and appears logical. But in fact, in spite of the small quantity of evidence, she presses forth full of self-confidence with decisive-sounding words, thus creating the "optical illusion" of an established theory.</blockquote>
<p>Again, Nattier is very patient here given the outrageous nature of this <i>ad hominem </i>fallacy. </p><p>As she explains, Fukui has ignored the strongest evidence and his objections to the weaker evidence only make sense if he is not even thinking about the facts that he has ignored. The evidence has to be taken <i>as a whole</i>. Nattier notes that Fukui doesn't even acknowledge the oddities in the Sanskrit text let alone provide an alternative explanation.</p><br />
<blockquote style="font-family: arial;">J. Insisting that the Sanskrit <i>Heart Sūtra</i> is a back-translation from the Chinese, her argument gradually becomes more and more unreasonable. For example, she argues that there is no Sanskrit word in the <i>Heart Sūtra</i> corresponding to the Chinese <i>shén</i> 神 of <i>shén zhòu </i>神咒; but there are many examples of "mantra" being translated into Chinese as shén zhòu 神咒. It is far from unreasonable to simply see <i>shén zhòu</i> 神咒 as a translation from Sanskrit into Chinese. What has she done is to put the argument first and the evidence second.</blockquote>
<p>Note that the argument in I and J is about how <i>reasonable </i>the Chinese origins thesis is, not how accurate or true it is; nor about the explanatory power of the thesis. The truth can sometimes seem <i>unreasonable</i> to religieux because their religious beliefs don't conform to the truth, they conform to the religious orthodoxy.</p>
<p>Nattier again demurs: she acknowledges that that her choice of this example is one of the weakest and she might leave it out if writing the article in 1995. But the method of cherry picking a weak example and saying on the basis of any ambiguity that it destroys the whole argument is example of the <i>nut picking fallacy</i>. As Nattier says, "If Fukui wishes to argue against the back-translation hypothesis, he must confront the evidence <i>as a whole</i>, not simply suggest that a particular word can be viewed better the other way around" (10. Emphasis added). </p>
<p>However, here Fukui is still fixated on the mantra as the most important part of the text (to him at least). And we know that he is simply wrong about this because the incantation at the end of the <i>Heart Sutra </i>is <i>not a mantra</i>.</p>
<p>It is true, however, that some scholars do read <i>zhòu </i>呪 as <i>mantra</i>. A good example of this can be found in Heng-ching and Lusthaus's (2006) translation of Kuījī's <i>Heart Sutra </i>commentary (T 1710). They routinely translate <i>zhòu </i>呪 as <i>mantra </i>even though it must be considered anachronistic for the Yogācāra scholar. I can substitute <i>dhāraṇī </i>in their translation in every case with no loss of sense. Even if I had not shown that the <i>gate gate</i> incantation <i>is a dhāraṇī</i>, there is no principial reason to translate <i>zhòu </i>呪 as meaning "mantra" in a non-tantric context, such as the <i>Heart Sutra</i>. </p><br />
<blockquote style="font-family: arial;">K. In order to make her argument complete, there are additional issues that she would have to discuss. For example:
<blockquote style="font-family: arial;">(a) a comparison of the differences between old-translation (kyūyaku) and new-translations (<i>shin'yaku</i>) terminology, e.g. vs Guānzìzài 觀自在 [two different Chinese translations of the name of the bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara].<br />
(b) the fact that there is no evidence or argument in the Chinese historical materials (e.g. scripture catalogues) that would support the idea that the Heart Sutra is an apocryphal text (<i>gikyō </i>偽経). If she wants to claim that is it apocryphal, she must explain where there is no proof of this in the text evidence.</blockquote>
In short, hers is an inferential argument based on logic, and as such it lacks persuasiveness.</blockquote>
<p>As Nattier notes, she does in fact discuss this issue raised in (a) citing pages 187, 190, and notes 82 and 84. And the second point is just a reiteration of complaint A, already dealt with in detail above. As Nattier (p. 11) says, "... the last point is genuinely worrisome: would Fukui prefer an illogical analysis?" As a religious, sure, he probably would as long as it left his worldview and his ecclesiastical status intact.</p><p><br /></p>
<blockquote style="font-family: arial;">L. Can reasoning based on such an extremely small body of evidence—that is, only on a comparison of the Sanskrit Heart Sutra, the Sanskrit Large Sutra, and the Chinese Large Sutra—really allow one to establish the theory that the Chinese Heart Sūtra is an apocryphon?</blockquote><p></p>
<p>Nattier answers, "of course not". But here, I think she means to allow for the uncertainty that never goes away in dealing with ancient history. And for the Popperian doctrine that no theory can be proven, because of the black swan effect; theories can only be refuted. At any time, some evidence may crop up that refutes our arguments: I've even spelled out <a href="http://jayarava.blogspot.com/2022/12/a-open-letter-to-buddhist-studies.html">what kind of evidence</a> would be required to refute our arguments. But Fukui does not have any such evidence. What he has is a series of trivial arguments that make no impact at all on Nattier's conclusion that the <i>Heart Sutra</i> was composed in Chinese. </p>
<p>In fact, <i>our</i> thesis does rest almost entirely on this body of literature. To call it "extremely small", however, when it takes up several volumes of the <i>Taishō Tripiṭaka</i>, is a bit rich. </p>
<p>The situation is a little more clear, some thirty years after Nattier first made her observations, now that we have a decent facsimile edition of the Gilgit manuscript and Kimura's edition of the Nepalese <i>Large Sutra</i>, both of which greatly improve on sources available to Nattier and Fukui in the 1990s. Huifeng and I have also made use of the Sanskrit <i>Aṣṭasāhasrikā</i>, and the<i> </i>Chinese <i>Large Sutra</i> translations by Dharmarakṣa, Mokṣa, and Xuanzang. Some of my articles also look at phrases in the broader Prajñāpāramitā literature as well. And having extended the work, Huifeng and I came to same conclusion as Nattier: the <i>Heart Sutra </i>could <i>only </i>have been composed in Chinese. </p>
<p>Right at the end, Nattier sets out the challenge to her detractors (which is very similar to <a href="http://jayarava.blogspot.com/2022/12/a-open-letter-to-buddhist-studies.html">my own challenge</a>):</p>
<blockquote>In the meantime, though, the data I have collected in my article—whether or not the reader wishes to accept the back-translation theory—must now be confronted <i>in toto</i> by those who wish to affirm or deny the sutras Indian origins. I have suggested one flowchart to diagram the relationship between the <i>Heart Sūtra</i> and the <i>Large Sūtra </i>in their Chinese and Indian versions; those who are not happy with the results are welcome to try their hand at coming up with another. </blockquote>
<blockquote>The textual evidence—especially the virtually word-for-word identity between the core passage of the Chinese <i>Heart Sūtra</i> and its parallel in the <i>Large Sūtra </i>of Kumārajīva, in contrast to the divergence between their Indian counterparts—is anomalous as it stands, and requires that we attempt an explanation. If another scholar finds a better way to account for the totality of this evidence, I will be the first to applaud her success </blockquote>
<p>I agree with every word of this. </p><p><br /></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><b>Heart Sutra Politics?</b></p>
<p>Nattier (1992) was published in the leading English language journal for Buddhist Studies: <i>The Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies </i>(JIABS) and as such it was scrutinised by the editorial board and by at least two anonymous reviewers from the field. Contra Fukui and his trivial objections, the article is well argued, provides ample evidence, follows a clear and simple method (that anyone can understand), and does arrive at conclusions logically. If Fukui were the voice of reason, he'd acknowledge this. </p><p>Fukui is not a voice of reason, he appears to be playing his ecclesiastical role as spokesman for his Tendai sect. Instead of reasoned argumentation, he argues from the popularity fallacy, from the nut picking fallacy, from the straw man fallacy, from the <i>ad hominem </i>fallacy, and from general confirmation bias. His thesis about the emphasis shifting from "mantra" [not a mantra] to emptiness only in the 15th century is contradicted by numerous facts, not least of which are the late-seventh century commentaries by Kuījī and Woncheuk, which don't treat the incantation as a mantra, and which don't treat the text as being about mantra. </p>
<p>Fukui's arguments, though wholly fallacious, found fertile ground amongst his peers who sought to extend the argument against Nattier in similarly ways. I don't want to say that they are all being disingenuous, since they appear to be sincere. But it is the sincerity of religieux who are aggrieved to discover that their unicorn has been exposed as a donkey onto which someone has fixed a narwhal tusk. Which leads to them sincerely shooting the messenger in the hope of suppressing the news. </p>
<p>I've read and reviewed a number of these articles (see <i>selected blog posts </i>below) including now two published critiques in 2020 and 2022. The articles that I've seen all seem to be quite poorly written and to fail in their stated objective of refuting Nattier. The anecdotal accounts I hear about the unimpeachable status of men like Fukui and his colleagues helps to make sense of this.</p>
<p>We see many scholars who specialise in some other field, write one article on the <i>Heart Sutra</i> and never return to it (Nattier and Huifeng included). Even highly regarded scholars seem to lose their objectivity when they write about this text. Critical thinking goes out the window, and we see a series of theological arguments and apologetics for sectarian Buddhist doctrines. </p>
<p>Nattier's magnificent, era-defining article was thus sabotaged by highly motivated theologians who were able to leverage their exaggerated social status as hierarchs and professors, as well as the intense sexism and, dare I say it, racial bias* of Japanese culture to mobilise a wall of rejection in Japan. And in the face of this, Nattier's European colleagues sat in stony silence and let it happen<i>. </i>Thirty years have passed with little change in academia; progress has come from outside of the ivory towers, from Huifeng (at the time a Buddhist monk in the Fo Guang Shan movement) and I. </p>
<blockquote style="font-size: x-small;">* To be fair I think religious apologetics, sexism, and racial bias are rife in European Buddhist Studies as well. I've written about this. Here, I am specifically trying to understand the rejection of Chinese origins <i>by Japanese academics </i> led by Fukui. I think these generalisations are fair.</blockquote>
<p></p><p>I'm glad Nattier finally decided to release this unpublished essay to the public. It's good that she now feels able to take the risk of pointing out how weak the arguments against her were back then (and now). As the only scholar actively exploring and writing about this today, I take heart. [Thanks, Jan]. </p><p>The facts as I understand the are like this. The <i>Heart Sutra</i> was composed in Chinese, in the mid seventh century, from passages copied from T 223 and a <i>dhāraṇī </i>from T 901. It was probably composed by Xuanzang. It was modelled on a <i>chāo jīng </i>抄經 "digest text" and was acknowledged by Kuījī and Woncheuk to be a <i>bié shēng </i>別生 "separately produced" text rather than a sutra. The Sanskrit text is a back-translation from Chinese and, as far as I know, none of us thinks Xuanzang was responsible for this. The myth of the <i>Heart Sutra</i> emerged in various texts in the decades following Xuanzang's death in 663 CE. </p><p>How believers <i>feel </i>about these facts is a separate issue and that would seem to be <i>their</i> problem, not mine or scholars generally. No one expects a religious believer to have an easy time dealing with reality, especially when they claim to have an exclusive understanding of "the nature of reality" that is denied the rest of us. Ironically, Buddhists who religiously assert that the nature of reality is "everything changes" are the last people to embrace change if it involves their belief system. </p>
<p style="text-align: center;">~~oOo~~</p><br />
<p style="text-align: center;"><b>Bibliography</b></p>
<p><i><b>Selected Blog posts and Unpublished Essays</b></i></p>
<p class="hang">"Japanese Reception of the Chinese Origins Thesis." (<a href="http://jayarava.blogspot.com/2017/11/japanese-reception-of-chinese-origins.html">24 November 2017</a>). A critique of Ishii Kōsei (2015). </p>
<p class="hang">"Review of Ji Yun's 'Is the Heart Sutra an Apocryphal Text? A Re-examination'." (<a href="http://jayarava.blogspot.com/2018/06/review-of-ji-yuns-is-heart-sutra.html">01 June 2018</a>). Ji argues for Chinese origins, but against the term "apocryphon". His article is problematic in many ways.</p>
<p class="hang">"Another Failed Attempt to Refute the Chinese Origins Thesis." (<a href="http://jayarava.blogspot.com/2019/09/another-failed-attempt-to-refute.html">13 September 2019</a>). A critique Harada (2002) based on an English language summary in the Wikipedia "talk" pages. </p>
<p class="hang">"The Heart Sutra Was Not Composed in Sanskrit - Response to Harimoto." (2021. <a href="https://www.academia.edu/48794912/The_Heart_Sutra_Was_Not_Composed_in_Sanskrit_response_to_Harimoto">academia.org</a>). </p>
<p class="hang">"Just How Crazy is the Heart Sutra?" (23 Sept 2022). A critique of Karl Brunnhölzl’s absurdist article “The Heart Sutra Will Change You Forever” in the Buddhist magazine <i>Lion’s Roar </i>(<a href="http://jayarava.blogspot.com/2022/09/just-how-crazy-is-heart-sutra.html">September 29, 2017</a>). </p><div>"An Open Letter to Buddhist Studies Academics." (<a href="http://jayarava.blogspot.com/2022/12/a-open-letter-to-buddhist-studies.html">23 December 2022</a>). A request for fair treatment by academics.</div><div><br /></div>
<p style="text-align: left;"><b>Published Works Cited</b></p>
<p class="hang">Attwood, J. (2017). "Epithets of the Mantra in the Heart Sutra." <i>Journal of the Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies</i>,12, 26–57. http://jocbs.org/index.php/jocbs/article/view/155</p>
<p class="hang">———. (2020). "The History of the Heart Sutra as a Palimpsest." <i>Pacific World</i>, Series 4, no.1, 155-182. https://pwj.shin-ibs.edu/2020/6934</p>
<p class="hang">———. (2020). "Studying The Heart Sutra: Basic Sources And Methods (A Response To Ng And Ānando)." <i>Buddhist Studies Review</i>, 37 (1-2), 199–217. http://www.doi.org/10.1558/bsrv.41982</p>
<p class="hang">———. (2022). "The Heart Sutra Revisited." [Review article]. <i>Buddhist Studies Review</i>. 39(2): 229-254. [Critique of five articles on the <i>Heart Sutra</i> appearing in <i>Acta Asiatica</i> 121 and purporting to represent the "frontier" of <i>Heart Sutra</i> research]</p>
<p class="hang">Fukui, Fumimasa. (1994) ‘Hannaya shingyō no kenkyūshi
- genkon no mondaiten.’ <i>Bukkyōgaku</i> 36: 79-99.</p>
<p class="hang">Harada, Waso 原田和宗 (2002). 梵文『小本・般若心経』和訳 [An Annotated Translation of The Prajñāpāramitāhṛdaya] (in Japanese). <i>Association of Esoteric Buddhist Studies</i>. pp. L17–L62.</p><p class="hang">Heng-Ching, Shih & Lusthaus, Dan. (2006) <i>A Comprehensive Commentary on the Heart Sutra (Prajnaparamita-hyrdaya-sutra)</i>. Numata Center for Buddhist Translation & Research.</p>
<p class="hang">Ishii, Kōsei. (2015). “Issues Surrounding the Heart Sutra: Doubts Concerning Jan Nattier’s Theory of a Composition by Xuánzàng.” [Translated 2017 by Jeffrey Kotyk]. Journal of Indian and Buddhist Studies (Indogaku Bukkyogaku Kenkyu) 64 (1): 499-492.</p>
<p class="hang">Nattier, Jan. 1992. "The Heart Sūtra : a Chinese apocryphal text?" <i>Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies</i> 15 (2): 153-223.</p>
<p class="hang">———. (1995). "Response to Fukui Fumimasa on the Heart Sutra 1995." [Unpublished Essay] https://www.academia.edu/99934922/Response_to_Fukui_Fumimasa_on_the_Heart_Sutra_1995</p>
<p class="hang">Tanahashi, Kazuaki. (2014). <i>The Heart Sutra: A Comprehensive Guide to the Classic of Mahayana Buddhism</i>. Shambala. </p>
</div></div>Jayaravahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13783922534271559030noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19327107.post-61315987104591039452023-03-24T13:40:00.170+00:002023-03-24T13:40:00.166+00:00The Emptiness of Etymology<div style="text-align: justify;"><p>It is <i>de rigueur </i>to begin an essay about a Buddhist technical term with an etymology: a discourse on the "true" or "original" (<i>etymos</i>) meaning of the word by referring to historical usage. I have often done this myself because I learned to write academic essays by reading hundreds of them and it's a very common practice. Constructing etymologies is fascinating and fun, it's just that this scholastic approach is alien to most language users. One could be completely ignorant of historical linguistics and still be fluent in a language. As most children are, for example. </p>
<p>It makes little sense to offer an etymology up front as part of <i>defining </i>a term since no language-user ever defined words that way. Nor does etymology necessarily tell us anything at all about how words are <i>used </i>at any given time (even "originally"). Also note that the first recorded use is necessarily a reference to written language which is likely a poor reflection of how a language was spoken. Moreover, in Buddhism Studies our texts are religious texts composed by religieux for religieux and they are full of words used as religious jargon. Buddhist jargon was often created in defiance of etymology: e.g. <i>vedanā </i>or <i>dhāraṇī.</i></p>
<p>This begs the question: How <i>do we define words? </i>And, in the light of the answer to this, how should we <i>present </i>the meaning of words when writing about them? </p><p>As Wittgenstein noted: <br /></p><p></p>
<blockquote>“For a large class of cases of the employment of the word ‘meaning’—though not for all—this word can be explained in this way: the meaning of a word is its use in the language” (<i>Philosophical Investigations</i> 43). </blockquote>
<p></p><p>This is sometimes boiled down to the rule of thumb: <i>meaning is use</i>. The meaning a word conveys doesn't come from the word itself, it comes from how we use the word in language (see also the <a href="https://www.thoughtco.com/humpty-dumpty-philosopher-of-language-2670315">Humpty Dumpty theory of language</a>). The general term for this approach to speech is <i>pragmatics</i>. Apart from Wittgenstein, this approach is also particularly associated with two philosophers of language: John L. Austin (1911-1960) and (his student and collaborator) John Searle (1932 -).* In a pragmatic framework we often don't ask what a word <i>means</i>, we ask what an utterance (or locution) was intended to <i>do </i>(illocution) and what it actually did (perlocution). The focus is less on words, and more on <i>sentences</i>. </p>
<blockquote style="font-size: x-small;">* NB. Searle (now a nonagenarian) was a fine philosopher and hugely influential in thinking about language, mind, society, artificial intelligence, and much more. He is one of the few philosophers I've <i>enjoyed </i>reading and has been a big influence on me. However, in 2017 a series of allegations of sexual harassment and sexual assault emerged. Searle's emeritus professor status was revoked by UC Berkeley although, far as I can tell, he has not been charged with or convicted of a crime. Still, his legacy is severely tarnished by these allegations.</blockquote><p></p>
<p>Philologers are concerned primarily with words in written language. For all that writing has a way of formalising language, in fact as we start to deal directly with ancient manuscripts we soon discover that no two of them are identical. And this leaves us with the awkward task of reconciling multiple competing versions of the text. The philologist has to assess which of the plurality of possible readings is the most plausible one. But the assessment relies heavily on the knowledge and experience of the editor and thus often involves subjectivity. </p>
<p>As my readers will know from my work on the <i>Heart Sutra</i>, editors sometimes make mistakes or <i>deliberately mislead us </i>about texts. Edward Conze is an obvious example of what can go wrong: his editions are full of mistakes (in Sanskrit grammar and syntax) and misreadings that made his idiosyncratic theory of Prajñāpāramitā more plausible. I still can't decide if he knew what he was doing or not. I suspect he did. </p>
<p>Authors may also allow different versions of their works to circulate, leaving philologists to argue over which is better. There are two editions of Kant's <i>Critique of Pure Reason</i> and they are substantially different. Clearly the author preferred the second reading but scholars sometimes think he said it better the first time around. We are not bound to take author's view of what the text says and remakes are notoriously inferior. Moreover, scribes make mistakes and these can be incorporated into the text, as has happened to the Tibetan <i>Heart Sutra</i> text.</p>
<p>In any case, even when we have a settled and reliable text, we may still encounter unfamiliar words quite often. And these present a problem, especially with an oral text, no reference books, and the spoken language has drifted for a millennia, which was the situation faced by <i>Ṛgveda </i>scholars in the ancient world.</p><p><br /></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><b>Unfamiliar Words in the Ancient World</b></p><p>Many people will know that modern linguistics was kickstarted when European intellectuals encountered the <i>Aṣṭādyāyī</i>, a complete descriptive grammar of Vedic produced by Pāṇini ca 400 BCE. Pāṇini was an advocate of the analytical (<i>vyākaraṇa</i>) approach to what words mean, which involves analysis of the construction of words and identifying verbal roots as the principal bearer of meaning. </p><p>Alongside this was a less well known tradition of linguistic analysis known as <i>nirvācaṇa or </i>"semantic analysis". This approach is associated with the figure of Yāska and is contained in his work the <i>Nirukta, </i>which is a commentary on a list of rare and unusual words in a text called the <i>Nighaṇṭu</i>. My account of the <i>Nirukta</i> is largely based on Eivind Kahrs (1998) and some articles by Paolo Visigalli (2017) and Johannes Bronkhorst (1981, 2001).</p>
<p>For Yāska, as for Pāṇini, the name of a things derive from its activities. Kahrs points out that proposition is conceptually more fundamental that deriving nouns from verbs. This is why explaining a noun by referencing a verb is seen as meaningful. Yāska asks "Why is dawn (<i>uṣā</i>) so called?" And answers: <i>uṣā ucchati </i>"Dawn dawns"; That is, "dawn is called 'dawn' (<i>uṣā</i>) because she carries out the action of dawning (<i>ucchati</i>)." Here the verb <i>ucchati</i> explains the noun <i>uṣā </i>by linking it to an action. (See also my essay on <a href="http://jayarava.blogspot.com/2022/12/does-buddhism-provide-good-explanations.html">what explanation is a</a>nd what makes for a good explanation)</p>
<p>The <i>Nirukta </i>proposes three levels of analysis. Durga's commentary on the <i>Nirukta </i>refers to these as the cases of <i>pratyakṣavṛtti </i>"evident formation", <i>parokṣavṛtti </i>"obscured formation", and <i>atiparokṣavṛtti </i>"opaque formation" (c.f. Kahrs 1998: 35-39; Visigalli 2017: 1148).</p><p><br /></p>
<p><b><i>Evident Formations</i></b></p>
<p>Firstly, there are obvious examples where grammatical analysis (<i>vyākaraṇa</i>) gives us all the information we need. For example, the common noun <i>dharma</i> is regularly derived from the root √<i>dhṛ </i>"hold" by adding the primary suffix <i>-ma</i> to the root in its <i>guṇa </i>grade (i.e. <i>dhar</i>). If you know the morphology and you can identify the root, then you can parse the unfamiliar word. </p>
<p>Another good example for Buddhists might be the word <i>buddhi</i>. This is not one of our technical terms so might not be familiar. But it looks a lot like <i>buddha</i>, the past participle of √<i>budh </i>"aware, awake" with the suffix -<i>ta</i> and a series of entirely regular sound changes. Similarly, I can parse <i>buddhi </i>as √<i>budh </i>with the action noun suffix -<i>ti</i> and guess that the resulting word means something like "awareness, waking". Actual usage provides the context that allows us to refine this guess to something appropriate to the specific occurrence. </p><p><br /></p>
<p><b><i>Obscured Formations</i></b></p>
<p>Secondly, some words are tricky because they are irregular formations. Consider the Pāli word <i>vedagū </i>(see also <a href="Some Notes on -gū in Vedagū">Some Notes on -<i>gū </i>in <i>Vedagū</i></a>). The <i>veda </i>part is easy and tractable with a standard <i>vyākaraṇa </i>approach. Veda is from the causative stem of the root √<i>vid </i>"to know". </p><p>On the other hand, <i>gū </i>is not a word in Pāḷi and it's not a word in Sanskrit. Nor is it obviously derived from a known word (verb or otherwise) in the Indo-European language family. On the other hand it does not appear to be a loan word either. And yet we have not only <i>vedagū </i>but a bunch of other words ending in <i>-gū </i>like <i>lokantagū </i>(an epithet of the Buddha). When we look at how the word is <i>used</i> it becomes apparent that -<i>gū</i> must be related to words meaning "go" and thus can be explained as some kind of alteration of √<i>gam</i> or √<i>gā</i> which is closely related. Moreover we can see that a few other words that ended in -<i>ā </i>got changed to -<i>ū</i>, like <i>kataññū</i> or <i>viññū. </i>With some effort, then, we can see that <i>vedagū </i>means much the same thing as *<i>vedagā</i> or <i>vedagata</i>, i.e.<i> </i>"in a state of knowing",<i> </i>"knowledgeable". Still, the form -<i>gū </i>cannot be arrived at by an allowed phonetic changes applied to a known form or root. Therefore -<i>gū</i> cannot be explained using <i>vyākaraṇa</i>. I have argued that <i>gū</i> is an example of an <i><a href="https://www.academia.edu/65460993/Some_Notes_on_g%C5%AB_in_Vedag%C5%AB">analogical change</a> </i>in Pāli (though the JPTS was underwhelmed by my argument).</p><p><br /></p>
<p><b><i>Opaque Formations</i></b></p>
<p>Thirdly, and most importantly for Yāska, there are very obscure examples which defy logical grammatical analysis entirely. It seems that there were a <i>large </i>number of unique words (<i>hapax legomena</i>) in the <i>Ṛgveda </i>whose meaning was already obscure by the time Yāksa wrote his treatise. Yāska was focussed on this class of words that didn't yield to standard linguistic analysis of the Pāṇinian <i>vyākaraṇa </i>tradition. Presumably the hundreds of loanwords from Dravidian and Muṇḍa languages in <i>Ṛgveda</i> (c.f. Witzel 1999) complicated this process since they are never traceable to a Vedic verbal root.</p>
<p>Take the example of <i>śraddhā</i> "faith". <i>Vyākaraṇā</i> suggests a root √<i>śrad </i>but this is unknown in Sanskrit. We can see from context that the word is understood as referring to the heart but the standard word for this is <i>hṛd</i>. The only other related word is <i>śrāddha </i>"death rite". There are no Sanskrit verbal forms related to <i>śrad </i>or <i>hṛd</i>. So we can't easily define <i>śraddhā</i> in terms of an action. What tends to happen however, is that scholars note that <i>dhā </i>appears to relate to the root √<i>dha</i> "to place" and the definition often includes a note about faith being "placing the heart".</p>
<p>Thus, Yāska was not idly speculating about the philosophy of language, his practical task was to try to elucidate the meaning of unfamiliar words in the archaic and partially obscure language of the <i>Ṛgveda</i>. Something like ten centuries separate the composition of the verses of the <i>Ṛgveda </i>and Yāska. Spoken language in daily use changes a lot in that time, and in this case enough so that intelligibility began to break down. And full intelligibility has never been restored since even modern scholars are still puzzled by some of the unique words in the <i>Ṛigveda</i>. </p>
<p>Yāska's approach to dealing with these intractable problems was a form of phonetic analysis that attributed meaning to sounds. </p><p><br /></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><b>The Sound Alike Principle, or Sound Symbolism</b></p>
<p>There is a curious fact about language that is not accepted by mainstream linguists but which was the subject of a PhD (2001) and a popular book (1999) by Margaret Magnus. If you take all the simple* words that begin with the same sound and cluster them by (broad) meaning, one will find different patterns for different sounds. </p>
<blockquote><span style="font-size: x-small;">* here I use "simple" for Magnus's term <i>monomorphemic</i>: words that do not rely on prefixes or suffixes for their meaning. So for example "gnosis" is monomorphemic but "cognition" is not, since it involves the Latin suffix <i>com-.</i></span></blockquote>
<p>Describing the range of semantic fields covered by English words beginning with the /b/ sound, Magnus (1999: 52) says in her book:</p>
<blockquote>The essence of /b/ concerns two things of which one is the lesser. /b/ identifies with this lesser element, the baddie, the back side. /b/ is not found in the 'ifs' or 'ands'. /b/ is found in the 'buts', those things which are secondary and adjoined, 'beside the point', 'by the way'.</blockquote>
<blockquote>/b/ is also high pressure within and low pressure without, like a bubble on the surface of the sea waiting to burst. English perceives this in various ways: as a birth, a death, a barrier, a transgression. Whatever the interpretation, /b/ conveys an explosive, large, and uproarious experience to the world. It blocks up openings or processes until the pressure is to great, and then it blows up. BAM! It disperses in all directions and cares not a whit where it lands.</blockquote>
<p>Another, independent, manifestation of this phenomenon can be found in the little book <i>Euphonics</i> by John Michell (1998: 2)</p>
<blockquote>An image evoked by the B sound is of balloons blown up near to bursting. They are broad, bluff, burly, obese, bulging, bulbous, burgeoning, billowing, blooming, blubbery blimps. These bouncing orbs attract adjectives of bounty: blessed, benevolent, benign, abundant, bland, buttery, and beautiful</blockquote>
<p>So in the last resort, when all other methods have failed, one may try to guess using the soundalike principle. An unusual English word beginning with /b/ may well fall within the semantic fields outlined in this way. It's not guaranteed or reliable. This is a last resort and must still be combined with understanding the context. </p>
<p>As with etymology, the <i>Nirukta </i>soundalike principle escaped the grammarian's milieu and found a popular expression. My favourite example of this in Buddhaghosa's explanation of <i>bhagavant</i>:</p>
<blockquote><i>bhagī bhajī bhāgī vibhattavā iti<br />Akāsi bhaggan ti garu bhāgyavā<br />
Bahūhi ñayehi subhāvitattano<br />Bhagavantago so bhagavā ti vuccati</i> (Vism VII.56)</blockquote>
<blockquote>The weighty one (<i>garu</i>) has blessings (<i>bhagī</i>), is a frequenter (<i>bhajī</i>), a partaker (<i>bhāgī</i>) a possessor of what has been analysed (<i>vibhattavā</i>). He has caused abolishing (<i>bhagga</i>), he is fortunate (<i>bhāgyavā</i>). He has fully developed himself (<i>subhāvitattano</i>) in many ways. He has gone to the end of becoming (<i>Bhagavantago</i>) thus he is called “Blessed” (<i>bhagavā</i>) </blockquote>
<p>At face value, the Pāḷi is pure nonsense, but note how this fits with the approach by Magnus and Michell. This doesn't always work. In the absence of an obvious verbal root for <i>rūpa </i>for example, some Buddhists related it to <i>ruppati</i> "to harm" in Pāli (e.g. the <i>Khajjanīya Sutta </i>which has been seen as an important source for understanding the <i>skandhas</i>). In answer to Yāska's question standard question: <i>rūpaṃ kasmāt "</i>Why is [it called] rūpa?", the <i>Khajjanīya-kāra </i>says that because <i>rūpa </i>does the action of <i>ruppati </i>"harming". The inferred relation is from √<i>rup </i>"harm" to the noun <i>rūpa</i>. But this is not accurate because there <i>is </i>no grammatical relation between <i>rūpa </i>and √<i>rup</i>. A version of this pericope in <i>Aṣṭasāhasrikā </i>uses the denominative verb <i>rūpayati </i>instead and this makes much more sense, especially in the light of my aphorism: "<i>rūpa </i>is to the eye as sound is to the ear." While a kind of sense can be made of <i>rūpaṃ ruppati </i>(since Buddhists consider sensory experience to be harmful), the sense of <i>rūpaṃ rūpayati</i> "an appearance appears" is too obvious to be wrong. This kind of statement is extremely common in Pāḷi. </p>
<p>Finally we should note that <a href="http://jayarava.blogspot.com/2008/10/yska-plato-and-sound-symbolism.html">Plato </a>also accepted a soundalike principle and essays it unsystematically in the <i>Cratylus Dialogue</i>. </p>
<blockquote>"Now the letter <i>rho</i>, as I was saying, appeared to the imposer of names an excellent instrument for the expression of motion; and he frequently uses the letter for this purpose: for example, in the actual words rein and roe he represents motion by <i>rho</i>; also in the words <i>tromos </i>(trembling), <i>trachus </i>(rugged); and again, in words such as <i>krouein </i>(strike), <i>thrauein </i>(crush), <i>ereikein </i>(bruise), <i>thruptein </i>(break), <i>kermatixein </i>(crumble), <i>rumbein </i>(whirl): of all these sorts of movements he generally finds an expression in the letter R, because, as I imagine, he had observed that the tongue was most agitated and least at rest in the pronunciation of this letter, which he therefore used in order to express motion".</blockquote>
<p>An article by Johannes Bronkhorst (2001) outlines and compares the two approaches found in the <i>Nirukta </i>and the <i>Cratylus</i>.</p>
<p>I am not saying that this sound alike principle was or is a first line of resort in explaining unfamiliar words, I'm saying that in the face of the failure of more rational methods, we may resort to this rather dubious method. This is definitely the<i> last resort</i> and all it does is potentially enrich our guesses, but there is some limited evidence that it <i>can </i>enrich guesses.</p><p><br /></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><b>Unknown Words in the Present</b></p>
<p>When we encounter an unfamiliar word in a text, human beings have a limited set of possible actions to try to figure out what it means. Like <i>Yāska</i>, I see three levels these actions as occupying three levels. The first reaction for most of us is to ask the nearest (familiar) person if they know and then broaden the circle out. People seek information from other people before we seek it in other ways. There is also trial and error: a kind of Bayesian approach in which we infer the meaning from the context and then look to see how this works in other contexts and then adjust as required. Finally, we can guess based on clues like similarity to other words and hope for the best. </p><p>These intuitive responses have been refined by European* philologers and what follows is an attempt to generalise about how we approach the unfamiliar word in the present.</p>
<blockquote style="font-size: x-small;">* The people we are talking about are either grew up in Europe or in one of the colonies of Europe.</blockquote>
<p>As scholars encountering an unfamiliar word in a text we also have three levels of response though they have been refined somewhat: consult an expert, explore the context, and etymology. </p><p><b><i><br /></i></b></p><p><b><i>Consult an Expert</i></b></p>
<p>Encountering an unfamiliar or unknown word is relatively common. I still come across new English words from time to time. Of course we live in an age in which there are comprehensive modern dictionaries and most of them are now online. It is usually a matter of a few seconds of searching to get a definition. These days as major references works are almost all online now, we can get pretty reliable answers to most questions if we are selective about which sources we use. </p><p>Recently, I've taken to watching American Football for entertainment and this has involved learning the jargon that the commentators and players use. Some terms that are used frequently like "fourth down and ten" or "out of bounds" or "snap" can easily be decoded from watching the action and equating words with what I'm seeing. However, it's not entirely obvious what terms like "go route" or "ineligible man downfield" mean in this way. In order to understand these terms I had to look them up.</p>
<p>When I google "ineligible man downfield", I'm asking an expert, Google's role is to put me in touch with the most relevant experts. When I look something up in a dictionary or grammar text I am consulting an expert. Experts are not simply knowledgeable about what words mean but (in the words of the late Roy Norman), they can say <i>why </i>words mean what they do, largely from looking at how the have been used in the past. The lexicographer Margaret Cone used to literally look at <i>every single occurrence </i>of a word in Pāḷi before writing her <i>Dictionary of Pali</i> entries. It is this that makes her an expert and her definitions authoritative. </p><p>One of the results of printing was to democratise knowledge, though it was some time before literacy became a general condition. Once a person could write down their knowledge, reproduce it relatively cheaply, and distribute it far and wide, knowledge began to escape from the milieu of experts. It also gave birth to meta-experts like librarians: we don't know everything; our expertise is in knowing how and where to find out <i>anything</i>. </p>
<p>This means that even though we seldom have direct access to experts, we have access to their knowledge in a systematic, albeit generalised, form in their written works. </p><p>Humans are social animals. We first look to each other for support; this includes knowledge support. But what to do when the experts fail, as they do from time to time. </p><p><br /></p><p><b><i>Context</i></b></p>
<p>In one of my first publications (Attwood 2010) I noticed that a translation from Pāḷi included the word "confess" but I could not find a word in the Pāḷi that meant "confess". The passage in question was cited from T. Rhys Davids' translation of the <i>Dīghanikāya </i>in which Ajātasattu goes to visit the Buddha and tells him about killing his father, Bimbasāra, in order to take his throne. <br /></p>
<blockquote>Verily O King it was sin that overcame you while acting thus. But in as much as you look upon it as sin, and confess it according to what is right we accept your confession as to that. For that, O King, is the custom of the Noble Ones, that whosoever looks upon his faults as a fault and rightly confesses it, shall attain to self-restraint in the future. (94-95)</blockquote>
<p>I had many questions after reading this. I also discovered that in some cases of this passage in other contexts the phrase "we forgive you" occured in the English translation. Let's look at the Pāḷi and my (recent) translation. <br /></p>
<blockquote><i>Taggha tvaṃ, mahārāja, accayo accagamā yathābālaṃ yathāmūḷhaṃ yathā akusalaṃ, yaṃ tvaṃ pitaraṃ dhammikaṃ dhammarājānaṃ jīvitā voropesi. Yato ca kho tvaṃ, mahārāja, accayaṃ accayato disvā yathādhammaṃ paṭikarosi, taṃ te mayaṃ paṭiggaṇhāma. Vuddhihesā, mahārāja, ariyassa vinaye, yo accayaṃ accayato disvā yathādhammaṃ paṭikaroti, āyatiṃ saṃvaraṃ āpajjatī ti.</i></blockquote>
<blockquote>Certainly, Mahārāja, you transgressed (<i>accaya</i>) by going too far (<i>accagamā</i>) when—like a fool, like an idiot, like an incompetent—you deprived your legitimate father, the rightful king, of his life. Since, however, Mahārāja having seen the transgression as transgression, you have returned to righteousness, we accept that from you. It is an ancient custom in this noble discipline that one who sees his transgression as transgression returns to righteousness, and in future will exhibit restraint. </blockquote>
<p>While we can see how a nineteenth century translator might have rendered <i>accaya</i> as "sin" there is no word that means "confess" nor less "forgive". And where we might expect to find that word, we have instead the verb <i>paṭikaroti</i>.</p>
<p>The entire entry from PED reads:<br /></p>
<blockquote><b>Paṭikaroti</b> [<i>paṭi+karoti</i>) 1. to redress, repair, make amends for a sin, expiate (<i>āpattiŋ</i>) Vin i.98, 164; ii.259; iv.19; S ii.128=205; A v.324; DhA i.54. — 2. to act against, provide for, beware, be cautious J iv.166. — 3. to imitate J ii.406. — ger. <i>paṭikacca</i> (q. v.). — pp. <i>paṭikata</i> (q. v.).</blockquote>
<p>And yet this is not how the verb is being used in the passage in question. Notably here etymology is completely useless because the verb <i>karoti </i>is so vague. It can mean "make" or "do" and the <i>paṭi</i>- prefix adds the sense of "against, back to, return". So <i>paṭikaroti </i>might have originally meant something like "counteract", but has clearly been used in a variety of senses. </p>
<p>To get the correct sense of the term for the context we have to look at the phrase and how it is used, and this is what I did in Attwood (2010). My conclusion was that the word had to be seen as part of the expression: <i>yathādhammaṃ paṭikaroti</i>. I argued that this must mean something like "return to righteousness" in order to make sense in context. </p><p>The passage does not use a word that means "confess", however Ajatasattu <i>does</i> confess in the sense that he tells the Buddha "I killed my father". And the Buddha <i>accepts </i>the confession (<i>taṃ</i>... <i>paṭiggaṇhāma </i>"we accept that [confession]" <i>not</i> "we forgive your [sin]"). And he acknowledges the resolution to return to lawfulness, but he does not "forgive" Ajātasattu and the <i>sutta </i>brings this out because after king leaves, the Buddha says to his monks: "The king is wounded, monks, the king is done for" (<i>khatāyaṃ, bhikkhave, rājā. Upahatāyaṃ, bhikkhave, rājā</i>. DN I 85) . The commentary records the story that, on death, Ajātasattu went straight to a hell realm for his transgression to be purged through extreme suffering (a hangover of the non-Buddhist idea that suffering purifies the soul). Later versions of this story see the king being purified of his unforgivable karma merely by confessing to the Buddha. This reaction is part of an ongoing process of deification of the Buddha: Buddhists could not conceive of his presence having <i>no</i> effect on Ajātasttu so they <i>changed the rules</i> of karma to allow the Buddha to save sinners. </p>
<p>In this case consulting the experts failed and I had to <i>become </i>the expert. I did this by looking at the local and broader context of how the word was used; by reading every single occurance of this term in the Pāli suttas and thinking about what it might mean in each context. Still there are times when this method fails also. </p><p>And this brings us to the last resort: etymology.</p><p><br /></p>
<p><b><i>Etymology</i></b></p>
<p>The word etymology is made up of Greek <i>etymos </i>"true, real, actual" combined with <i>logos </i>"study" and thus originally meant "the study of true [meaning]." This is a wonderfully optimistic idea. With the reconstruction of Proto-Indo-European more or less complete (notwithstanding arguments over details) and widely accepted to be accurate, we can usually trace a word in English or Sanskrit back a few thousands years to PIE; where the word is not a loan from some other language family. </p>
<p>Etymology is a useful tool in comparative historical linguistics because it helps identify cognate words, but as much as anything we are concerned at one level with the changes in phonetics over time on one hand and with changes in grammar (the structure of language) on the other. I think lay people often place too much emphasis on the conservation of words over time. For example, kin terms like father (<i>pitṛ</i>, πατέρας) or numbers like two (<i>dvi</i>, δύο) are strongly conserved. But what's interesting historically is that despite conservation we see sound changes. Indo-European initial /p/ becomes /f/ in the Germanic languages (including English). This is known in Europe as Grimm's Law. </p>
<p>The limitations of etymology for defining words are beautifully brought out by the example of <i>nice</i>. Our English word derives from the Latin <i>nescius </i>"ignorant, unaware,". It was used in the thirteenth century to mean "foolish, ignorant, frivolous, senseless." By the late fourteenth century, it was being used in the sense of "fussy, fastidious" and "dainty, delicate". By the sixteenth century, the meaning had changed to "precise, careful" (a "nice distinction"). In the eighteenth century, it came to mean "agreeable, delightful"; in the nineteenth century "kind, thoughtful"; and, finally, in the twenty-first century it now means "twee, bland, uninteresting". </p><p>At more or less any time in history, the etymology of the word <i>nice</i> tells us almost nothing about how it is used by English speakers. And keep in mind that we are basing this on the occurrence of the word in written texts. In fact we have little idea of how people <i>spoke </i>at any given time prior to audio recordings. </p>
<p>Examples of poor use of etymology abound in Buddhist studies. For example, Edward Conze insisted that <i>avalokita </i>means "looked down" and <i>vyavalokayati </i>"to look down". And he was flatly wrong in both cases. Both words derive from √lok "to look" and mean "examine, observe". That is to say they both suggest forms of looking closely at something: more like "getting down and looking" rather than "looking down". The prefix <i>ava</i>- can simply mean "downwards" but Sanskrit prefixes have a range of senses and influence on the final meaning. Prefixes don't always result in logical changes to words. For example, <i>avagacchati</i> can literally mean "go down" as in "descend", but it's also used to mean "arrive, visit, approach"; moreover it has a cognitive sense of "understanding, knowing". </p><p></p>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlY0gHSUBTulFEIB6CYx-neb6ZwImD3XRjf7I2nFFVnpHTkbKKzBYO3ps5SYkTH2FJ8LKaQhedKOpS7t4YEGlFsp1HwCOvqhOd1XeDYR819NEueK9ZeEnwWF6npZO3MFfhHz2fmOt6E2wd9ccjJMM7JXXgV_0IDNZv0j416-RCgxiZCc_bxg/s408/bec-ouvert.africain.brho.0p.jpg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="408" data-original-width="300" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlY0gHSUBTulFEIB6CYx-neb6ZwImD3XRjf7I2nFFVnpHTkbKKzBYO3ps5SYkTH2FJ8LKaQhedKOpS7t4YEGlFsp1HwCOvqhOd1XeDYR819NEueK9ZeEnwWF6npZO3MFfhHz2fmOt6E2wd9ccjJMM7JXXgV_0IDNZv0j416-RCgxiZCc_bxg/w147-h200/bec-ouvert.africain.brho.0p.jpg" width="147" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Anastomus oscitans</span></span></td></tr></tbody></table>
<p>Another example from my own research (Attwood 2013) is the case of <i>sithilahanu</i>. This word is used only once in Pāḷi and Chinese translations of the text offer no insights. The context tells us it is a kind of bird, since the word occurs in a list of birds whose feathers are used to fletch arrows. But the etymology of the name is unhelpful: <i>sithila</i> "loose, lax, bending, yielding" and <i>hanu</i> "chin, jaw". One author guessed that it might be the open-billed stork (Anastomus oscitans), which has a gap when it's beak is closed. This doesn't really make sense: a "gap" is not "loose" and the bill is not particularly bent or yielding, it has a gap which is helpful for cracking the shells of water snails without crushing them. Moreover the beak of a bird is usually <i>tuṇḍa. </i></p>
<p>Or consider <i>vedanā </i>(Attwood 2018) which we often see translated as "feeling" or "sensation", but which Buddhists use to mean "the positive, negative, and neutral hedonic quality of experience" (<i>sukha-dukkha-asukhamadukkha</i>). We actually have an English word that is used in exactly this sense by neuroscientists, i.e. <i>valence </i>(a word that is used in a variety of scientific jargons). But <i>vedanā</i> comes from the root √<i>vid </i>"to know": the closely related term <i>vedana </i>means "announcing, proclaiming" which suggests that it is from the causative stem of the root, i.e. <i>ved- </i>"to cause knowing, to make known, to inform". Again, the etymology of the word has no obvious connection to how it is used in Buddhist texts. </p>
<p>It turns out that when we encounter an unfamiliar word, the etymology is the least useful approach to understanding what it means. Indeed, etymology is often wrong about usage at any given time or simply irrelevant to that usage. </p><p><br /></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><b>Conclusion</b></p>
<p>Citing an etymology in lectures and essays probably began as a way for philologists to show that they were <i>bona fide</i> members of the profession who knew their stuff: a kind of academic shibboleth. I doubt they ever imagined that the practice of talking about etymology would ever escape their ivory tower. It seems that, other scholars soon realised that they could simply consult an etymology dictionary and they would sound erudite in the matter of language. I've definitely<i> </i>done this. </p>
<p>Unlike Plato who seemed to be quite playful with the soundalike principle, Yāska was serious and his business, interpreting the Ṛgveda was serious. Even so, Yāska knows that a guess based on the sound-alike principle was a last resort when dealing with an unfamiliar word. Of course, phonosemantics has never taken off in mainstream linguistics because it's too opposed to the paradigms of academic linguistics which take as axiomatic the idea that verbal sounds are not symbolic (or gestural) in any way. The modern view, following Saussure, is that spoken sounds are entirely arbitrary. However, I still think Magnus had a point and good data. And I wonder if the discovery of the sophisticated gestural language of chimpanzees, which is largely intelligible to humans, might make someone think (with Magnus) that verbalisations <i>are </i>(or at least involve) gestures. </p>
<p>For scholars of language or texts encountering an unfamiliar word, the <i>last resort </i>is etymology. One uses etymology to <i>guess </i>the contemporary (synchronic) meaning of unfamiliar words based on the historical (diachronic) meaning. These days we have the marvel of the reconstructed language of all our Indo-European forebears, i.e. Proto-Indo-European. It is now a trivial matter to look up what Indo-European root a given word can be traced to. I've spent many happy hours doing just this (for around 500 terms in my book <i>Nāmapada</i>). </p>
<p>The first resort of explaining a word to someone ought to be offering them <i>a sentence </i>in which it is used in a typical manner. As is done in American spelling bees. If the word has multiple senses then offer a representative sample of sentences in which the word is used. This is what the best dictionaries do, with Franklin Edgerton's <i>Dictionary of Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit</i> being a shining example.</p>
<p>An excellent example of how to approach the meaning of a word can be found in the article on <i>saññā</i> by Krishna Del Toso (2015). Rather than pfaff about with etymologies, Del Toso goes straight to looking at how the word is used in sentences in Pāḷi. He begins with a catalogue of existing translations and why they are unsatisfactory, offers provisional translations from a locus classicus, but then examines how it fits in other contexts leading to refinements in his definitions. In this view <i>saññā</i>, can be usefully translated as "recognition", but involves but "recognizing" and "naming" (693). Del Toso suggests that <i>saññā</i>, "Indicates an ordering activity that is carried out by grasping the distinctive marks of things of which one has a sensation. (709)". This is similar to the conclusion I came to when studying the <i>khandhas </i>via summaries by Vetter and Hamilton (see <a href="http://jayarava.blogspot.com/2021/01/modern-interpretations-of-khandhas-sanna.html">Modern Interpretations of the Khandhas: Saññā</a>). </p><p>It's all too easy to fall for the hype of etymology, but it really isn't much help day to day unless the problems we are thinking about involve historical phonetic changes. The one thing the etymology can never tell us is the true meaning of a word, independent of use. Because in the final analysis, Wittgenstein was onto something: meaning is to be found in how words are used; and use is specific to a language using community which exists in a place and a time. </p>
</div>
<p style="text-align: center;">~~oOo~~</p><br />
<p style="text-align: center;"><b>Bibliography</b></p>
<p class="hang">Bronkhorst, J. (1981). "Nirukta and Aṣṭādhyāyī: Their Shared Presuppositions." <i>Indo-Iranian Journal</i>, 23(1) :1-14</p>
<p class="hang">——. (2001). "Etymology and Magic: Yāska's <i>Nirukta</i>, Plato's <i>Cratylus</i>, and the Riddle of Semantic Etymologies." <i>Numen</i> 48(2), 147-203. doi: https://doi.org/10.1163/156852701750152645</p>
<p class="hang">Del Toso, Krishna. 2015. “The function of saññā in the perceptual process according to the Suttapiṭaka: an appraisal.” <i>Philosophy East and West</i> 65(3), 690-716.</p>
<p class="hang">Kahrs, Eivind. (1998). <i>Indian semantic analysis : the nirvacana tradition</i>. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.</p>
<p class="hang">Magnus, M. (1999) <i>Gods of the Word : archetypes in the consonants</i>. Kirksville, Missouri : Thomas Jefferson University Press.</p>
<p class="hang">——. 2001. <i>What's in a Word? Studies in Phonosemantics</i>. PhD Dissertation, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim. </p>
<p class="hang">Michell, John (1998). <i>Euphonics: A Poet's Dictionary of Sounds</i>. Powys, Wales: Wooden Books. </p>
<p class="hang">Skilling, Peter. (2007). Mṛgara’s Mother’s Mansion: Emptiness and the Śūnyatā Sūtras. <i>Journal of Indian and Tibetan Studies</i> 11, 225-247.</p>
<p class="hang">Visigalli, Paolo. (2017). "Words In And Out Of History: Indian Semantic Derivation (Nirvacana) And Modern Etymology In Dialogue". <i>Philosophy East and West</i>, 67(4): 1143-1190. </p>
<p class="hang">Witzel, Michael. (1999). "Substrate Languages in Old Indo-Aryan (Ṛgvedic, Middle and Late Vedic)." <i>Electronic Journal of Vedic Studies</i> 5(1): 1-67. </p>
Jayaravahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13783922534271559030noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19327107.post-82708511324967205782023-02-17T08:35:00.001+00:002023-02-17T16:39:51.748+00:00What's the Difference Between a Meditator and Corpse? <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYc6MH7gIRzpD5aWhzsoBkuxN-W3aVbMo9UHky_47MvotWTtIfs09aOjtWRHxQuMjuhdsCK5Tgg8SDbzd4cDiW0Z3e1zlYBcIc4TVFkvWCNs71Z6F_Su3XvSKsZHQjadSZtrU86zNR4FGtqbyDFud9E9FVofCoK-G6KQkXnPxuJI3KzNSSKQ/s640/mummified-body-of-a-monk-93125-442x640.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 20px; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="442" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYc6MH7gIRzpD5aWhzsoBkuxN-W3aVbMo9UHky_47MvotWTtIfs09aOjtWRHxQuMjuhdsCK5Tgg8SDbzd4cDiW0Z3e1zlYBcIc4TVFkvWCNs71Z6F_Su3XvSKsZHQjadSZtrU86zNR4FGtqbyDFud9E9FVofCoK-G6KQkXnPxuJI3KzNSSKQ/w138-h200/mummified-body-of-a-monk-93125-442x640.jpg" width="138" /></a></div><div style="text-align: justify;">At first glance, my title this week might seem like an odd question or the opening to a joke. In fact, the question is asked and answered in the Pāḷi <i>Mahāvedalla Sutta </i>(MN 43). This is one of those suttas that seems to be an attempt to comprehensively summarise Buddhism as it was understood at the time, but not in a standard Theravāda way. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The <i>Mahāvedella </i>is a teaching by Elder Sāriputta for Elder Mahā-Koṭṭhita. The pair are also portrayed as speaking together in the <i>Koṭṭhita Sutta</i> (AN 9.13) and another <i>Koṭṭhita Sutta </i>(SN 35.232). <p></p>
<p>In this case, the sutta includes some ideas that are rare elsewhere. What the Pāḷi texts repeatedly show is that different ancient Buddhists thought about the same terms in different ways. Not everything that we find in a Pāḷi sutta was incorporated into Theravāda Buddhism, even in theory. </p>
<br />
<p><b>The <i>Mahāvedalla Sutta</i></b></p>
<p>The <i>Mahāvedalla Sutta </i>is a series of questions and answers. For example, the first question asks for a definition of "faulty <i>pañño"</i> (<i>duppañño</i>; Skt <i>duḥprajñā</i>) and compares this with someone endowed with <i>pañño</i> (<i>paññavā</i>; Skt. <i>prajñāvat</i>). Note how these are not quite opposites. The natural opposite of <i>duppañño </i>would be <i>su</i><i>pañño</i>; while the opposite of <i>paññavā </i>would be <i>a</i><i>paññavā</i>. No doubt there was a story here, but it's lost to time. It's not clear how the <i>Mahāvedalla-kāra </i>understood <i>pañño</i>, the adjectival form of <i>paññā,</i> but in Prajñāpāramitā it seems to connote the knowledge gained by undergoing cessation (<i>nirodha</i>). The series of questions continues. Define "discrimination" (<i>viññāṇaṃ</i>; <i>vijñāna</i>)? What is the difference between <i>viññāṇaṃ</i> and <i>paññā</i>? The answer here is that <i>paññā</i> is to be cultivated; discrimination is to be comprehended (<i>paññā bhāvetabbā, viññāṇaṃ pariññeyyaṃ</i>). </p><p>This explanation leaves me in the dark about the distinction, I think, because I lack the context in which to understand it. There is one other reference to cultivating <i>paññā </i>in Pāḷi. The <i>Rāga Sutta</i> (AN 6.107) describes a group of three things to be abandoned (<i>raga</i>, <i>doha</i>, <i>moha</i>) and three to be cultivated (<i>asubha</i>, <i>mettā</i>, and <i>paññā</i>) in order to eliminate them, i.e. cultivating understanding (<i>paññā</i>) dispels confusion (<i>moha</i>). This one is comprehensible on its own, but doesn't help us to distinguish <i>paññā</i> from <i>viññāṇa</i>. It seems that the <i>Mahāvedalla-kāra </i>did not see <i>viññāṇa </i>as something that could be cultivated or abandoned. But this doctrine was not developed by Buddhists and all we have is this incomplete snapshot. This happens a lot in the Pāḷi suttas. </p>
<p>Then the sutta asks, what is valence (<i>vedanā</i>) and recognition (<i>saññā</i>)? And are these three—<i>saññā</i>, <i>paññā</i>, <i>vedanā</i>—inseparable? The <i>sutta-kāra </i>says they are not separable because "what one experiences, that one recognises; what one recognises one discriminates" (<i>yaṃ hāvuso, vedeti taṃ sañjānāti, yaṃ sañjānāti taṃ vijānāti</i> MN I 293). Note that the traditional <i>skandha </i>meditation practice is predicated on being able to distinguish these three, while here the three are said to be impossible to distinguish individually (<i>na ca labbhā imesaṃ dhammānaṃ vinibbhujitvā vinibbhujitvā* nānākaraṇaṃ paññāpetuṃ</i>).</p><p><span style="font-size: x-small;"></span></p><blockquote><span style="font-size: x-small;">* The repetition of <i>vinibbhujitvā </i>here is odd, but seems to be in the original texts. </span></blockquote><p></p>
<p>Then a change of pace. "Comrade, what can be inferred by purified mental discrimination that dismisses the five [physical] senses?" (<i>Nissaṭṭhena hāvuso, pañcahi indriyehi parisuddhena manoviññāṇena kiṃ neyyan ti?</i>)</p>
<p></p><blockquote><span style="font-size: x-small;">* Ñāṇamoḷi & Bodhi "Friend, what can be known by the purified mind-consciousness released from the five faculties?</span></blockquote><p>Interestingly, what can be inferred or understood (<i>neyyan</i>) from this are precisely the <i>āyatana </i>states. From the statement (or thought) "space has no limits" we can infer the stage of limitless space (<i>ananto ākāso’ti ākāsānañcāyatanaṃ neyyaṃ</i>); from "there is no limit to discrimination" we infer the stage of limitless discrimination can be inferred (<i>anantaṃ viññāṇan ti viññāṇañcāyatanaṃ neyyaṃ</i>); and from "there is nothing" we infer the stage of nothingness can be inferred (<i>natthi kiñcī ti ākiñcaññāyatanaṃ neyyaṃ</i>). And we know this phenomenon through the eye of <i>paññā</i> (<i>paññācakkhunā</i>). And what is the purpose of <i>paññā</i>? It is higher knowledge (<i>abhiññatthā</i>), exact knowledge (<i>pariññatthā</i>), and abandonment (<i>pahānatthā</i>). The latter refers to eliminating sensory experience (cf. <a href="Paññā kho, āvuso, abhiññatthā pariññatthā pahānatthā’’ti."><i>Pahāna Sutta</i> SN 35.24</a>).</p>
<p>More questions follow on right view (<i>sammādiṭṭhi</i>), being (<i>bhava</i>), first <i>jhāna</i>, the five faculties, and then the section that really interests me. </p>
<br />
<p><b>Life and Heat</b><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-oQBvH42FS7jm0oPQxkiRJvoXI1KGM2pzwp8fIHdLYvilLvR6ttFDBEx9ZXjpws9oNkYPX8q88T06kuW7RkIk4xDCQUNDas9BjFtxfLpkwJdgX0YCF4rqKmqN9kF9zFq-05Be0fno9AauwmZq8HDI_SlQObJe0_uQOrsgK_G8Q047Y5LA_Q/s400/031.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="300" data-original-width="400" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-oQBvH42FS7jm0oPQxkiRJvoXI1KGM2pzwp8fIHdLYvilLvR6ttFDBEx9ZXjpws9oNkYPX8q88T06kuW7RkIk4xDCQUNDas9BjFtxfLpkwJdgX0YCF4rqKmqN9kF9zFq-05Be0fno9AauwmZq8HDI_SlQObJe0_uQOrsgK_G8Q047Y5LA_Q/w200-h150/031.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>The pertinent question is, "On what condition do the five faculties depend?" (<i>pañcindriyāni kiṃ paṭicca tiṭṭhantī ti</i>); where the five faculties are eye, ear, nose, tongue, body. The <i>Mahāvedalla Sutta</i> says that they depend on <i>āyu </i>"life" (Skt <i>āyuḥ</i>; as in <i>āyurveda</i>). Life itself depends on the condition of "heat" (<i>āyu usmaṃ paṭicca tiṭṭhati</i>) but, at the same time, heat depends on the condition of life (<i>usmā āyuṃ paṭicca tiṭṭhati</i>). The relation between the two is explained by an analogy: it's just like how seeing the light of a lamp is dependent on seeing the flame, and seeing the flame is dependent on seeing the light. This mirrors the analogy between mutually conditioning <i>viññāṇa </i>and <i>nāmarūpa</i> in the <i>Mahānidāna Sutta</i> (DN 15) there conceptualised as two sheaves of harvested grain that lean against each other (called a "stook" in English). <p></p>
<p>Life and heat are not a common topic in Pāḷi; they occur together in just three texts including the <i>Mahāvedalla Sutta</i>, and I will digress briefly to consider the other two. We find life and heat together in a verse at the end of the <i>Pheṇapiṇḍūpama Sutta</i> (SN 22.95) where death is equated with the absence of <i>āyu</i>, <i>usmā</i>, and <i>viññāṇa </i>(SN III 143). In the <i>Kāmbhū Sutta</i> (SN 41.6), which features a discussion between the patriarch<i>* </i>Citta and the bhikkhu Kāmbhū, we find a similar discussion of the difference between a corpse and a meditator experiencing cessation (Starting at SN IV 294). Here the bodily, verbal, and mental formations (<i>kāya</i>-, <i>vācī-</i>, and <i>citta-saṅkhāra</i>) cease in a meditator undergoing cessation. However, they still have life and heat, and their "faculties are serene" (<i>indriyāni vippasannāni</i>). </p>
<blockquote>*<i>Gahapati </i>refers to the patriarch of an extended household or possibly an extended family within a clan structure. Standard translations like "householder" seem to miss the point. </blockquote><p></p>
<p>Note the inconsistency here: a living person in both texts has life and heat, but the third factor is <i>viññāṇa </i>in one account and <i>indriyāni</i> in another. Here we might conjecture that <i>viññāṇa</i> is intended as the function of the <i>indriyāni</i>, i.e. objectification is the function of the sense faculties. We could, at a pinch, see the two terms in this context as synonyms. Though this is a neat solution, we have to consider other possibilities as well. The two texts may be trying to say something different and incompatible that we no longer understand (this is not uncommon between two Pāli texts).</p><p>I don't understand how we came to translate <i>viññāṇa </i>as "consciousness" but it seems plain wrong to me. Notably, <i>viññāṇa </i>is an action noun rather than an abstract noun, so <i>viññāṇa </i>and consciousness are not even on the same level of abstraction. It is my view that no Pāḷi word can be translated into English as an abstract noun "consciousness" and that our whole philosophical concept of "consciousness" is absent from ancient Buddhist dialogues (see also <i><a href="http://jayarava.blogspot.com/2012/07/the-mind-as-container-metaphor.html">The 'Mind as Container' Metaphor</a></i>). The use of "consciousness" in discussing ancient Buddhist discourses is a Whiggish anachronism (in which we imagine ancient Indians to be primitive precursors of ourselves). </p>
<p>In any case, the gist here is clear. It can be very difficult to distinguish a meditator from a corpse by the usual signs of life that we look for in a conscious and aware person, because we cannot interact with them. We could say that following cessation a person becomes completely unresponsive to the world around them. People undergoing cessation of sensory experience necessarily lack all sense of time, since all of the clues to the passing of time have, by definition, ceased. Hence, perhaps, the Buddhist insistence that the Buddhadharma is <i>akāliko</i> "timeless", though in a culture where death is often referred to as <i>kālaṅkato</i> "having done one's time", <i>akāliko </i>could also be a synonym for <i>amata</i> "deathless" (Skt. <i>amṛta</i>). The phenomenon of people sitting lost in <i>samādhi</i> for days on end is likely related to their undergoing cessation and having no sense of time passing. It is likely that thirst, i.e. a need for water, is what rouses them. Being dragged out of <i>samādhi</i> by thirst may explain why "thirst" (Skt. <i>tṛṣṇa</i>;<i> </i>P<i>. taṇha</i>) became such a key word in the Buddhist lexicon. </p>
<br />
<p><b>Life Force</b></p>
<p></p>
<p>Coming back to the <i>Mahāvedalla Sutta</i> and moving to the next section the subject is now "life" (<i>āyu</i>) and the "constituents of life" (<i>āyu-saṇkhārā</i>). The sutta explicitly states that these "constituents of life" are not phenomena that one can experience (<i>na kho, āvuso, teva āyusaṅkhārā te vedaniyā dhammā</i>). And then it says that, if the <i>āyu-saṅkhārā </i>were phenomena to be experienced, the one who experienced the cessation of awareness and experience would not emerge from their meditation, that is to say <i>they would die</i>. The logic here is that if <i>āyu </i>and <i>āyu-saṅkhāra</i> were part of the <i>experienced world</i>, then when the experienced world ceased, so too would life. Rather, the text makes the apposite observation that life continues even when all sensory experience ceases. </p>
<p>What did the <i>sutta-kāra</i> mean by <i>āyu </i>and <i>āyu-saṇkhārā</i>? It is difficult to say, because the terms are not defined. <a href="https://discourse.suttacentral.net/t/on-ayusa-khara-and-jivitasa-khara/3188">Sujato has blogged</a> about how the words <i>āyusaṇkhāra </i>and <i>jīvitasaṇkhāra </i>are used. There is not a great deal more to be said. In the <i>Mahāparinibbāna Sutta</i> (DN 16) the Buddha mentions <i>jīvitasaṅkhāra </i>in a sense that Sujato interprets as a "will to live". He is, I think, here relying on the traditional idea that <i>saṅkhāra </i>means "volition" because it is explained as the six kinds of <i>cetanā</i> associated with the six sense spheres. </p>
<p>This meaning of <i>saṅkhāra</i> derives from the earlier Brahmanical use of the Sanskrit equivalent. In Vedic ritual, a <i>saṃskāra </i>is a rite of passage. When performing these rites, the Brahmin priests carry out a series of actions (<i>karman</i>). Hence, in Buddhist usage, <i>saṇkhāra/saṃskāra </i>is "an opportunity for doing karma". Keeping in mind that all intentional acts carry a karmic debt. At the same time, the unique but influential passage in AN 6.63 famously says "intention is how I talk about karma, monks" (<i>cetanāhaṃ bhikkhave kammaṃ vadāmi</i>). Thus an opportunity for doing karma becomes an intention to act. </p>
<p>Whether this meaning can be applied to <i>āyusaṅkhāra </i>is moot and, since Sujato doesn't make this case, we are none the wiser. He finds a way to make sense of <i>jīvitasaṇkhāra </i>as "the will to life" and then retrospectively relates <i>āyusaṇkhāra </i>to this as a kind of "vital force". In the end, however, Sujato concludes that distinction between <i>āyusaṇkhāra </i>and <i>jīvitasaṇkhāra </i>probably emerged later and that the two words are synonyms for "vitality" and "vital energies" and are best translated as "life force". This is a self-consistent explanation and it might be right. But there is presently no way to confirm such conjectures: we are trying to make sense of how a word was used in the absence of any contemporary explanation and from just a few instances that are vague and/or ambiguous. This is a common problem when dealing with older Buddhist texts (in any language). </p>
<p>Across the ancient world we repeatedly encounter the idea of a "life force", but it is almost always conceptualised as <i>breath</i>. Words indicating breath as life force include: psyche, anima, spirit, <i>qi </i>氣, and <i>prāṇa</i>. For more on this theme see my 2014 essay: <a href="http://jayarava.blogspot.com/2014/06/spiritual-i-lifes-breath.html">Spiritual I: The Life's Breath</a>. In the Indian context the vital force is <i>āṇa </i>"breath" which itself is caused by the action of the element of wind (<i>vāyu</i>). <i>Vāyu</i> conceptualises all forms of <i>movement</i>. The word <i>āyu</i>,<i> </i>however, does not refer to "breath". Rather, it is related to the words <i>aeon </i>and <i>age</i>, and often refers to <i>lifespan</i> or <i>longevity</i>. Breath (<i>āṇa</i>) is what animates the body (<i>kāya</i>); the resulting animation seems to be called <i>āyu </i>(and is accompanied by <i>usmā</i>)<i>. </i>Similarly, <i>jīva </i>is not related to breath but is cognate with Greek <i>bio</i>, Latin <i>vivarus</i>, and Germanic <i>quick</i>; all meaning "life; living".</p>
<p>These are not ideas that were integrated into later Buddhism. Nor does the concept of a life-force as distinct from mind and body ever become mainstream. The reason is obvious, and has also bothered European philosophers. If there <i>were </i>a "life-force", then it would surely have a roll to play in facilitating life after death. And if it is present in all living things, as appears to be implied, then we are in the realms of eternalism: that is to say <i>āyu </i>starts to sound suspiciously like <i>ātman</i>. Not surprisingly most Buddhist schools of thought set the idea of a "life force" outside of their orthodoxy and <i>āyusaṅkhāra</i> never became a mainstream Buddhists' technical term. Moreover, Buddhist knowledge of physiology never really developed beyond this Iron Age conception.</p>
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<p><b>Conclusions</b></p>
<p>To answer the question in the title, a meditator and a corpse are similar in that signs of life in the form of actions of body, speech, and mind are absent. Even though the meditator is insensate, or even catatonic, they are still alive; still warm. The corpse is cold and lifeless (and decay sets in almost immediately). </p><p>Presumably, this was enough of an issue for the early Buddhists thought that it required some <i>doctrinal </i>explanation. That said, the terms used to explain the difference—like <i>āyu </i>and <i>āyusaṅkhāra</i>—did not seem to need an explanation in the minds of the author(s). Leaving us scratching our heads. </p><p>This <i>sutta</i> is <i>not</i> consistent with Theravāda Buddhism, if only because it unequivocally states that <i>vedanā</i>, <i>saññā</i>, and <i>viññāṇa </i>cannot be distinguished from each other. Nor is this statement consistent with any form of Buddhism I am familiar with. The <i>Mahāvedella Sutta</i> appears to be from an unknown sect of Buddhists, missing from the historical record. Their text was preserved, but the teaching lineage associated with it was not. I suspect this is true in a large number of Pāḷi suttas. </p>
<p>However, that <i>āyu </i>and <i>usmā </i>occur together in three texts suggests that at least some Buddhists believed in some kind of "life force" as distinct from a soul (<i>ātman</i>). A life force (<i>jīva</i>) was also important in Jain theology, where it provided the necessary continuity for rebirth. At least some Buddhists further conceptualised life as composite and posited life-constituents (<i>āyu-saṅkhāra</i>). However, in the end we don't know precisely what words like <i>āyu</i> or <i>āyusaṅkhāra </i>meant to those people then, because they didn't say and there is not enough context to guess. </p><p>In this case it is very tempting to smooth over the difficulty by conjecturing an answer that solves all the problems, is plausible, and self-consistent. However, this is not sufficient to establish how the <i>author(s) </i>thought. Any number of plausible, self-consistent answers are possible. But we have no objective facts available to help us choose between them.</p></div><p style="text-align: center;">~~oOo~~</p>
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Jayaravahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13783922534271559030noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19327107.post-55274323580970173062023-02-03T11:49:00.001+00:002023-02-03T16:46:50.691+00:00Does Buddhism Provide Good Explanations? <blockquote><p style="color: #2b00ff;">This is my <i>600th</i> essay on this blog. Thanks to all my readers over the last 17 years. Although I've slowed down in order to focus on publishing in academic journals, I still enjoy writing these less formal essays.</p></blockquote><blockquote><p style="color: #2b00ff; text-align: center;">~~oOo~~</p></blockquote>
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<p>What is an explanation? And more to the point, what is a <i>good </i>explanation? To answer these questions we have to formulate a "good" explanation of "explanation" along with an explanation of what constitutes "good" in this context. There is a whole branch of the philosophy of science concerned with characterising scientific explanation. We can draw on this to outline such an explanation. In a classic article, Jan Faye (2007) outlines three modes of scientific explanation. These will form the basis for an exploration of what kinds of explanations that Buddhism offers.</p><br />
<p><b>Formal-Logical Mode of Explanation</b></p>
<p>In this approach, A and B are both (logical) propositions. We may say that A explains B if B can be inferred from A using deduction. This approach involves some idealisation because both A and B are <i>propositions </i>rather than brute facts. Moreover, if A explains B according to this definition, then A is <i>ipso facto</i> a good explanation. Here a "good explanation" is one that follows the rules of logic. Formal-logical explanations are thus prescriptive rather than descriptive.</p>
<p>The problem with this mode of explanation is that in applying deduction we inevitably seem to reproduce our starting assumptions. All exercises in logic involve <i>axioms </i>or propositions that we hold to be true but cannot substantiate. For example, many Buddhists assume that the Buddha was an historical character. We can't prove this, since there is no direct evidence of the Buddha, but the proposition has very broad appeal and most people uncritically accept it as true. The problem, then, is how this unevidenced commitment affects the outcome of deductions from circumstantial evidence. </p>
<p>If we were simply to begin with known facts then we might deduce new facts. But in all cases of applying logic to the real world we cannot avoid axioms, or at least propositions that we take to be axiomatically valid. If we set out to prove that the Buddha was an historical character when we have a prior intellectual commitment to that proposition, i.e. if we treat the Buddha's historicity as axiomatic, then the details of the logical argument are irrelevant. There will always come a point when we <i>deduce</i> that the Buddha was an historical character and we will judge this to be a valid deduction precisely because it concurs with our axiomatic presupposition. In other words, if our axiom is "the Buddha was an historical character" then <i>any </i>sequence of deductions that reproduces the axiom will automatically be accepted as valid. This boils down to Aristotle's law of identity: A is A. <br /><br />Recently, David Drewes (2022) challenged the axiom of the historical Buddha by arguing that the basic definition of an historical character is that they can be connected to an historical event or fact. If this is our criterion then the Buddha is not an historical person since he cannot be connected to any historical event or fact. Drewes concludes that it does not make sense (at least for academic historians) to speak of an "historical Buddha". Indeed, the same can be said of all the characters in early Buddhist texts, including the kings. Usually, if anyone can be associated with history, it is kings. Lāja Piyadasi (aka Emperor Asoka whose name means "remorseless") is the first historical character in Indian history. He left artefacts that we can definitely link to him. </p><p>This mode of explanation has long been out of fashion in science, but it still holds sway in theology, including Buddhist theology.</p><br />
<p><b>Ontological Mode of Explanation</b></p>
<p>Ontological explanations seek to identify and understand <i>causes</i>. The idea here is that facts, events, and states explain observations by revealing law-like casual relations between them. This mode of explanation is familiar to anyone who has studied science. In this mode, A explains B if A is the cause of B: where A and B are facts, events, or states. </p><p>In a classical scientific explanation we might say, for example, that a force applied to a mass <i>causes </i>it to accelerate (i.e. undergo a change in speed and/or direction). The size<i> </i>of this effect is given by Newton's second law of motion: <i>F = ma; where F is force, m </i>is mass (kg)<i> </i>and <i>a </i>is acceleration<i> </i>(m/s<sup style="font-size: xx-small;">2</sup>). From this we can say that the magnitude of the change in acceleration is equal to the force applied divided by the mass. It also allows us to define a unit of force: one Newton of force (N) is 1 kg⋅m/s<sup style="font-size: xx-small;">2 </sup>(i.e. mass multiplied by acceleration). However, note that there is no term in the equation that corresponds to "causation". We assume that the applied force is the cause of the acceleration, but we don't need to encode that in the descriptive law. </p>
<p>As Faye says, in this mode, "An explanation is both true and relevant if, and only if, it discloses the causal structure behind the given phenomena." (I'm referring to an unpaginated preprint). As another commentator, Sam Wilkinson puts it, "events explain other events, and they do so by standing in predictable law-like relations" (2014: 2)</p><p>Causation is a very tricky subject since, as David Hume observed some 300 years ago, we never observe causation, we only ever observe sequences of events. Immanuel Kant went further with this and asserted that causation and other metaphysical notions, like space and time, are actually structures imposed on experience by our minds in order to make sense of them. This basic insight seems to have stood the test of time. The explanations of causation I have seen tend to be rather abstract. In my view, our understanding of causation is related to learning how to use our own limbs and especially our hands. The archetype of causation, then, is <i>action initiated by desire</i>. This is why the concept of causation seems so intuitive but also why it is so confusing. Desire is an emotion and is not present outside of animal life. It's not present at all in most sequences of events in the universe, and as far as we know the only agents in the entire universe all live on earth. Thus our internal model for causation is not typical of causation generally. The conscious initiation of an action is an anomaly, not a model. </p><p>Moreover, most events have multiple causes and we tend to highlight one or a small number from amongst them. The real world is far too complex for single causes to give rise to single effects, so most causal explanations introduce simplifications: for example, we often ignore gravity when it is perpendicular to the plane of interest. Our perception of initiating movements is biased because we are simply not aware of the complexity involved in making our limbs move: our kinesthetic sense, for example, is very coarse grained compared to our physiology. We don't sense, in any way, the nerve impulses involved, or the muscle fibres contracting and relaxing. We just have a broad sense of the limb moving. </p><p>Thus, causal explanations are also fraught with uncertainty because the basic concept of <i>causation </i>is ill-defined and our understanding of it is based on a local anomaly. </p><p>This leaves us with the third mode of scientific explanation. </p><p><br /></p><p><b>The Pragmatic Mode of Explanation</b></p><p>"Pragmatic" here is a technical or jargon term that refers to a particular approach to philosophy that is mainly focussed on speech and "speech acts". A speech act is an utterance that is intended to <i>do </i>something. This approach is contrasted with <i>semantics, </i>which is focussed on what words <i>mean</i>. It is not that pragmatists deny the meaning of words, but they do see meaning as secondary to doing. A classic example is irony, when we say one thing, but mean another, and do so "for effect". Semantics struggles to explain irony, though semantic explanations of irony have been proposed. Irony is simple for pragmatics since the effect of irony is to highlight the gap between expectation and reality. This is what the ironic utterance <i>does</i>. <br /><br />A question, in this view, is a speech act with the intention of seeking information. According to Faye, an explanation begins with a question. A pragmatic explanation, then, is a response to a question. As such, then, the purpose of an explanation is to <i>satisfy the questioner</i>. And an explanation is "good" to the extent that it does this. </p><p>This may seem like a slippery slope to "relativism". Pragmatist philosophers address this by requiring that the questioner not be delusional and thus the answer only has to satisfy the <i>rational </i>requirements of a questioner and not their irrational requirements. Different philosophers have addressed this in different ways. For some, it requires a metaphysical turn, that is, linking "good" to being "true". </p><p>Less problematic is the idea of <i>accuracy</i>: the closeness of an observed value to the true value. A good explanation has to attain a somewhat arbitrary level of accuracy. In physics, for example, scientists look for a confidence level of 5-sigma (5 σ). This means that there is a one in two million chance that your measurement is a statistical fluke that can be explained by some alternative route such as measurement error. So when, for example, someone announced that they had measured neutrinos travelling faster than the speed of light, the first reaction was to look for some problem in the measurement rather than an immediate overturning of general relativity. And sure enough, a loose wire in the measurement device was fixed and the neutrinos "slowed down" to subluminal speeds.</p><p>Note that all measurements have an inherent level of error due to the limitations of our methods. <i>Real</i> science will always state what level of error the scientists have identified in their measurements. If you see a measurement that is not followed by the ± sign, then you should be on alert because someone is, at best, oversimplifying things and, at worst, attempting to deceive. </p><p>An explanation that matches observations with a 5 σ level of accuracy is taken to be a good explanation in science. General relativity is a good explanation to certain questions asked by scientists. What is gravity? "Gravity is the geometry of spacetime". Why does the orbit of Mercury precess at the rate it does? Because at perihelion the curvature of spacetime caused by the sun is much greater than at aphelion, causing the planet to get ahead of where its orbit is expected to go under classical descriptions. And so on. </p><p>Other philosophers try to apply criteria like "usefulness" a good explanation is one that is "useful", though usefulness is itself a nebulous concept: Useful for what? Useful to whom? </p><p>In the pragmatic view, a good explanation entails the person asking the question understanding the answer that addresses their <i>rational</i> concerns. And if it does this, then it is a good explanation for that situation. For example, it remains to be seen whether my explanation of this is good from the reader's point of view. It gets interesting when authors raise questions that readers have never thought to ask, a situation I meet everyday as an author. </p><p>Incidentally, this is consistent with Mercier & Sperbers contention that <i>reasons </i>are <i>post hoc </i>explanations that we produce in response to questions about motivations. Humans don't act for reasons, we act and then produce <i>ad hoc </i>reasons as required. Our deliberations on whether to act or how to act are generally handled by inferential processes below the threshold of awareness. Moreover, we tend to adopt the first plausible explanation for our actions that comes to mind. A striking demonstration of this can be seen in people with neurological damage who cannot form new memories. Oliver Sacks reports one such case in his book <i>The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat </i>(1985). The patient is in hospital but cannot remember why. Asked to account for why he is there, the man confabulates a story that seems plausible to himself. He's there for a check up, he's waiting for someone, and so on. Each time it's different because he can't remember his previous answers. One of the functions of memory is to put limits on our speculations about how we got here. </p><p>By this criterion, if a five-year old asks me why the sky is blue, and I respond by explaining how the scattering of incident sun light by atoms in the atmosphere is dependent on the type of atom and the wavelength of the light; blue light is scattered by more nitrogen gas than other frequencies, so we see more blue light than other colours in any direction in the sky away from the sun itself. The answer is objectively true, to the best of my knowledge, and accurate to some arbitrary level. However, I have still failed to give a <i>good </i>answer because my five-year old interlocutor is unlikely to understand it. This is not relativism, since we can still say that some answers are better than others. The sky is not blue because that is God's favourite colour, for example. Rather there is a limit on the "goodness" of an explanation that is dependent on the knowledge and capabilities of the questioner. Similarly, if a scientist asks why the sky is blue and I give a mythological answer that would satisfy the people of, say, Iron Age India, it would not be a good explanation in that circumstance.</p><p>So a good explanation, in this mode, is an utterance that addresses a particular question, asked by a particular person whose rational needs (especially for understanding) must be satisfied by the answer. This means that explanations in this mode are not universal, they have to fit the requirements of the question/questioner. In this mode, contrary to the others, the explanation is not inherent in nature, not a fixed thing, but changes dependent on who is asking and why. An explanation has to do more than simply reveal a pre-existing truth, it has to communicate something to a specific audience. And as such, an unmitigated scientific explanation is seldom the best explanation except to other scientists. </p><p><b><br /></b></p><p><b>Other Modes?</b></p><p>These modes are how philosophers of science explain explanation to each other. I was alerted to this by reading Sam Wilkinson's (2014) application of Faye's schema to a problem in neuroscience. One mode that is not included, though it was the primary mode of explanation for ancient Buddhists is, <i>explanation by analogy</i>. In this mode, one can explain an unknown event or process by analogy to some known process. One of the best examples of this from ancient Buddhism is the <i>niyāma </i>doctrine that we find in Pāli commentaries attributed to Buddhaghosa. </p><p>In this view, for example, we can explain karma by reference to the way a seed grows into a plant (<i>bīja-niyāma</i>). Indeed, we refer to the results of karma as <i>phala </i>"fruit" and <i>vipāka </i>"ripening, maturing" (from √<i>pac</i> "to cook"). This also explains the like-for-like specificity of karma: good actions (<i>kusala</i>, <i>puṇya</i>) lead to a good rebirth (<i>sugati</i>); bad actions (<i>pāpa</i>, <i>akusala</i>, <i>apuṇya</i>) lead to a bad rebirth (<i>duggati</i>). The analogy here is that a rice seed can only grow into a rice plant. On the other hand, karma also has to be timely, i.e. to ripen at the appropriate time. The analogy for this is the way that plants bloom and fruit in season, or the way the monsoon rains (mostly) come at the same time each year (<i>utu-niyāma</i>).</p><p>However, sometimes ancient Buddhists could find no analogy. And in these cases they often resorted to theological arguments. Taking another example from the doctrine of <i>pañcavidha niyāma</i>, <i>Kamma-niyāma </i>itself refers to the inevitability of consequences. Karma <i>must </i>ripen. There is no good analogy for the inevitability of this, since it is not true that real fruit must ripen. In nature, crops may fail to ripen for many reasons. Some unripe fruit fall from the tree, some are consumed by birds, insects, or fungus, some are affected by draught, etc. Where they could find no analogy from nature, Buddhists would resort to an appeal to authority. In the case of <i>kamma-niyāma </i>Buddhaghosa opted to cite a verse from the <i>Dhammapada </i>(127) which describes inevitability. </p><p>In my articles on karma I have noted that the early belief in the inevitability of karma is overridden in later Mahāyāna and Vajrayāna texts that allow for religious practices to mitigate karmic consequences. The epitome of this is the Vajrasatva mantra, the chanting of which is said to eliminate even the most negative forms of karma, such as that from killing a buddha. This alone suggests that argument from authority is less successful than argument from analogy.</p><p><b style="text-align: center;"><br /></b></p><p><b style="text-align: center;">Doctrine as Explanation</b></p><p>Buddhist explanations are typically codified as "doctrine", a word derived from Latin that means "teaching", but is also used to refer to the official body of teachings that are core to a particular religious community. Some religieux, notably Christians and Muslims, define membership of their group by acceptance of certain doctrines. Modern Buddhists will often ape this practice, setting out a Buddhist catechism, but ancient Buddhists seem to have defined membership in terms of behaviour rather than belief. And after all, a person can profess belief, but if their behaviour is not consistent with that belief such profession is meaningless. </p><p>Doctrines are not necessarily arbitrary, but can reflect a considered position on a particular question or problem. That is to say, a doctrine can (and often does) function as an explanation. For example, in response to the question, "How should we live as Buddhists?", Buddhists codified sets of training rules or <i>śikṣapāda, </i>the best known of which are the <i>pratimokṣa </i>and the five precepts for lay Buddhists. These constitute different levels of explanation for different people. Lay people were not expected to live according to the <i>pratimokṣa</i>, though they often knew the rules and reported monks who broke them. </p><p>However, Buddhists seldom codified the questions or problems that gave rise to the doctrines. And thus we have to be careful. We do not know, for example, why anyone believed in rebirth in India. Vedic speakers were originally from a milieu that did not believe in rebirth. They seem to have embraced it when they encountered it in India (traces of the process are found in the <i>Ṛgveda </i>stories about Yama as the discoverer of the way to the <i>pitṛloka</i>). We know a good deal about the content of what various communities believed about life after death, and we know how they responded to the belief, but we don't know <i>why </i>they found rebirth a more compelling version of the afterlife than the one they arrived in Indian with (every culture has a view about this). Nor do we fully understand <i>how </i>rebirth happened, since even within Buddhism there was no general agreement on this. </p><p>There are times when we can attempt to reverse engineer the problem that gave rise to a doctrine, but since we have no way to go back in time and confirm this directly, such reconstructions are always speculative. </p><p>According to many Buddhist texts, the most fundamental thing that Buddhism seeks to explain is suffering. In Christianity, for example, suffering must be explained with reference to the creator and is often referred to as the problem of theodicy or "God's justice"; or simply the <i>problem of evil</i>. If God created the world with evil in it, was he compelled, complicit, or indifferent? Christians have addressed this problem in different ways. Evil is not God's fault because he gave humans free will (evil is our fault; or worse, evil is women's fault). Evil is part of God's plan and not being omnipotent we simply cannot understand it. Many of us now say that the explanations of evil offered by Christians are not good explanations because all of the answers implicate God as the creator of evil. </p><p>Buddhists, free of the scourge of a personified creator, had a number of approaches to explaining suffering. One of the most important reasons offered is the belief that we are repeatedly reborn in one or other of the realms of <i>saṃsāra.</i> To be reborn <i>is </i>to suffer. In response, all ancient Buddhists sought an end to rebirth as their primary goal. Arguably all modern Buddhists do also, but they seldom couch it in these terms. Modern Buddhists often try to explain evil from the point of view of individual psychology (often with a psychoanalytic perspective): evil is a result of an individual's desire, since it is desire that fuels rebirth. </p><p>However, in this example, rebirth is a given. The belief in rebirth seems to have been ubiquitous in pre-modern India. Rebirth is not a conclusion, it is an axiom. That we are reborn is never in question for Buddhists (and when it is questioned, many Buddhists throw up their hands and declare that without rebirth Buddhism is meaningless). There are early Buddhist references to non-believers, but we don't know if they actually existed, because they did not leave their own records and where we have external confirmation (as through archaeology) we find Buddhist texts are quite unreliable witnesses to history. As we know, <i>none </i>of the characters in the Pāli stories can be linked to historical events. Indian history begins with writing and writing in India begins with Asoka's inscriptions. Before that, we have archaeological evidence, such as potsherds or stupas, but this tends to shed light only on material culture, not on individuals or mores.</p><p>As Sue Hamilton (2000) says repeatedly, early Buddhists were interested in how certain things worked; they did not have much to say about whether or not anything existed. This is also true for Prajñāpāramitā.</p><p><br /></p><p><b>Is Dependent Origination a Causal Explanation?</b></p><p>Recall that the causal mode of explanation aims to explain something by showing a causal relation with something else. X explains Y, if X is the cause of Y. Superficially, the formula of dependent arising resembles a causal explanation, so much so that many modern Buddhists speak of dependent arising as a "theory of causality". This is inaccurate. Dependent arising tells us <i>when </i>causation happens, i.e. when the condition is present; it does not explain <i>how </i>causation happens. Moreover, the relations between the twelve <i>nidānas</i> are extremely varied: ignorance is the condition for volitions, for example, but birth is the condition for death. In the latter we get a dramatic example of why this is not a theory of causation. If X causes Y, then we are left stating the proposition that "birth causes death". This is obviously false. </p><p>Of course one cannot die without first being born, but it would be ridiculous to say that birth is the cause of death. Such a causal explanation fails to satisfy any rational question about death. Take the case of a person who dies at age 100. Their birth was 100 years prior. Just as Buddhists insisted on the presence of the condition, we too think of causation as happening locally, both physically and temporally. A cause with a 100 year delay in fruition doesn't work as a causal explanation because we don't perceived widely separated moments in time as being present to each other (note that in English we almost always discuss time using spatial metaphors). We are constantly interacting with the world and its living creatures; constantly experiencing causation at various levels. A 100 year delay opens the door to uncountable causal relations that would smother any causal connection between two events. </p><p>Leading up to <i>bhava </i>the <i>nidānas</i> can, at a stretch, be understood as relating to experience. But <i>bhava</i> means "existence". It may be that this was the end of the sequence at some point, because <i>bhava </i>here implies a <i>series </i>of rebirths driven by karma. This raises larger questions about whether the <i>nidānas </i>are an explanation at all. Many would say that the <i>nidānas </i>are not an ontology (not an explanation of what exists), but merely a framework for reflecting on the nature of experience in the pursuit of ending rebirth. The whole thing is predicated on axiomatic rebirth. </p><p><br /></p><p style="text-align: center;"><b>Conclusion</b></p><p>I started with an overview of different modes of explanation as understood by philosophers of science: the <i>formal logical</i> mode, the <i>ontological </i>mode, and the <i>pragmatic </i>mode. Philosophers of religion have to add a few more modes of explanation that scientists don't accept, such as explanation through analogy and appeals to doctrine. This looks like a fruitful approach to exploring Buddhism. For example, it would be useful to identify what kinds of questions Buddhists were asking. We get some idea of this from the work of people like Richard Gombrich who have identified where Buddhists were in dialogue with Brahmins or people of other faiths. For example, it seems that everyone in ancient India who believed in rebirth looked for an explanation of rebirth. Just saying we are reborn again and again is not satisfying, especially in a culture that sees birth as a misfortune. Ancient Buddhists wanted to know <i>why </i>we are <i>repeatedly </i>reborn into misery because the idea of being reborn into misery was taken to be axiomatic true. And the doctrine of karma seeks to explain rebirth rather than the belief in rebirth. Buddhists never sought to explain their belief in rebirth because everyone took it to be axiomatically true. Background beliefs are almost never explained, which is why we still need philosophers. </p><p>What other kinds of questions were Buddhists trying to answer in their myriad doctrines? And why do those doctrines compete? We tend not to even think in these terms so the answers are not forthcoming.</p><p>Then there is the question of why doctrines change. I have been interested, for example, by changes in the doctrine of karma over time, especially where we get oddities like the <i>sarvāsti </i>doctrine or the <i>pudgala </i>doctrine. What <i>caused </i>such changes? Buddhists themselves are uninterested in such questions. They are more concerned with the question of authenticity. For example, there is now a regular stream of articles saying that secular mindfulness is not authentic because the suite of practices under that rubric have been removed from their "spiritual" context (see for example White 2023). </p><p>What does this word "spiritual" mean any more? What question is "spiritual" the answer to and for whom? Moreover, there is no word in the Buddhist technical lexicon that can legitimately be translated as "spiritual"? The word has no meaning in modern English anymore, but it never had any meaning in a Buddhist context. </p><p>In the end, what do the Iron Age doctrines of Buddhism explain and for whom? For example, the intended audience for many texts is monastics, living a life that has almost no parallel in modern Buddhism, i.e. mendicant monasticism: living rough, depending on begging, mostly engaged in meditation. Do answers for this community constitute a good explanation of anything for someone living in the 21st century? Many modern Buddhists require us to believe that not only are the Iron Age doctrines still apt, but that they are the acme of all explanations: Buddhists purport to explain reality itself. </p><p>But these explanations strike few of us as salient or good. And by "us" here, I mean modern Europeans and people living in European colonies. Traditional explanations are still popular where Buddhist traditions thrive. But they clearly do not relate to the majority. If we look at the statistics, Buddhists are typically less that 1% of the population of European states. 200 years after the first Buddhist monks arrived in the UK we are still less than half of 1% of the population. The fact is that, while many Europeans are sympathetic to and tolerant of Buddhism, they have no interest in becoming Buddhist. The largest and fastest growing category of religion in the 2021 UK census was "no religion". Religious explanations are not winning people over, secular explanations are. </p><p>Moreover, I don't find the Buddhist account of reality convincing anymore, either. I'm not sure I was ever wholly convinced, but I did take on a lot of doctrine in order to facilitate a sense of belonging. Now I find the metaphysics of Buddhism quite dull and uninteresting, especially in the light of Sue Hamilton's heuristic of treating the Buddha of the Pāli canon as addressing issues of phenomenology and knowledge, and not as addressing metaphysical problems. Indeed, the Buddha famously avoids answering questions framed as "Does X exist or not exist?" And this attitude persists into the Prajñāpāramitā literature that I have spent the last ten years studying. </p><p>Buddhist metaphysics leads to paradoxes and contradictions; to philosophical kludges like the two truth doctrine (<i>dvisatyavāda</i>) or the momentary doctrine (<i>kṣanavāda</i>). One paradox, for example, is that dependent arising forbids action at a temporal distance while karma demands it: conditionality requires the presence of the condition, while some karmic actions only mature (<i>vipāka</i>) into consequences many lifetimes later. We cannot have both and ancient Buddhists produced all kinds of fudges to try to overcome this, with simple denial being at the forefront. For example, one academic journal editor, who is a Theravādin Buddhist, refused to publish an article of mine because he refused to admit that dependent arising requires the presence of the condition. We need to be clear about this: <i>causation in the absence of a cause is totally incoherent, even in Buddhism</i>. Causation in which the cause and effect appear at arbitrary times doesn't even meet the requirement of being a repeating sequence of events. It is not a sequence at all since any number of other events intervene and are implicated in conditionality generally. </p><p>The internal contradictions of Buddhist doctrine are a sign that something has gone wrong. Moreover, ancient Buddhists must have been aware of this, since all Buddhist sects introduced doctrinal innovations and this still goes on today. Some of the explanations, such as <i>sarvāstivāda </i>and <i>pudgalavāda</i>, make clear that they introduced innovations to deal with perceived problems in doctrine, but most never acknowledge the motivations for innovations. Changes in the doctrine of karma are <i>never </i>justified. Later Buddhists simply adopted a different definition and did not acknowledge the older one. </p><p>The modern Buddhists' use of ancient Buddhist texts as justification for a belief is not a good explanation for me, as it doesn't answer any question that I have posed about Buddhist doctrines. Moreover, not even ancient Buddhists could cite textual justification for changing the doctrine of karma, because that would mean admitting that the <i>Buddhavācana</i> had mistakes in it. </p><p>What Buddhism does explain is this: there is a real state of contentless awareness that a human being can reach by withdrawing attention from sensory experience and enduring the resultant sensory deprivation (often accompanied by hallucinations). <br /><br />In terms of conditionality we have to leave dependent arising behind in explaining contentless awareness. This is the state that occurs when all conditions for sensory experience have been eliminated through the practice of nonapprehension of sensory experiences. Philosophers would refer to it as a non-intentional conscious state. That is to say, a conscious mental state that is not "aimed at" anything. </p><p>However, the vast majority of Buddhists reify this state and talk about it as "reality". The word may be explicit (especially in English language publications) or it may be implicit. And this is ironic for several reasons. There is no word in Indic languages that quite covers the same semantic field as the abstract noun "reality". Reality is never explicit in Pāḷi, for example, because there is no such term in Pāḷi. The same applies for Sanskrit and Chinese. Buddhist accounts of reality are often merely silly, like the common claim that "mind creates matter". It doesn't. Moreover, Buddhist texts don't claim that it does, because they almost never discuss "matter" (<i>dravya</i>) in relation to mind; they discuss <i>phenomena </i>(<i>dharma</i>)<i> </i>which they clearly distinguish from objects. </p><p>My conclusion is that traditional Buddhism does not provide me with good general explanations. Modern Buddhism does little better since it subordinates all knowledge to the claims of the traditional buddhist: where a Buddhist acknowledges the validity of a scientific explanation, for example, they almost always assert that the Buddha got there first. For Buddhists, science or any foreign body of knowledge can only ever be a handmaiden to Buddhism. In this all too common scenario Buddhists co-opt the explanatory power of science to assuage their anxieties over orthodoxy and to bolster metaphysical claims (that are otherwise unreasonable). Buddhism does not provide me with good explanations of reality, truth, or any other metaphysical issue. Buddhists have no explanation whatever of morality, just a bunch of lists of moral rules. As Damien Keown long ago noted, there are no ethical treatises in traditional Buddhist literature. </p><p>Buddhism can do a decent job of explaining the state of contentless awareness that follows the cessation of sensory experience. And yet I know that scientists are now exploring this phenomenon and are likely to do a better job of explaining it, just as they do for other events and states. </p><p>We have an interlocking network of good explanations of reality in science (in the form of theories that satisfy many levels of questioning). Science gives us extremely accurate and precise values for some of the physical properties of changing systems. However, even science is not a complete description of the world as it stands because the vast majority of scientists are committed to a reductionist explanatory paradigm: any event or state is best explained in terms of events and states at a lower order of structure and/or complexity: the parts explain the whole. Only... bricks and mortar <i>don't </i>explain architecture. I don't accept reductionism as a complete metaphysics. Rather, I hold that structure is <i>equally </i>important to substance, and that in order to have knowledge of structures we cannot employ the destructive analysis of reductionism (which destroys structures). Any good explanation will explain both substance and structure and privilege neither. So, while I am critical of Buddhist explanations, I'm not advocating scientism as an alternative. As useful as reductionist science undoubtedly is, we have a long way to go understanding the place and role of structure. </p><p style="text-align: center;">~~oOo~~</p></div>
<p style="text-align: center;"><b>Bibliography</b></p>
<p class="hang">Faye, Jan.(2007). "The Pragmatic-Rhetorical Theory of Explanation." In <i>Rethinking Explanation. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science</i>. 43-68. Edited by J. Persson and P. Yikoski. Dordrecht: Springer.</p><p class="hang">White, Curtis. (2023). "How Corporations Attempt to Co-opt Buddhism." <i>Yes Magazine. </i>Jan 24, 2023. <a href="https://www.yesmagazine.org/opinion/2023/01/24/corporate-buddhism">https://www.yesmagazine.org/opinion/2023/01/24/corporate-buddhism</a></p><p class="hang">Wilkinson, Sam. (2014). "Levels and Kinds of Explanation: Lessons from Neuropsychiatry." <i>Frontiers in Psychology</i> 5 (article 373): 1-9. </p><p></p>Jayaravahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13783922534271559030noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19327107.post-41090598783441114812023-01-27T10:53:00.001+00:002023-02-03T03:00:53.348+00:00Reading rūpa (phenomeno)logically<div style="text-align: justify;">
<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_7HCWrom6Mf6YzWndUFlQJ29bIDB-Av2B78eMdeAq2LdrSs0CR5OLHT_nKYE9IKBBJcO7oWeoWl_dfYvHYw-_b8P2NAaba1LOKo7sdUIki1vUgekIMW64fPBaMEpDYdd-ymKeWUy7Sbwwdz4kOBfAPAetA2GFY8WbVPTOwBC6ZVNTHTGTJg/s2400/building-reflection-637278988.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1800" data-original-width="2400" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_7HCWrom6Mf6YzWndUFlQJ29bIDB-Av2B78eMdeAq2LdrSs0CR5OLHT_nKYE9IKBBJcO7oWeoWl_dfYvHYw-_b8P2NAaba1LOKo7sdUIki1vUgekIMW64fPBaMEpDYdd-ymKeWUy7Sbwwdz4kOBfAPAetA2GFY8WbVPTOwBC6ZVNTHTGTJg/w200-h150/building-reflection-637278988.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>Because I read everything that academics publish on the <i>Heart Sutra</i>, I see a lot of translations of the Sanskrit word <i>rūpa</i> (Chinese: <i>sè</i> 色). The most common translation of the word is "form", but one often sees it translated as "body" or, especially in relation to Tibetan Buddhism, even as "matter". Even when selecting "form" many translators and commentators appear to have <i>substance </i>in mind. Over the years I've become convinced that this must be incorrect. <p></p>
<p>I've written about <i>rūpa</i> before, especially <a href="http://jayarava.blogspot.com/2020/12/modern-interpretations-of-khandhas.html">in the context of the skandhas</a>, based on extended essays on the <i>khandhas </i>in Pāli found in Vetter (2000) and Hamilton (2000). As I noted in my previous essay, the modern definition of <i>rūpaskandha </i>has been influenced by an ancient mistake in the <i>Khajjanīya Sutta </i>(SN 22.79), which related the word to a verb <i>ruppati </i>"to strike" (Skt <i>rupyati</i>), when in fact it was meant to be <i>rūpayati </i>"appearing", a denominative extrapolated <i>from the noun</i>. However, the denominative doesn't occur in Pāli, which may explain the incorrect etymology that follows from <i>ruppati</i>. </p>
<p>In this essay I want to try to show the utility of what I'm now calling a "phenomenological approach". I had been calling it "epistemic", but I realised that the focus is <i>phenomena </i>and the cessation of all phenomena in meditation. The result is certainly a kind of knowledge, <i>prajñā</i>, but the focus is on phenomena and <i>prajñā </i>appears to be context dependent. I believe, but cannot yet prove, that the cessation of experience in meditation, and the subsequent contentless awareness (aka <i>emptiness</i>), were common knowledge in ancient India. Contrary to the perennial philosophy, I do not believe that all religions point to a single truth. Rather, I believe that each sect interpreted contentless awareness in their own way, giving us a multitude of religions all based on one kind of experience, but quite diverse in how they understood the meaning and significance of contentless awareness. </p>
<p>We can begin with dictionary definitions, but in order to understand <i>rūpa </i>we need to see how it is used in context. I will argue that, in a Buddhist context, we should always at least try to understand it in terms of phenomenology. In this view, <i>rūpa </i>always means "appearance" whether visual or across sensory modes. </p>
<p>The noun <i>rūpa </i>refers to "any outward appearance or phenomenon or colour" (Monier-Williams). Mayerhofer (1976: III 70-71) tells us it means "appearance, colour, shape, beauty". According to William K. Mahoney (1998: 247, n.5), the word is based on the verbal root <i>rūp </i>"to exhibit" or "display"; however, there is no such root in W. D. Whitney's <i>The Roots, Verb-forms and Primary Derivatives of the Sanskrit Language</i>. Monier-Williams does include an entry for <i>rūp </i>but states the verb is probably a denominative, which is to say that the verb <i>rūpayati </i>means "to appear; appearing" since, in this case, it derives from the noun <i>rūpa </i>"appearance". As noted there is an unrelated root √<i>rup </i>"to harm" which forms a third person singular indicative <i>rupyati </i>"he/she/it harms" (Pāli <i>ruppati</i>). For example, in the <i>Sutta Nipāta</i> someone who is deprived of <i>kāma </i>is <i>sallaviddhova ruppati</i> "hurt as though pierced by an arrow" (Sn 767).</p>
<p>In Pāli, <i>rūpayati </i>and <i>ruppati </i>became confused. This may be because <i>rūpayati </i>doesn't occur in Pāli until the medieval commentaries began to be composed (likely by people knowledgeable about Sanskrit or, at least, grammar). Around one third of the occurrences of <i>ruppati </i>in the suttas<i> </i>occur in the <i>Khanjjanīya Sutta</i>. I've previously noted that I became aware of this because in the <i>Pañcaviṃśatisāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā </i>we find:</p>
<blockquote><i>yā śāradvatīputra rūpaśunyatā na sā rūpaṃ... tathā hi śāradvatīputra yā rūpaśunyatā na sā rūpayati </i>| (Zacchetti 2005: 393)</blockquote>
<blockquote><p>Śāriputra, that absence of appearance, is not appearance... since the absence of appearance does not appear. </p></blockquote><p>And the same is true of the other skandhas (<i>vedanā </i>does not <i>vedayati </i>and so on). As it happens this is the line immediately preceding the opening line of the core passage of the <i>Heart Sutra</i>. What comes next is the question "And why is that?" (<i>tat kasya hetoḥ</i>) and the answer is the now famous lines (though in their generally unfamiliar original form ): "For, Śāriputra, appearance is not different from emptiness; " (<i>na hi śāradvatīputra anyad rūpam anyā śunyatā</i>).</p><p>Given this as a starting point, we now need to look more closely at how the word is used in a Buddhist context.</p><br />
<p><b>Buddhist Usage</b></p>
<p>The Buddhist account of sensory perception is spelled out in some Pāḷi texts, e.g. <i>The Loka Sutta </i>(SN 12.44):</p>
<blockquote><p>And what, monks, is the origin of the world. Conditioned by eye and appearances, visual discrimination occurs. The three together are <i>contact</i>. With contact as condition, valence occurs; with valence as condition, desire occurs; with desire as a condition, grasping occurs; with grasping as condition, becoming occurs; with becoming as condition, birth occurs; with birth as condition, aging and death occur: grief, lamenting, misery, depression, and despondency are born. This, monks, is the origin of the world.</p>
<p><i>Katamo ca, bhikkhave, lokassa samudayo? Cakkhuñca paṭicca rūpe ca uppajjati cakkhuviññāṇaṃ. Tiṇṇaṃ saṅgati phasso. Phassapaccayā vedanā; vedanāpaccayā taṇhā; taṇhāpaccayā upādānaṃ; upādānapaccayā bhavo; bhavapaccayā jāti; jātipaccayā jarāmaraṇaṃ sokaparidevadukkhadomanassupāyāsā sambhavanti. Ayaṃ kho, bhikkhave, lokassa samudayo.</i> </p></blockquote>
<p>This pericope is repeated for each of the sensory modes. </p>
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>eye and appearance give rise to eye-discrimination</li>
<li>ear and sound give rise to ear-discrimination</li>
<li>nose and smells give rise to nose-discrimination</li>
<li>tongue and tastes give rise to tongue-discrimination</li>
<li>body and tangibles give rise to body-discrimination</li>
<li>mind and dharmas give rise to mind-discrimination</li></ul><p>In the <i>Sabba Sutta</i> (SN 35.23) and elsewhere, these twelve items (eye and appearances, etc.) are called <i>āyatana</i> and they are <i>everything </i>(<i>sabbaṃ</i>). In the <i>Pahāna Sutta</i> (SN 35.24), the twelve <i>āyatana </i>are to be abandoned (<i>pahātabba</i>). In terms of understanding, and therefore translating, <i>rūpa</i>,<i> </i>we can see that <i>rūpa </i>stands in the same relation to the eye as sound does to hearing, or the body to the sense of touch. Certainly, in this context, <i>rūpa </i>is not "body". </p>
<p>Note that, for in each sensory mode, there is no consideration of the <i>object </i>being sensed; rather, we have the sensory organ (eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, mind) and something (appearance, sound, smell, taste, touch, dharma) that crosses the space between us and the object so that it contacts (<i>phassa</i>) our sensory organ and causes the arising of discrimination (<i>viññāna</i>). Here, then, <i>rūpa </i>is <i>not "</i>the object of perception", it is the <i>medium </i>through which visual objects are perceived. </p>
<p>In modern terms the <i>something</i>, the medium, related to the visual sense, is simply the light reflecting off the object and striking the eye, from which we extract visual information concerning the colour, shape, contrast, edges, etc of the object. While we can think of <i>rūpa </i>as reflected light, it would be anachronistic to use this concept in talking about early Buddhist religious doctrines. The ancient Buddhists do not seem to have thought in terms of reflected light facilitating seeing. Rather they thought in terms of a vague "visual appearance" emanating from the object and <i>striking </i>the eye to create a moment of visual awareness.</p>
<blockquote><p><i>Evameva kho, bhikkhave, assutavā puthujjano cakkhusmiṁ haññati manāpāmanāpehi rūpehi </i>(SN IV 201)</p>
<p>Thus also, monks, the uneducated hoi polloi are <i>struck in the eye</i> by pleasant and unpleasant appearances. </p></blockquote>
<p>If <i>rūpa</i> were the object of perception, then being "struck in the eye by an appearance"<i> </i>(<i>cakkhusmiṁ haññati rūpehi</i>) is not <i>vision</i>, it's a trip to the hospital. There is no <i>object </i>that strikes the eye and gives rise to pleasure. </p>
<blockquote><p><i>Corā gāmaghātakāti kho, bhikkhave, channetaṃ bāhirānaṃ āyatanānaṃ adhivacanaṃ. Cakkhu, bhikkhave, haññati manāpāmanāpesu rūpesu; sotaṃ, bhikkhave…pe… ghānaṃ, bhikkhave…pe… jivhā, bhikkhave, haññati manāpāmanāpesu rasesu; kāyo, bhikkhave…pe… mano, bhikkhave, haññati manāpāmanāpesu dhammesu. </i>(SN IV.175)</p>
<p>Monks, "like thieves who attack a town" is a way of talking about the six external senses. Monks, the eye is attacked (<i>haññati</i>) by pleasant and unpleasant appearances; the ear..., nose.., the tongue is attacked by pleasant and unpleasant tastes; monks, the body... the mind is attacked by pleasant and unpleasant thoughts.</p></blockquote>
<p>From all this we can deduce an important definition:<br />
</p><p><br /></p><p style="font-size: medium; outline: 1px; text-align: center;"><i>rūpa</i> is to the eye as sound is to the ear</p><br />
<p>This is a general definition of <i>rūpa </i>in a Buddhist context. Making analogies was a very popular method of inferring knowledge in ancient India, so it is fitting that our general definition of <i>rūpa </i>should emerge from an analogy. <i>Rūpa </i>is not, and cannot be "the body", since in this context "the body" is part of the scheme as <i>kāya</i> (literally "a collection") and is in a different category, i.e. the category of sense organs, not the category of sense media. Moreover, <i>rūpa </i>cannot be the object of vision, since the object itself striking the eye does not result in vision, usually the opposite. Rather, we visually know an object (<i>cakkhu-viññāṇaṃ</i>) by seeing the light reflected from it. This reflected light is conceptualised in Pāli as "appearance" (<i>rūpa</i>). </p><p>However, this definition raises a problem in terms of how <i>rūpa </i>is used in other terms, notably <i>rūpaskandha </i>and <i>nāmarūpa. </i>In these terms <i>rūpa </i>is traditionally defined as meaning "the entire physical universe" and "the body". And neither of these definitions offers much in the way of coherent interpretation. How can one word mean both "visual appearance" (and <i>definitely not </i>"body" which is <i>kāya</i>), "body", and "the entire physical universe"? My answer is that it cannot. It does not. This interpretation is old, but it misses the point. </p><p>So how does the phenomenological reading help here? </p><br />
<p><b>Rūpakkhandha</b></p>
<p>As noted in previous work on <i>rūpakkhandha</i>, the traditional definitions are based on incorrect information, especially the folk etymology in the <i>Khajjanīya Sutta</i> (SN 22.79). As Sue Hamilton (2000: 70) noted: "there is no text which gives a full and clear account of what is being referred to by the term <i>khandha</i>.". Still, there is another way in which <i>rūpakkhandha </i>is defined, in the <i>Mahāhatthipadoma Sutta</i> (MN 28) that carries a little more weight and is more amenable to metaphysics:</p>
<blockquote><p><i>Katamo cāvuso, rūpupādānakkhandho? Cattāri ca mahābhūtāni, catunnañca mahābhūtānaṃ upādāya rūpaṃ. </i><i>Katamā cāvuso, cattāro mahābhūtā? Pathavīdhātu, āpodhātu, tejodhātu, vāyodhātu.</i><i>Katamā cāvuso, pathavīdhātu? Pathavīdhātu siyā ajjhattikā, siyā bāhirā. Katamā cāvuso, ajjhattikā pathavīdhātu?</i> </p>
<p><i>Yaṃ ajjhattaṃ paccattaṃ kakkhaḷaṃ kharigataṃ upādinnaṃ, seyyathidaṃ – kesā lomā nakhā dantā taco maṃsaṃ nhāru aṭṭhi aṭṭhimiñjaṃ vakkaṃ hadayaṃ yakanaṃ kilomakaṃ pihakaṃ papphāsaṃ antaṃ antaguṇaṃ udariyaṃ karīsaṃ, yaṃ vā panaññampi kiñci ajjhattaṃ paccattaṃ kakkhaḷaṃ kharigataṃ upādinnaṃ. Ayaṃ vuccatāvuso, ajjhattikā pathavīdhātu.</i> (MN I 185)</p></blockquote>
<blockquote><p>And what, comrade, is the branch whose fuel is appearance? It is the four great "beings" (<i>bhūtā</i>) and the appearances dependent on them. And what, comrade, are the four great "beings". The elements (<i>dhātu</i>) of earth, water, heat, and wind. And what, comrade, is the earth element. The earth element may be internal or external. And what, comrade is the internal earth-element?</p>
<p>That which is internal to oneself and is hard (<i>kakkhaḷa</i>) or solid (<i>kharigata</i>) when grasped, such as: head hairs, body hairs, fingernails, teeth, skin, flesh, sinews, bones, marrow, kidneys, heart, liver, diaphragm, spleen, lungs, intestines, bowel, stomach, excrement</p></blockquote>
<p>And the proper attitude to all this <i>solidity </i>is </p>
<blockquote><p><i>taṃ netaṃ mama, nesohamasmi, na meso attā</i> (MN I 185)</p>
<p>This is not mine, I am not this, this is not the essence of me.</p></blockquote><p>This is all usually construed in a metaphysical framework because our Theravāda informants tell us that <i>they believe</i> that it concerns metaphysics (based on their traditional commentaries on the Abhidhamma). This reinforces the sectarian idea that <i>rūpakkhandha </i>is substance generally. As I say, I no longer believe this to be true or even plausible.</p>
<p>A lot of this material comes either from the general Indian background at the time of the second urbanisation (from ca 600 BC onwards) or from Brahmanism. We learn a lot about the conception of the elements from Vedic texts. For example, the idea of the element of <i>tejo </i>"heat", is not simply "fire". Rather, the element of <i>tejo </i>is conceptually connected to actual flames, but also to the sun, anything hot, and <i>digestion</i>. Fire might be the prototype that defines the category, but clearly the category itself is not composed only of "fire". Moreover, the general word for fire is <i>agni </i>(Pāḷi <i>aggi</i>).</p>
<p>This language of prototypes defining categories and membership of the category being based on similarity to the prototype comes from George Lakoff's expansion on Wittgenstein's <i>family resemblances</i>, especially as set out in his book <i>Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things </i>(1987).<i> </i>I've often cited Lakoff's work on metaphors, but his approach to categorisation is useful here. The "beings" (<i>bhūtā</i>) in this view represent <i>prototypes </i>(or models) by which the categories are defined. Earth is the conceptual model for defining solidity, water for cohesion, heat for transformation, and wind for movement. We could still define these in ontological terms (leading to metaphysics), but we can also define them experientially (leading to phenomenology). </p><p>For example, if we grasp some hair we will have an experience of solidity or resistance. Hair is an example of "earthiness" because the solidity of hair is analogous to the prototype of solidity, i.e. the earth. Moreover, although Buddhaghosa goes into similar detail about <i>where </i>we experience "earth" in the body (Vism XI.27 ff), it's clear that this is not an ontology (i.e. not an account of real things) and not intended to be an ontology; this is <i>a meditation practice</i>. Making it into an ontology was a project of later Buddhist monks who seem to have completely missed the point (perhaps because they didn't meditate).</p>
<p>This means that we are not <i>forced </i>to read <i>rūpakkhandha </i>(metaphysically) as "the body" as Vetter and Hamilton suggested. We might even say, given comments on <i>rūpa </i>above, that it would incoherent to think of <i>rūpakkhandha</i> as "the body". There is no doubt that we can experience solidity <i>in </i>our body as well as outside it, but our body is <i>not </i>the prototype for solidity, earth is the prototype. </p>
<p>This opens up the possibility of reading <i>rūpakkhandha </i>phenomenologically, in which case the way the word is used ought to reflect the basic meaning, i.e. <i>appearance</i>. I take <i>rūpakkhandha </i>to refer to the "appearance" of sensory experience across the six sensory modes. Here <i>rūpa </i>is a metonym for appearance across the sensory spectrum: appearance, sound, smell, taste, tangibles, and thoughts (<i>rūpa</i>, <i>saddo</i>, <i>gandho</i>, <i>raso</i>, <i>jivhā</i>, <i>phoṭṭhabbo</i>, <i>dhammo</i>).</p><p><br /></p>
<p><b>Nāmarūpa</b></p>
<p>Like <i>rūpakkhandha</i>, there is a long tradition of treating <i>nāmarūpa </i>as an ontology. In this ontology we divide the world into "physical" and "mental". We have Pāli technical terms for these categories, viz. <i>kāyika </i>and <i>cetasika</i>. These terms are adjectives meaning "concerned with or pertaining to the body (<i>kāyo</i>)" and concerned with thought (<i>ceto</i>). Theravāda exegetes take <i>kāyika </i>to be another metonym for the entire physical world, along with with <i>rūpa</i>. This is a dualistic ontology that simply divides the world into material and non-material. We are quite familiar with this dualistic ontology in Europe, because it was central to our intellectual tradition. For Descartes, for example, this dualism allowed a place for God in an otherwise materialistic universe. </p>
<p>That said, we can make a valid epistemic distinction between what we know about what goes on in our body and what we know about the world. This is the distinction between internal (<i>ajjhattika</i>) and external (<i>bāhirā</i>). The distinction is epistemic because we get different kinds of information from our different senses. <i>I</i><i>nteroception </i>gains us knowledge of our internal physical state, and <i>exteroception </i>knowledge of the external world. We may well <i>infer </i>metaphysical conclusions from such knowledge, but <i>we don't have to</i>. We can think of this as a basic distinction between the kinds of knowledge we can have and how we get it. And, notably, different people infer different metaphysics apparently from the same kinds of experience (especially where meditation is concerned). </p>
<p>Again, we are not forced to read <i>nāmarūpa </i>as an ontology or as rooted in a particular kind of metaphysics. I think we can read <i>rūpa </i>here as appearance also. Note that as a <i>nidāna</i>, <i>nāmarūpa </i>is conditioned by <i>viññāṇa</i>,<i> </i>which I have defined as "discrimination of the object ". I have contrasted this with <i>saññā </i>which is "recognising (and thus naming) the experience". Two different kinds of knowledge, both sharing the etymological root <i>jñā</i> "to know". </p>
<p>In the <i>Mahānidāna Sutta </i>(DN 15) we find a curious variant of the <i>nidānas</i>. In this <i>sutta</i>, <i>viññāna </i>is the condition for <i>nāmarūpa</i>, but <i>nāmarūpa</i> is also the condition for <i>viññāna</i>. In the usual presentation of <i>nidāna doctrine </i>as an ontology (a way of dividing up reality) this doesn't make any sense. How can two things mutually condition each other? Conditionality requires the presence of the condition for the effect to arise. If the effect is also the condition for the condition, then conditionality ought to break down. Thus, at face value, in an ontological reading, this <i>sutta</i> is incoherent. </p>
<p>In a phenomenological reading <i>viññāna </i>involves identifying the object of experience from the experience of it. We can do this because the experience has a <i>sui generis </i>quality (or a <i>sabhāva</i>; Skt <i>svabhāva</i>). We know from the inside that greed and generosity are different, that anger and love are different. And such differences are essential to Buddhist soteriology because they influence how we act and, therefore, where we are reborn. This in turn either supports or undermines our attempts to end rebirth (the ultimate goal of all Buddhist traditions). As we know from considering the <i>khandha </i>doctrine, <i>viññāna </i>depends on the appearance (<i>rūpa</i>) of a sensory experience and putting a name (<i>nāma</i>) to it. In a sense ,then, <i>viññāna </i>and <i>nāmarūpa </i>are two different ways of talking about the same aspect of sensory experience. </p>
<p>Another aspect of the ancient account of sensory experience is that when an object is discriminated we name that discrimination according to which sensory mode it occured in:</p>
<blockquote><p><i>yaññadeva, bhikkhave, paccayaṃ paṭicca uppajjati viññāṇāṃ tena teneva saṅkhaṃ gacchati. cakkuñca paṭicca rūpe ca uppajjati viññāṇaṃ, cakkhuviññāṇanteva saṅkhaṃ gacchati... (MN I 259)</i></p>
<p>Whatever condition gives rise to a discrimination, it goes by that name. A discrimination arising on the basis of the eye and appearances, goes by the name "eye-discrimination"...</p></blockquote>
<p>I think we cannot overstate the importance of this. "Goes by that name" translates <i>saṅkhaṃ gacchati</i>. If, for example, there is a <i>viññāna </i>dependent on <i>cakkhu </i>and <i>rūpa</i>, then the name (<i>nāma</i>) of that is <i>cakkhuviññāna</i>. How do we know that it is a <i>cakkhuviññāna</i>? Because we perceived it via the eye and because it has the appearance of a visual percept. Vision is different from other modes of perception, i.e. vision has a sui generis character than enables us to distinguish visual sensory experience from other kinds of sensory experience. </p>
<p>We may notice that all these doctrines that Theravādins treat as ontologies are simplistic. The idea that just five categories cover all possible phenomena is overly simplistic. The fact is that these doctrines are mostly meditation practices rather than ontologies. They are subjects to contemplate in an attempt to gain liberation, not existential explanations. They all seek to undermine our conviction that sensory experience is the acme of being, because the authors were familiar with the idea of the cessation of sensory experience and possibly with the experience of cessation. </p>
<p>Early Buddhists (and Prajñāpāramitā Buddhists) did not, for example, make much of the contrast between pleasant and unpleasant sensory experiences. Clearly there is some discussion of these in relation to karma and rebirth. But the much clearer contrast is between <i>any </i>sensory experience (<i>kāma</i>) and <i>no </i>sensory experience (aka <i>nibbāna</i>, <i>suññatāvhāra</i>). </p><p>What the <i>Mahānidāna Sutta </i>appears to argue is that discrimination of the object and its name and appearance are much the same thing. That if they really are two different processes, then they coexist. And this is a phenomenological argument, based on epistemology; it is not a metaphysical argument based on inferences drawn from experience.</p>
<br /><p><b>Conclusion</b></p>
<p>In this essay I've tried to make two co-existing arguments. On one hand the traditional interpretation of <i>rūpa </i>is incoherent in many ways, largely because it is misinterpreted as "body" or "substance". This seems to be due to a tendency towards metaphysical speculation in the post-canonical period (and up to the present). On the other hand, a phenomenological reading of <i>rūpa </i>as "appearance" stops short of inferring a particular metaphysics and avoids the kind of incoherence that we see in, for example, Theravāda orthodoxy.</p>
<p>We notably conclude that: <i>rūpa</i> is to the eye as sound is to the ear.</p>
<p>In a Buddhist context, then, <i>rūpa </i>means "appearance". In modern terms, this amounts to <i>reflected light</i>, but I have tried to avoid the anachronism of attributing knowledge of physics to the Iron Age authors of the Pāli suttas. The translation "appearance" is a much better reflection of the state of their knowledge of the physics of visual perception.</p>
<p>I have tried to show that we can retain this approach to better account for the idea of <i>rūpakkhandha. </i>Here, also, <i>rūpa </i>means "appearance" but in a more general way. And the same applies to <i>nāmarūpa</i>. </p><p>I believe that this means we are not forced to take the metaphysical speculations of Theravādins, or any other Buddhists, seriously. We can, and I argue that we should, read these passages as concerned with phenomenology in the service of soteriology. Early Buddhists did not speculate about the nature of phenomena or the nature of reality. Because they can, and did, reduce sensory experience to the point where from their point of view it was completely absent (<i>suñña</i>), they were simply not interested (at first) in the nature of experience, they were interested in the implications of the cessation and absence of sense experience in meditation. </p>
</div>
<p style="text-align: center;">~~oOo~~</p><br />
<p><b>Bibliography</b></p>
<p class="hang">Hamilton, Sue. 2000. <i>Early Buddhism: A New Approach</i>. London: Routledge.</p><p class="hang">Lakoff, George. 1987. <i>Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things. </i>Chicago University Press</p>
<p class="hang">Mahony. William K. (1998). <i>The Artful Universe: An Introduction to the Vedic Religious Imagination</i>. State University of New York Press.</p>
<p class="hang">Mayrhofer, Manfred. (1976) <i>Kurzgefaßtes etymologisches wörterbuch des Altindischen</i>. <i>A Concise Etymological Sanskrit Dictionary</i>. Heidelberg: Carl Winter. Universitätsverlag.</p>
<p class="hang">Vetter, Tilmann. 2000. <i>The Khandha Passages in the Vinayapiṭaka and the Four Main Nikāyas</i>. Wien Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften.</p>
<p></p>Jayaravahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13783922534271559030noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19327107.post-31982453816309644702022-12-23T11:19:00.003+00:002022-12-24T07:57:29.770+00:00An Open Letter to Buddhist Studies Academics<div style="text-align: justify;">
<p>I'm not an academic.
I don't have the training, temperament, or the inclination. If I <i>had </i>been an academic I would have chosen chemistry (my undergraduate major) as my field, not Buddhist Studies. However, by a series of accidents I have ended up publishing around thirty articles in Buddhist Studies journals, including fourteen on the <i>Heart Sutra </i>(or closely related topics). I expect at least three more publications on the <i>Heart Sutra </i>by the end of 2023. I am, by a very wide margin, the most prolific scholar on this text since Lopez published his two books, 34 and 26 years ago respectively. </p><p>My anonymous reviewers comments are often a mixed bag. However, I still have the email with comments on my first <i>Heart Sutra</i> article (2015). Anonymous reviewer No.1 said:</p>
<p></p>
<blockquote>"This is an impressive paper, in which the author has assembled a wide range of evidence—drawn from Chinese and Tibetan as well as Sanskrit—in support of his hypothesis... </blockquote><blockquote>This scenario strikes me as entirely plausible, indeed, ingenious, and it certainly does resolve the grammatical difficulties that have plagued earlier interpretations of the Sanskrit text".</blockquote>
<p></p>
<p>Of course, this was followed by <i>nine pages</i> of suggestions for improvement. I was and am extremely grateful for a thoughtful and sympathetic, but <i>penetrating,</i> critique of my draft. As a writer, this is exactly what you want and my article was considerably improved as a result. I thought, naively as it turns out, that if I could get my work published in an academic journal academics would take it (and me) seriously. Comments like the one above, and actually getting published, only encouraged this delusion. </p><p>The reality is that is that across the Humanities, <a href="https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2014/04/23/academic-papers-citation-rates-remler/">fully 80% of articles are never cited</a>. And even when my "impressive paper" has been cited by Buddhist Studies academics, they don't seem to be impressed at all, but also don't commit themselves to saying what is wrong with it. They just vaguely wave it off in a footnote. To be clear, in that article I showed that the first sentence of Conze's <i>Prajñāpāramitāhṛdaya </i>has a simple, and <i>entirely uncontroversial</i>, grammatical mistake in it. A mistake that can be resolved by the addition of an <i>anusvāra</i> (a dot or <i>ṃ</i>) to one syllable. </p><p>Academics don't seem to care that there are multiple mistakes in Conze's Sanskrit edition of the <i>Heart Sutra</i>. I am completely stumped by this attitude. </p>
<p>In this letter I want to highlight some issues with respect to doing research on the <i>Heart Sutra</i>, many of which I have already raised in passing in my articles. I also want to make a case for getting off the fence when it comes to the provenance of the <i>Heart Sutra</i>. To this end I spell out some simple ways to refute my work and I invite everyone to try to disprove my thesis (the joke goes: I say to academics "disprove me!" and they reply "We <i>do</i> disapprove of you.").</p>
<br />
<p style="text-align: center;"><b>Writing About the Heart Sutra</b></p>
<p>Every year, at least one or two academics write articles about the <i>Heart Sutra</i>. In most cases this is not connected to the main thrust of their research and is not a subject they return to. The quality of these one-off articles is typically quite poor. I have informally critiqued a number of these articles (see the blog posts listed in the bibliography). Two published articles, Attwood (2020 "Methods") and (2022 "Frontiers") look more deeply at the problem of substandard writing about the <i>Heart Sutra </i>by academics.</p>
<p>Almost all of these one-off articles I've read (and, for my sins, I think I've read them all) explicitly treat the <i>Heart Sutra</i> as an Indian text. The exception is Matthew Orsborn, writing as Huifeng (2014), who applied Nattier's comparative method to different parts of the text with two important results. On one hand he confirms the validity of Nattier's approach and conclusions; and on the other he notes the metaphysics of Madhyamaka are not a suitable framework for thinking about Prajñāpāramitā and suggests that an epistemic approach is needed instead. Many of my articles expand on Nattier's conclusions in the same way and this work is now summed up in Attwood (2021 "Chinese origins"). More recently I have also taken up Huifeng's idea of an epistemic reading of the <i>Heart Sutra</i> and expanded on that (2022 "Cessation"). Our approach has a definite methodology, a nascent body of theory, and some great successes explaining the seemingly inexplicable. We have made progress. </p>
<p>With respect to Nattier (1992), there seems to be a great deal of what me might charitably call "confusion" about what her version of the Chinese origins thesis explains and how it explains that. Of those Japanese scholars whose work has published in English (sometimes in translation), we mostly see them labouring away to explain the similarity of the Chinese texts or to deny that Xuanzang was involved in composing the text. While these issues are not irrelevant, they are secondary. What any theory of the provenance of the <i>Heart Sutra</i> has to explain is not the similarity of the Chinese texts, but the <i>differences </i>between the <i>Prajñāpāramitāhṛdaya</i> (<i>Hṛd</i>) and the <i>Pañcaviṃśatisāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā</i> (<i>Pañc</i>). This is because most of the passages in <i>Hṛd </i>were ostensibly (in the Indian origins hypothesis) <i>copied from Pañc. </i>This copying is not a controversial fact. Everyone knows about it and the knowledge goes back to the late-seventh century Chinese commentaries on the <i>Heart Sutra</i>, which only postdate the earliest evidence of the <i>Heart Sutra</i> by a few decades.</p>
<p>From this we can conclude that the pattern of differences between <i>Hṛd </i>and <i>Pañc </i>should be the central focus of research on the provenance of the <i>Heart Sutra</i>. But they almost never are. <br /></p>
<p>Although Nattier discussed the most salient examples of differences, Huifeng and I have noted more. Below is the complete list of expressions from passages supposedly copied from <i>Pañc </i>but which are substantively different in <i>Hṛd</i>. I give the term as it appears in <i>Hṛd </i>followed by the term we find in <i>Pañc</i>: </p>
<p></p><ol style="text-align: left;">
<li><i>Avalokiteśvara </i>< <i>Subhūti</i></li>
<li><i>caramāno </i>(present middle participle) < <i>caranta </i>(present active participle)</li>
<li><i>prajñāpāramitācaryām</i> < <i>prajñāpāramitā</i></li>
<li><i>svabhāvaśunyān</i> < <i>śūnyatā</i></li>
<li><i>rūpaṃ śūnyatā < rūpaṃ māyā </i>(in <i>Aṣṭa</i>)</li>
<li><i>na pṛthak</i> < <i>na anya/anya</i></li>
<li><i>sarvadharmāḥ </i>< <i>śūnyatā</i></li>
<li><i>amalā </i>(adj.) < <i>na saṃkliśyate </i>(verb)</li>
<li><i>avimalā </i>(adj.) < <i>na vyavadāyate </i>(verb)</li>
<li><i>anūna </i>(adj.) < <i>na hīyate </i>(verb)</li>
<li><i>aparipūrṇāḥ </i>(adj.) < <i>na vardhate </i>(verb)</li>
<li><i>avidyākṣaya </i>< <i>avidyānirodha</i></li>
<li><i>jarāmaraṇakṣaya </i>< <i>jarāmaraṇanirodha</i></li>
<li><i>na jñānaṃ</i> < <i>na prāptiḥ</i></li>
<li><i>na prāptiḥ </i>< <i>nābhisamayaṃ</i></li>
<li><i>aprāptitvāt </i>< <i>anupalambhayogena</i></li>
<li><i>āśritya </i>< <i>niśritya</i></li>
<li><i>tryadhvavyavasthitāḥ </i>< <i>atītānāgatapratyutpannāḥ</i></li>
<li><i>mahāmantraḥ </i>< <i>mahāvidyā</i></li>
<li><i>mahāvidyāmantraḥ </i>< <i>mahāvidyā</i> </li>
<li><i>anuttaramantraḥ</i> < <i>anuttarā vidyā</i></li>
<li><i>asamasamamantraḥ </i>< <i>asamasamā vidyā</i></li><li><i>mantraḥ </i>< <i>dhāraṇī</i></li></ol><p>In most of these cases, idiomatic Sanskrit expressions in <i>Pañc </i>are non-idiomatic and/or anachronistic expressions in <i>Hṛd</i>. Another class of cases do not seem to be copied, but do also seem to be non-idiomatic. I have tentatively reconstructed these by retranslating the Chinese with a view to Buddhist idioms and consulting Xuanzang's translations (which usually better reflect the Sanskrit text he was translating).</p>
<ol>
<li><i>viharatyacittāvaraṇaḥ </i>< *<i>cittaṃ asya na kvacit sajjati</i></li>
<li><i>cittāvaraṇanāstitvāt</i> < *<i>tena</i> </li>
<li><i>viparyāsātikrāntaḥ </i>< *<i>viparyāsamāyāviviktaḥ</i></li>
<li><i>satyaṃ amithyatvāt </i>< *<i>satyaṃ na mṛṣaṃ</i></li>
<li><i>uktaḥ </i>(passive past participle of √<i>vac</i>) < *<i>vaca </i>(second person singular imperative of √<i>vac</i>).</li></ol>
<p>All of these cases are explained as the result of passages being translated from Chinese to Sanskrit, without much, if any, knowledge of Sanskrit Prajñāpāramitā idioms. Most of the original Chinese text was copied from Kumārajīva's translation of <i>Pañc</i>, i.e. <i>Móhē bānrěbōluómì jīng</i> «摩訶般若波羅蜜經» (T. 223; translated 400-404CE), with the addition of a dhāraṇī copied from <i>Tuóluóní jí jīng </i>«陀羅尼集經» *Dhāraṇīsamuccaya (T. 901) translated by Atikūṭa in 654 CE, and some light editing to showcase Xuanzang's new approach to translating. </p><p>At every turn the back-translator of <i>Hṛd</i> chose a synonymous Sanskrit expression, only they chose the wrong synonym. As a result, <i>Hṛd</i> resembles the speech patterns of the character Alexander Perchov (the driver) in Jonathan Safran Foer's novel <i>Everything is Illuminated</i>. </p>
<p>A good example is <i>avidyākṣaya. </i>This is a <i>hapax legomenon</i>, i.e. a unique expression found only once in this one text. In the context of the <i>nidāna </i>doctrine, Buddhist literature invariably uses the term <i>avidyānirodha </i>(Pāli <i>avijjānirodha</i>). <i>Hṛd </i>is the only text in existence that uses the expression <i>avidyākṣaya</i>. Buddhists do use -<i>kṣaya</i> but only with reference to an idea borrowed from Jainism, i.e. <i>āśravakṣaya </i>"the destruction of the influxes" (which refers to someone who no longer creates karma). </p>
<p>Moreover, we have identified a good deal of circumstantial evidence that lends support our conclusions. The oldest <i>Heart Sutra </i>artefact is Chinese, a stele from Fangshan dated 13 March 661; see Attwood (2019). The oldest literary reference to the <i>Heart Sutra </i>(6 January 656) occurs in Chinese, specifically in Xuanzang's <i>Biography</i>; see Kotyk (2019). Commentaries on the Chinese texts date from the late seventh century. The oldest Sanskrit manuscript is the so-called <a href="https://emuseum.nich.go.jp/detail?langId=en&webView=null&content_base_id=100625&content_part_id=001&content_pict_id=004">Hōryūji manuscript</a> from Japan, is now thought to be from the ninth or tenth century (Silk 2021). The transcribed Sanskrit text in T 256 is now attributed to Amoghavajra, active in the mid-late eighth century (d. 774). Evidence from Tibet begins to appear only in the late eighth century, with commentaries around the same time. Notably all Chinese commentaries are on the standard text, while all Tibetan commentaries are on the extended text. Evidence from Dunhuang is difficult to date, but likely eighth century (during the Tibetan occupation) and mostly considerably after that. The earliest evidence from Nepal, as far as I know, is a manuscript from the thirteenth century. There is no evidence of the <i>Heart Sutra</i> from India: neither artefacts, such as manuscripts or inscriptions, nor literary mentions in other texts. The <i>Heart Sutra</i> was completely unknown in ancient India as far as we know. Eight Tibetan commentaries, from the late eighth century onwards, are attributed to "Indian" authors. We know next to nothing (or just <i>nothing</i>) about the "authors" in half of the cases, while at least two of the commentaries were commenting on Tibetan texts (Horiuchi 2021). None of the attributions has been tested against other works attributed to these authors, (where they exist). </p><p>Perhaps the most strikingly circumstantial evidence is that the <i>Heart Sutra </i>is a Chinese <i>genre </i>of Buddhist literature, unknown in India, i.e. a <i>chāo jīng </i>抄經 or digest text (a short precis of a long text made using copied passages). I believe this observation was first noted in a rather patchy one-off article in Chinese by Ji Yun (2012), (who despite having the honorary title "Professor" is a librarian at a "Buddhist University" and thus only notionally an "academic"). This article was republished in English translation in 2017. I posted a critique of Ji's article on my blog (see bibliography) and published my own exploration of this idea in Attwood (2020 "Palimpsest").</p>
<p>If those who reject this explanation wish to contribute, they need to find a <i>better </i>explanation of the 27 differences cited above and of <i>all</i> the circumstantial evidence. Show me how an expression such as <i>avidyākṣaya</i> can occur in an Indian Buddhist context when no Indian Buddhist of any period is known to have used the term. In other words, show me evidence of an Indian Buddhist tradition that <i>does </i>use this term in contradistinction to the norm. If the Indian origins thesis is so powerful, then let us see it <i>used to explain something </i>about the <i>Heart Sutra. </i>Pick an example from the list above and explain it in a way that is more satisfying than our explanation ("our" here is Nattier, Huifeng/Orsborn, Kotyk, and me). Prove me wrong and I will change my mind and tell the world about your explanation. This is how scholarship is supposed to work, right? </p><br />
<p style="text-align: center;"><b>Why is This Important for Buddhist Studies Academics?</b></p><p>Let's review some of the reasons that academics might want to accurately identify the provenance of the <i>Heart Sutra</i>, other than the simple and obvious desire to know where it came from. And apart from the fact that the normative "Indian origins thesis" doesn't seem to explain <i>anything</i>. </p><p>It is now a well-worn cliche to say that the <i>Heart Sutra</i> is the most popular Buddhist text, chanted daily by millions of Buddhists across Asia and Europe. This alone qualifies the text to be an object of intense interest and study. Most of those who chant the <i>Heart Sutra</i>, attribute magical power to the text, and at least some of this depends on its origins in India, with the Buddha. If there is no direct line back to India and the Buddha, then the popularity of the text would appear to be based on a misperception. Does this make it any less authentic? Doesn't the mere existence of the <i>Heart Sutra</i> raise questions about the notion of authenticity, i.e. that it is a matter of perception, rather than a matter of fact? <br /><br />Rethinking the authenticity of local forms of Buddhism is a desideratum, if only because European Buddhists are taking the religion in a plethora of new directions, from a tentative and usually partial embrace of secularism, to aligning with the metaphysics of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics, to approaches inspired by psychoanalysis, and so on. What can authenticity mean in these circumstances?</p><p style="text-align: start;">If the <i>Heart Sutra </i>was composed in China, then a lot of powerful and influential Buddhist figures —including the Dalai Lama and the late Thich Nhat Hanh—are potentially exposed as fallible. Academia has tended to act as a willing co-dependent with these religious figures, allowing them to act as normative sources for Buddhist historiography and doxology. There is a growing acknowledgement that academic reliance on Buddhist sources and authorities has been naive (again, we are being charitable here). See the series of articles on this by Max Deeg (2007, 2012, 2016), for example. See also Kotyk (2019) on the (in)accuracy of Chinese Buddhist sources vis à vis Imperial court records. <br /></p><p>In at least one important case—<i>aprāptitvāt </i>substituted for <i>anupalambhayogena</i>—the privilege afforded to the Sanskrit version has obscured the meaning of the <i>Heart Sutra</i>, by distracting us from the historical fact that Kumārajīva invented the term <i>yǐwúsuǒdégù</i> 以無所得故 to translate a single technical term from Sanskrit, i.e. <i>anupalambhayogena, </i>"by means of the practice of nonapprehension". In this case, the confusion goes back to the earliest commentaries. For example, Kuījī makes just this mistake (c.f. Heng-ching and Lusthaus 2001: 115-116). That is to say, the Indian origins thesis not only doesn't explain what we want it to, it actually obscures facts. It subtracts from our knowledge rather than adding to it. </p><p>As Huifeng (2014) pointed out, the ramifications of this discovery are extensive. It is not that we've got one word wrong, it is that in exposing <i>how </i>we got this word wrong, we see that the whole approach of treating the <i>Heart Sutra</i> as concerned with communicating a metaphysical truth through contradiction and paradox is shown to be a false narrative. When we clean up the text, we see that there <i>are </i>no paradoxes in the <i>Heart Sutra</i>. Moreover, the term <i>anupalambhayogena </i>"through practising nonapprehension" is clearly an <i>epistemic </i>term, concerned with meditation and the arising and, especially, the <i>cessation </i>of sensory experience. In this view, then, the message of the <i>Heart Sutra </i>is not the nihilistic metaphysics of Nāgārjuna, it is the epistemology, the phenomenology even, of sensory experience, especially of the state of "emptiness" in which all sensory experience has ceased. </p><p>We need to explain how we ended up conflating Prajñāpāramitā with the Madhyamaka approach when, in fact, they seem unrelated and are incompatible. Furthermore, we have to explain why this tension has been completely overlooked by academics. Huifeng (2016) is a notable exception to this trend and an important source for problematising the perceived sameness of Prajñāpāramitā and Madhyamaka (a theme of later Madhyamaka thought). It is all the more concerning, therefore, to note that academics who write about the <i>Heart Sutra</i> have never read Huifeng (2014) or (2016). Note that Huifeng has moved on from being a monk, and has returned to being Dr Matthew Orsborn, an academic working at Oxford University. </p><p>The Buddhist anxiety over authenticity is visible in every strata of Buddhist literature and continues to be an important theme in modern Buddhism. Given that the world considers the <i>Heart Sutra </i>to have the highest level of authenticity, we begin to see why so many Buddhists are reluctant to think of it as a Chinese composition. This doesn't quite explain the reluctance amongst academics, except of course that many Buddhist Studies academics are also religious Buddhists or act as apologists for Buddhism (this is very striking in Nāgārjuna scholarship, for example, where the most prominent scholars are <i>openly </i>apologists for Nāgarjuna. On this, compare comments by Richard H. Jones (2018).</p><p>Prajñāpāramitā is a centrally important topic for the history of Buddhism, but is sorely neglected and the normative narrative about Prajñāpāramitā is evidently false in many respects. For example, given that it emphasises practices associated with the Buddha <i>before </i>his awakening, Prajñāpāramitā may well turn out to predate mainstream Buddhism rather than appearing as an innovative breakaway group later on. Contradiction and paradox play little or no role in Prajñāpāramitā. Prajñāpāramitā has little or no relation to Madhyamaka and is in many ways antinomous to it. And so on. </p><p>The Chinese <i>Heart Sutra </i>paradigm is a <i>better </i>narrative and it has vastly more explanatory power. Those academics who don't simply ignore us, mostly seem concerned to refute this new paradigm, although refutation attempts to date seem to miss the mark entirely. Therefore, let me make it easier for those who wish to refute this new paradigm by spelling out <i>what it would take</i>. </p><p><br /></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><b>What Evidence Would Refute the Chinese Origins Paradigm?</b></p><p>One of the exercises that intellectuals sometimes do is to consider what evidence might refute our views. My view, based on ten-year-long a forensic review of the existing evidence and a lot of original research, is that the <i>Heart Sutra</i> is a Chinese <i>chāo jīng</i> 抄經 or "digest text", composed using copied passages ca 654-656 CE, by Xuánzàng 玄奘 , for Wǔ Zhào 武曌 (later Emperor Wǔ Zétiān 武則天; r. 690–705 CE). </p><p>However, it has to be admitted that evidence is sparse and not always conclusive. New, more conclusive, evidence could turn up at any time. It behooves me to be clear about what kind of evidence would refute or seriously challenge the view I am proposing. This is not a common practice in Buddhist Studies, but it is one that I am keen on. Here is an indicative, but not comprehensive, list of possible counter-evidence:</p>
<ul>
<li>The existence of a Sanskrit <i>Heart Sutra </i>manuscript or inscription from India that was securely dated (say, by C14 analysis or any similarly objective measure) prior to the seventh century would definitely refute the Chinese origins thesis. <br /><br /></li>
<li>The discovery of an Indian literary reference to the <i>Heart Sutra</i> prior to the seventh century would probably refute Chinese origins. This could include a quotation from it including some of the non-idiomatic expressions. Any early reference to a text called <i>Prajñāpāramitāhṛdaya </i>would at the very least undermine Chinese origins<i>.<br /></i><br /></li>
<li>The discovery of a Chinese <i>Xīn</i> <i>jīng</i> text from before the seventh century would also refute the current version of Chinese origins, but only in the sense of pushing back the date of composition in China and excluding Xuanzang as the likely author. Note that several texts have been conjectured to be older, but these claims have themselves all been refuted. The <i>Dàmíngzhòu jīng </i>《大明呪經》 (T 250) is certainly not from the fifth century, as the traditional narrative suggests, and is generally agreed to post-date the <i>Xīn jīng. </i>The supposed <i>Heart Sutra </i>texts in old catalogues are not even called <i>Xīn jīng </i>and we have no other information apart from the title, i.e. no idea what the content was. <br /><br /></li>
<li>The discovery of a Sanskrit manuscript/inscription of more or less any text, securely dated prior to the seventh century, with the same two dozen non-idiomatic expressions as the <i>Heart Sutra</i>,<i> </i>or at least several of them, would likely refute Chinese origins, since it would explain the oddities in a more straightforward way, i.e. by direct borrowing. </li></ul><p>I don't pretend that this list is exhaustive, but it is indicative. If this evidence, or something in this vein, turns up, I will be forced to reconsider. Until it does turn up, I think my explanation of the available evidence is better in all kinds of ways. A single process explains all the oddities in one stroke (this is partly what "explanatory power" means). My explanation fully acknowledges the authenticity of Chinese Buddhism. It takes in the full range of evidence. It provides us with a more straightforward, non-supernatural narrative about what Prajñāpāramitā practices might have looked like and how they worked. It also explains some peripheral problems such as defining terms such as <i>asaṃskṛtadharma</i>. It leads to the epistemic reading which obviates the need for speculative metaphysics, especially the kind that tells us that "nothing exists". </p><p>No one is denying that we have sensory experiences. In Buddhist terms: <i>dharmas arise</i>. But the normative metaphysical narrative is that dharmas <i>do not exist</i>. Although this is sometimes qualified by "really" or "ultimately", the qualifications don't make much, if any, difference. The insistence that dharmas don't exist (<i>na rūpaṃ na vedanā</i>, etc) forces proponents into the dualistic position of having one metaphysics for experience and a completely different metaphysics for reality, unironically called the "two truths" (ironically, because only one of them is considered to be true). The epistemic distinction between experience and reality is a much simpler prospect based on how humans come by knowledge about self and world through different sensory modes. Moreover, the epistemic approach is far more consistent with recent neurological studies of meditators in the state of emptiness. <br /></p><p>If I am wrong about these conjectures, then the fact that I have published them in academic journals requires that academics refute them by <i>publishing </i>the contradictory evidence or showing how the logic of my argument fails. The basic dynamic of scholarship, as I understand it, is still conjecture and refutation. And I would be <i>grateful </i>to be corrected, if it was done sympathetically. Of course, academics could continue to ignore my contributions, but I submit that after fourteen articles on this topic, this strategic ignorance begins to look dishonest. If I am wrong, show me. If I am right, then academics are obliged by the customs of scholarship to <i>acknowledge this</i>. <br /><br /></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><b>Open Questions in Heart Sutra Research</b></p><p>As I have gone along, I have noted many open questions regarding the <i>Heart Sutra</i>. These are topics that any qualified academic or grad student could tackle if they wanted to make a contribution. They don't quite amount to a research agenda, but solving these problems would go a long way to clarifying some of the details of the <i>Heart Sutra</i>. Again, if academics want to contribute, these are the kinds of issues they could think about working on.</p><p><br /></p>
<p><b><i> Svabhāva</i> </b></p>
<p> I have noted that the <i>Xīn jīng</i> does not use the term <i>svabhāva </i> but that it does occur in <i>Hṛd</i>. There are, broadly speaking, two Buddhist approaches to this term. In early Buddhism and Abhidharma it is used in the sense of <i>sui generis</i>, or that which enables us to identify (<i>saṃjñā</i>) the experience we are having. Distinctions such as <i>kusala</i> and <i>akusala </i> are central to Buddhist soteriology. We know which is which because they <i>feel </i>different. This is an epistemic proposition, not a metaphysical claim about the nature of dharmas.</p><p>The other approach only occurs, as far as I know, in the works of Nāgārjuna and his followers. Here, <i>svabhāva </i>is taken to mean <i>autopoietic, </i>or "self-creating". Nāgārjuna defines an existent thing as being autopoietic, i.e. an existent thing can only be one which is itself the sole condition for its own existence. It is then a trivial exercise of logic to show that nothing can be autopoietic <i>in this sense</i>. Logically, such a self-creating entity either exists permanently or it permanently does not exist. For Nāgārjuna, only autopoietic things exist; and he's just proved that no things are autopoietic because nothing is permanent. While being contingent on other things places limits on existence (especially duration), it does not stop a thing from existing. It might call into question how we define existence, but clearly many things exist that are not autopoietic. In which case, why would we privilege Nāgārjuna's late Iron Age definition over more modern definitions? </p><p>As far as I know, no one has investigated how the word <i>svabhāva</i> is used in Prajñāpāramitā, though I know that many authors assume that Prajñāpāramitā uses <i>svabhāva </i>in Nāgārjuna's autopoietic sense.</p>
<p>Matthew Orsborn (Huifeng 2016) has identified the problematic Madhyamaka telos involved in virtually all modern scholarship on Prajñāpāramitā. Given the popularity of Nāgārjuna amongst academics, this goes some way to explaining the general neglect of Prajñāpāramitā in favour of nihilistic metaphysics.</p>
<p>A study of <i>svabhāva </i>in Prajñāpāramitā, sensitive to the <i>sui generis/autopoietic</i> distinction, is urgently needed. </p><br />
<p><b>明咒 <i>and </i>咒</b></p>
<p>Matthew Orsborn tells me there is a discussion of these two terms in <i>Dàzhìdù lùn</i>《大智度論》 (T 1509). It would be really useful for someone to publish a translation and commentary on this, especially in relation to the use of the terms in Chinese translations of the <i>Heart Sutra</i>. <br /><br /><br /><b>照見 </b><br />The term <i>zhàojiàn </i>照見 has proved problematic for translators, e.g. “saw clearly” (Mattice 2021: 198), Hyun “illuminatingly sees” (Choo 2006: 142), “had an illuminating vision” (Hurvitz 1977: 107). None of these rings true for me and maybe in this case the Sanskrit back-translation, <i>vyavaalokyati sma</i>, is indicative? Since the term is used in other contexts, someone needs to look at what Indic terms were translated using this expression.</p><br />
<p><b><i>Prajñāpāramitā Chronology</i></b></p>
<p>Conze's chronology of Prajñāpāramitā is still cited as normative, but it is now obviously wrong in many respects. Our research shows that the <i>Heart Sutra</i> doesn't fit Conze's scheme at all. Most scholars now believe that the <i>Vajracchedikā Prajñāpāramitā</i> was an early text and that the <i>Ratnaguṇasamccayagāthā </i>is late. Someone needs to review the recent evidence and revise the chronology on an objective basis. The posthumous publication of Stefano Zacchetti's (2021) history of the <i>Large Sutra</i> and its main commentary goes some way towards this, but it needs to be distilled into a succinct chronology to replace Conze's dated and biased work in Buddhist Studies textbooks.</p><br />
<p><b><i>Contradiction and Paradox</i></b></p>
<p>Harrison (2006) has now shown that contradiction and paradox play little or no role in <i>Vajracchedikā</i>. This is independently supported by Jones (2012). Orsborn/Huifeng and I have shown that contradiction and paradox play little or not role in the <i>Heart Sutra</i>. Of course, we know that this approach plays no role whatever in early Buddhist literature, either. The question then becomes, <i>when </i>did Buddhists adopt this paradoxical hermeneutic? Was it a consequence of Madhyamaka, for example? Or developments in Chan Buddhism? We might want to identify the factors that drove Buddhists to abandon the idea that one could make sense of awakening, which in turn requires seeing the change in its historical context.</p><p><br /></p><p><b><i>History of the Heart Sutra</i></b></p><p>It would be very useful for someone with access to previous versions of the Chinese <i>Tripiṭaka </i>to collate all the <i>Heart Sutra</i> texts (T250-257) and note any differences and/or any patterns of change over time. Posting images of all the various versions online would make these texts more accessible to those of us who don't have that kind of access. Though digital texts would be preferable. </p><p>This gives a flavour of what is currently missing from our accounts of the <i>Heart Sutra</i>. The actual history of the text and the repair of mistakes introduced into it are in hand. My own current projects include: (interim) revised editions of <i>Xīn </i>and <i>Hṛd</i>, with all the editorial mistakes resolved; a detailed comparison and running commentary of <i>Xīn </i>and <i>Hṛd</i>; an epistemic reading of Chapter One of <i>Aṣṭasāhasrikā</i>; and a synoptic edition and commentary on the Chinese, Sanskrit, Pāli versions of the <i>Kātyāyana Sūtra </i>(which is important in epistemic approaches to Buddhism).</p><br />
<p style="text-align: center;"><b>Conclusion</b></p>
<p>I don't expect a Nobel Prize for my contribution. I wouldn't want that kind of attention anyway. But I have published <i>fourteen articles</i> in the prescribed manner, meeting the standards of academic communications to the satisfaction of an academic editor and two academic reviewers each time. I feel that I have made a significant contribution to the field. Given this, seeing a stream of new publications on the topic appear without any citation of my publications or <i>more importantly </i>of Huifeng, and seeing the constant <i>misrepresentation</i> of Nattier (1992), is depressing and has left me feeling cynical about the whole enterprise of academic Buddhist Studies. </p>
<p>In Buddhist Studies, there is no common research agenda, with each academic mainly pursuing solo projects that don't connect to what anyone else is doing or address common concerns. Graduate students appear to pick topics at random and supervisors <i>let them</i>. In what sense is this a unified "field" of research? </p><p>Worse, there is no consistent use of research methods amongst academics who write about the <i>Heart Sutra</i>. We are <i>all</i> dependent on the work of others. No one does scholarship in a vacuum. And yet, I find myself tearing my hair out each time a new <i>Heart Sutra </i>article appears only to discover that they <i>haven't bothered to do a literature search</i>, let alone a <i>literature review</i>. Instead, they appear to cite a random assortment of sources, often ignoring the most relevant <i>primary </i>sources, let alone important secondary sources like Huifeng (2014) and (2016). This means that each new article tends to be written in a vacuum and the execrable results speak for themselves. We teach students to do literature searches for a reason. It is just weird to abandon the practice once one has a job in academia.</p>
<p>I understand that the pressure to publish or perish exists. The temptation to knock out a one-off article on the <i>Heart Sutra</i> (or whatever), with minimal actual <i>research</i>, could be overwhelming if, for example, one's main line of research has plateaued or one's funding for bigger projects has dried up. But this superficial approach doesn't help. The world's most popular Buddhist text deserves better and, in my experience, it handsomely repays sustained attention. The desultory and piecemeal academic approach to the most popular Buddhist text serves only to reinforce preconceived ideas and prejudices. And thus little or no progress is made, and such progress as is made goes unacknowledged. I want to emphasise, for example, that Huifeng 2014 represents <i>major progress </i>in our field and it has been <i>completely ignored</i> by academics. <br /></p>
<p>Nattier, Huifeng, and I have all faithfully played the game of academic communications and all we ask is that academics read our articles and evaluate them based on commonly accepted standards: Is the evidence salient? Do we understand the primary sources? Have we addressed all the relevant secondary literature? Is the method appropriate to the evidence and the project? Are the inferences we draw from the application of the method valid? Are the conclusions we arrive at sound? Do our explanations actually explain the thing we claim to explain? </p>
<p>We don't ask for <i>special </i>treatment, just read and evaluate our work objectively <i>as normal</i>. Which is, after all, your job; not the whole of your job, obviously, but definitely an important part of any academic's work. <br /></p></div>
<blockquote>Yours Sincerely<br />
Jayarava Attwood, B.Sc, Dip. Libr. </blockquote>
<br />
<p style="text-align: center;"><b>Bibliography</b></p>
<p><i><b>Selected Blog posts and Unpublished Essays</b></i></p><p class="hang">"Japanese Reception of the Chinese Origins Thesis." (24 November 2017). <a href="http://jayarava.blogspot.com/2017/11/japanese-reception-of-chinese-origins.html">http://jayarava.blogspot.com/2017/11/japanese-reception-of-chinese-origins.html</a></p>
<p class="hang">"Review of Ji Yun's 'Is the Heart Sutra an Apocryphal Text? A Re-examination'." (01 June 2018). <a href="http://jayarava.blogspot.com/2018/06/review-of-ji-yuns-is-heart-sutra.html">http://jayarava.blogspot.com/2018/06/review-of-ji-yuns-is-heart-sutra.html</a></p>
<p class="hang">"Another Failed Attempt to Refute the Chinese Origins Thesis." (13 September 2019).<a href="http://jayarava.blogspot.com/2019/09/another-failed-attempt-to-refute.html">http://jayarava.blogspot.com/2019/09/another-failed-attempt-to-refute.html</a></p>
<p class="hang">"The Heart Sutra Was Not Composed in Sanskrit - Response to Harimoto." <a href="https://www.academia.edu/48794912/The_Heart_Sutra_Was_Not_Composed_in_Sanskrit_response_to_Harimoto">https://www.academia.edu/48794912/The_Heart_Sutra_Was_Not_Composed_in_Sanskrit_response_to_Harimoto</a></p>
<p class="hang">"Just How Crazy if the Heart Sutra?" (23 Sept 2022). <a href="http://jayarava.blogspot.com/2022/09/just-how-crazy-is-heart-sutra.html">http://jayarava.blogspot.com/2022/09/just-how-crazy-is-heart-sutra.html</a> </p><br />
<p><b><i>Published Heart Sutra Articles</i></b></p>
<p class="hang">(2015). "Heart Murmurs: Some Problems with Conze’s Prajñāpāramitāhṛdaya." <i>Journal of the Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies</i>, 8, 28-48. http://jocbs.org/index.php/jocbs/article/view/104</p>
<p class="hang">(2017). "Form is (Not) Emptiness: The Enigma at the Heart of the Heart Sutra." <i>Journal of the Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies</i>, 13,52–80. http://jocbs.org/index.php/jocbs/issue/view/15/showToc.</p>
<p class="hang">(2017). "Epithets of the Mantra in the Heart Sutra." <i>Journal of the Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies</i>,12, 26–57. http://jocbs.org/index.php/jocbs/article/view/155</p>
<p class="hang">(2018). "A Note on Niṣṭhānirvāṇa in the Heart Sutra." <i>Journal of the Oxford Centre For Buddhist Studies</i>, 14, 10-17. http://jocbs.org/index.php/jocbs/article/view/173</p>
<p class="hang">(2018). "The Buddhas of the Three Times and the Chinese Origins of the Heart Sutra." <i>Journal of the Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies</i>,15, 9-27. http://jocbs.org/index.php/jocbs/article/view/184</p>
<p class="hang">(2019). "Xuanzang’s Relationship to the Heart Sūtra in Light of the Fangshan Stele." <i>Journal of Chinese Buddhist Studies</i>, 32, 1–30. http://chinesebuddhiststudies.org/previous_issues/jcbs3201_Attwood(1-30).pdf</p>
<p class="hang">(2020). "Ungarbling Section VI of the Sanskrit Heart Sutra." <i>Journal of the Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies</i>, 18, 11-41. https://www.academia.edu/43133311/Ungarbling_Section_VI_of_the_Sanskrit_Heart_Sutra</p>
<p class="hang">(2020). "Edward Conze: A Re-evaluation of the Man and his Contribution to Prajñāpāramitā Studies." <i>Journal of the Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies</i>, 19, 22-51. http://jocbs.org/index.php/jocbs/article/view/223</p>
<p class="hang">(2020). "The History of the Heart Sutra as a Palimpsest." <i>Pacific World</i>, Series 4, no.1, 155-182. https://pwj.shin-ibs.edu/2020/6934</p>
<p class="hang">(2020). "Studying The Heart Sutra: Basic Sources And Methods (A Response To Ng And Ānando<i>)." Buddhist Studies Review</i>, 37 (1-2), 199–217. http://www.doi.org/10.1558/bsrv.41982</p>
<p class="hang">(2021). "Preliminary Notes on the Extended Heart Sutra in Chinese." <i>Asian Literature and Translation </i>8(1): 63–85. DOI: http://doi.org/10.18573/alt.53</p>
<p class="hang">(2021): "The Chinese Origins of the Heart Sutra Revisited: A Comparative Analysis of the Chinese and Sanskrit Texts." <i>Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies</i> 44: 13-52.</p>
<p class="hang">(2022) "The Cessation of Sensory Experience and Prajñāpāramitā Philosophy" <i>International Journal of Buddhist Thought and Culture </i>32(1):111-148. https://www.academia.edu/84003602/The_Cessation_of_Sensory_Experience_and_Prajñāpāramitā_Philosophy.</p>
<p class="hang">(2022 forthcoming). "The Heart Sūtra Revisited: The Frontier of Prajñāpāramitāhṛdaya Studies." Acta Asiatica [No. 121]. 2021. [A Review Article].” <i>Buddhist Studies Review </i>39(2)</p><p><br /></p>
<p><i><b>Other Published Sources</b></i></p>
<p class="hang">Deeg, M. (2007). "Has Xuanzang really been in Mathura? Interpretation Sinica or Interpretation Occidentalia – How to critically read the records of the Chinese pilgrims." In <i>Essays on East Asian religion and culture: festschrift in honour of Nishiwaki Tsuneki on the occasion of his 65th birthday</i>, edited. by Christian Wittern and Shi Lishan, 35–73. Kyōto: Editorial Committee.</p>
<p class="hang">Deeg, M. 2012. "Show Me the Land Where the Buddha Dwelled… Xuanzang’s Record of the Western Regions (Xiyu Ji西域記): A Misunderstood Text?" <i>China Report </i>48 (1-2): 89–113.</p>
<p class="hang">Deeg, M. (2016). "The political position of Xuanzang: the didactic creation of an Indian dynasty in the Xiyu ji’. In “The Middle Kingdom and the Dharma Wheel: Aspects of the Relationship between the Buddhist Saṃgha and the State in Chinese History,” Vol. 1. <i>Sinica Leidensia</i>, 133: 94–139.</p><p class="hang">Harrison, Paul. (2006) "Vajracchedikā Prajñāpāramitā: A New English Translation of the Sanskrit Text Based on Two Manuscripts from Greater Gandhāra." In <i>Buddhist Manuscripts in the Schøyen Collection.</i>Vol. III. Hermes Publishing, Oslo, p.133-159.</p>
<p class="hang">Heng-Ching, Shih & Lusthaus, Dan. (2001) <i>A Comprehensive Commentary on the Heart Sutra (Prajnaparamita-hṛdaya-sutra</i>). Numata Center for Buddhist Translation & Research.</p>
<p class="hang">Horiuchi, Toshio. (2021). “Revisiting the ‘Indian’ Commentaries on the Prajñāpāramitāhṛdaya: Vimalamitra’s Interpretation of the ‘Eight Aspects’.” <i>Acta Asiatica</i> 121: 53-81.</p>
<p class="hang">Huifeng. (2014). “Apocryphal Treatment for Conze’s Heart Problems: Non-attainment, Apprehension, and Mental Hanging in the Prajñāpāramitā Hṛdaya.” <i>Journal of the Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies</i>, 6, 72-105.</p>
<p class="hang">——. (2016). <i>Old School Emptiness: Hermeneutics, Criticism, and Tradition in the Narrative of Śūnyatā</i>. Fo Guang Shan Institute of Humanistic Buddhism. </p><p class="hang">Ji, Yun. (2012) "纪赟 —《心经》疑伪问题再研究." [Is the Heart Sūtra an Apocryphal Text? – A Re-examination.] <i>Fuyan Buddhist Studies</i>, 7: 115-182 (2012), Fuyan Buddhist Institute. [Trans. Chin Shih-Foong (2017). <i>Singapore Journal of Buddhist Studies</i>, 4: 9-113. https://www.academia.edu/36116007/Is_the_Heart_Sūtra_an_Apocryphal_Text_A_Re-examination</p>
<p class="hang">Jones, Richard H. (2012). <i>The Heart of Buddhist Wisdom: Plain English Translations of the Heart Sutra, the Diamond-Cutter Sutra, and Other Perfection of Wisdom Texts. </i>New York: Jackson Square Books.<br /><br />——. (2018) "Dialetheism, Paradox, and Nāgārjuna’s Way of Thinking," <i>Comparative Philosophy</i> 9(2), Article 5. https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/comparativephil.../vol9/iss2/5</p>
<p class="hang">Kotyk, Jeffrey. (2019). ‘Chinese State and Buddhist Historical Sources on Xuanzang: Historicity and the Daci’en si sanzang fashi zhuan 大慈恩寺三藏法師傳’. <i>T’oung Pao</i> 105(5-6): 513–544. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/15685322-10556P01</p>
<p class="hang">Mattice, Sarah A. (2021). <i>Exploring the Heart Sutra</i>. Lanham: Lexington Books.<br /></p><p class="hang">Samuel, Geoffrey. (2008). <i>The Origins of Yoga and Tantra: Indic Religions to the Thirteenth Century</i>. Cambridge University Press. </p>
<p class="hang">Silk, Jonathan A. (2021). “The Heart Sūtra as Dhāraṇī.” <i>Acta Asiatica </i>121: 99-125.</p><p class="hang">Zacchetti, Stefano. (2021). <i>The Da zhidu lun 大智度論 (*Mahāprajñāpāramitopadeśa) and the History of the Larger Prajñāpāramitā. </i>[Edited for publication by Michael Radich and Jonathan Silk]. Bochum/Freiburg: projektverlag.</p><div><br /></div>Jayaravahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13783922534271559030noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19327107.post-87280127283339979232022-11-25T11:33:00.001+00:002022-12-09T20:10:15.619+00:00On the Cognitive Linguistics of Emptiness<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOEpxmJCBaqCzs5-OPKxP1D4ExRlBqegNWm4cl3hX2gmEequ5XG6H36Pc4ebzSniZVI9YvnFg5XYpEYAEioPJAOHwAys8fGp3mD2YolvC9fgBQ5GTDrislD8FFY0GRLyDEh1hzgPxbMf_IwW-IfXhb9zI6EuZluI-k3spD9OVFJl7TkBjUGw/s800/646.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="800" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOEpxmJCBaqCzs5-OPKxP1D4ExRlBqegNWm4cl3hX2gmEequ5XG6H36Pc4ebzSniZVI9YvnFg5XYpEYAEioPJAOHwAys8fGp3mD2YolvC9fgBQ5GTDrislD8FFY0GRLyDEh1hzgPxbMf_IwW-IfXhb9zI6EuZluI-k3spD9OVFJl7TkBjUGw/w200-h200/646.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><p>This essay applies an analytical method developed by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, especially as it occurs in the book <i>Metaphors We Live By, </i>originally published in 1981, with a revised edition 2003. I will also draw on their other published works, notably Lakoff (1987) and Johnson (1987). Lakoff and Johnson tell us that "cognitive metaphors" are ubiquitous in human language. These metaphors involve treating a target domain as if it were a member of the same category as the source domain. In these metaphors the source domain is usually some form of physical interaction that humans have with the objective world, and the target domain is some feature of cognition. In this way, cognitive metaphors are what enable us to think about the world in abstract terms. </p>
<p>This is a modern form of philosophical analysis not available to the ancient world. So this type of analysis offers the possibility of new insights when applied to old discourses. This method has occasionally been applied to Buddhism in the past, though the application has been patchy and the methods involved have not become mainstream. In this essay, I am going to use the methods developed by Lakoff and Johnson to critique the abstract concept of "emptiness" as we mainly meet it in accounts of Buddhism. In this case, I'm not criticising any particular usage, but want to make some general points about the concept. </p><p><br /></p><p><b>Cognitive Metaphors</b></p><p></p><p>A metaphor involves treating one things <i>as if </i>it were another. In a series of five blog posts in 2016, I outline John Searle's account of social reality in which "as if" plays a major role (see <a href="http://jayarava.blogspot.com/2016/09/components-of-social-reality-social.html">Social Reality</a>). In that account of social reality I noted that language is an institutional fact:</p><p></p><blockquote>Language itself only works because of collective intentionality, i.e. we all agree that certain verbal sounds count as words; that certain words count as representing concepts; that certain combinations of words count as sentences, and so on. (<a href="http://jayarava.blogspot.com/2016/10/institutional-facts-language-social.html"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Institutional Facts & Language: Social Reality. II</span></a>).</blockquote><p>What this means is that language relies on us all agreeing that a given word means what it means. As Wittgenstein famously said, </p>
<p></p><blockquote>“For a large class of cases—though not for all—in which we employ the word “meaning” it can be defined thus: the meaning of a word is its use in the language.” (Wittgenstein 1967, section 43)</blockquote><p></p><p>This is often abbreviated to "meaning is use". Individualism has a role to play in the evolution of language, especially where the individual is influential. But, generally speaking, language relies on our collective agreement on what words mean (semantics) or do (pragmatics). Cognitive metaphors are no different; other people must understand our use of cognitive metaphors in order for us to communicate about abstractions. </p><p></p><p>The metaphor relation is not arbitrary. It is not that anything can be anything. The relation requires that the target domain has some properties that make it a good candidate for metaphorical projection. I won't go more deeply into this since it involves invoking the <i>image schema </i>and explaining this is too involved for an essay like this one. The standard work on image schemas is still (as far as I know) Mark Johnson's book <i>The Body in the Mind</i> (1987). Suffice it to say that the target domain for the metaphor must be a good fit. </p><p>For example, we may state a commonly used cognitive metaphor: <span style="font-size: x-small;">IDEAS ARE OBJECTS</span>. (I use Lakoff and Johnson's convention of citing metaphors in small caps). In this metaphor, the source domain is our physical interactions with objects, while the target domain is a subjective experience of thought. If we accept the metaphor <span style="font-size: x-small;">IDEAS ARE OBJECTS, </span>then any operation we can physically perform on an object we can perform mentally on an idea. If I can grasp an object, then under this metaphor I can grasp an idea, <i>as if </i>it were an object. I can turn an idea over and look at it from another angle. I can look at an idea from different angles. If I have more than one idea, I can juggle them. I can throw an idea out, toss it around, and kick it into the long grass. Virtually anything I can physically do with an object finds a metaphorical application to an idea under the cognitive metaphor, <span style="font-size: x-small;">IDEAS ARE OBJECTS.</span></p>
<p>A poor metaphor might be <span style="font-size: x-small;">IDEAS ARE COWBOYS</span>. Cowboys ride, bait, and subdue semi-wild animals for entertainment. It's not clear in what way an idea is like a cowboy. This metaphor is not intuitive. Another one might be <span style="font-size: x-small;">FISH ARE BICYCLES</span>. Note that these propositions are not forbidden by the rules of English grammar. Still, they don't make for obvious metaphorical usage. The metaphor <span style="font-size: x-small;">IDEAS ARE OBJECTS</span> works because ideas have a limited scope, they can often expressible in a succinct way that makes each idea seem discreet from other ideas. Expressing the idea leads to a transfer of that discreet piece of knowledge to another person. It's not that an idea <i>is </i>an object, but that an idea is sufficiently <i>like </i>an object in specific ways. The similarity occurs at the level of "image schemas", which I'm trying to avoid for reasons of brevity. </p><p>It may seem simplistic to labour the point, but I think it's worth saying that ideas are <i>not real objects</i>. In making the metaphor, we are not reifying the abstraction. Moreover, contrary to the prevailing view of humans amongst Buddhists, people are not easily fooled into reifying cognitive metaphors. It would be odd for a person to claim that <i>ideas are objects</i> in a substantial sense. We know this is not true. No one ever literally held an idea in the palm of their hand, for example. We know it's a metaphor and we intuitively deal with thousands of such metaphors every day. If we had to stop to analyse each one, abstract thought would not be possible.</p>
<p>Unlike a computing language I don't have to "declare" the metaphor before using it. We effortlessly decode hundreds and thousands of these cognitive metaphors on the fly without even noticing that we are doing it. When people are sitting around a table at a meeting and someone says, "we need to move on", and they change the subject rather than getting up and leaving the room, no one is surprised by this. </p><p>In this case, it is because we can form a cognitive metaphor: <span style="font-size: x-small;">A CONVERSATION IS A JOURNEY</span>. For example, we might be having a conversation and it "takes a turn" (perhaps a strange or unexpected turn, or a turn for the worse). Someone might wish to "return" to what was said earlier. If it's going badly, we might say "Let's start over". If the conservation was difficult but productive, we may say: "we got there in the end". When a conversation is at an impasse, we might say that we have to move on and leave the impasse unresolved. And a conversation may reach a natural conclusion: "let's stop there". </p><p>These cognitive metaphors are not incidental but rather they form an integral part of language use. The richness of our metaphorical use of language is part of what makes us human. Our ability to talk about one thing <i>as if</i> it were a member of a completely different class of thing is what distinguishes human communication from all other animals. Clearly, some animals and birds are capable of abstract thought to some extent. But they don't <i>communicate in metaphors</i>. We do. </p>
<p>Once we get attuned to this idea of cognitive metaphors, we begin to see them everywhere. When I talk about typing on my keyboard (a physical act) and words appearing "on my screen" this is two cognitive metaphors: <span style="font-size: x-small;">WORDS ARE OBJECTS</span> and <span style="font-size: x-small;">SCREENS ARE SURFACES</span>. Of course the screen is literally a surface, but the words are not <i>on</i> it in a physical sense. I can't physically interact with words on a screen. Even on a touch screen that's not what is happening. Rather the patterns of light and dark created by pixels make words <i>seem to appear </i>on the screen, and electrical interactions between surface and finger help to create the illusion of physical interaction. At the end of the day there is dust and fingerprints on my screen, but no physical objects called "words". Still, all the verbs that can be used to describe interacting with objects on a surface, can now be applied to "words on a screen".</p>
<p>In order to get at the underlying metaphors involved in talking about <i>emptiness </i>in a Buddhist context, we have to consider the use of container metaphors.</p><p><b><br /></b></p><p><b>Container Metaphors</b></p>
<p>A very common cognitive metaphor involves likening something to a container. For example, in English we have the metaphor: <span style="font-size: x-small;">A BOOK IS A CONTAINER</span>. A book can, for example, be filled with ideas (here again: <span style="font-size: x-small;">IDEAS ARE OBJECTS)</span>. With this combination we make a complex source domain: putting objects into a container maps onto putting ideas or words into a book. We use the same verb in each case, but use it substantively on one hand and metaphorically on the other. </p><p>A very common metaphor in English is <span style="font-size: x-small;">MIND IS A CONTAINER</span> and more specifically, mind is a container <i>of experiences</i>. In this view, experience happens in the mind; experience is the content of the mind qua container of experiences. Interestingly, however, Indian Buddhists do not seem to have used a specific container metaphor that we take for granted: i.e. sensory experience is contained in the mind. In Buddhism, the mind (<i>manas</i>) is more like a translator that turns (physical) sensory experience into (mental) perception. An ancient Buddhist could not, for example, say something like "empty your mind" because this relies on the container metaphor and they did not conceive of the mind as a container or sensory experience as the content of the mind. They are more likely to use a surface metaphor for the mind, and to talk about sensory experience as a disturbance of that surface. They may also talk about a sensory event in terms of the sense organ being struck by the appearance of an object. Keeping in mind that "appearance" (<i>rūpa</i>) is to the eye as sound is to the ear.</p><p>Despite the fact that ancient Buddhists did not use the container metaphor for the mind, it is so ingrained in us as English speakers that it's almost impossible to not think of the mind as a container and sensory experience as the content. </p><p>Given all this, what can we say about how to understand the term "emptiness" (Skt. <i>śūnyatā</i>)</p><p><br /></p>
<p><b>Emptiness and Experience</b></p>
<p>The adjective "empty" and the abstract noun "emptiness" are part of the broader cognitive metaphor involving containers. There is no abstract "emptiness" in the absence of a container that could potentially contain <i>something</i>. Moverover, emptiness in the dictionary sense boils down to "the absence of content". "Emptiness" is defined by the <i>Online Etymology Dictionary</i> as "the state of containing nothing". Similarly Merriam-Webster defines emptiness as "containing nothing, not occupied or inhabited" and "lacking reality, substance, meaning, or value." </p><p>These definitions are curiously opposed to Buddhist definitions of "emptiness" which specifically state that it does not mean "void" or "nothingness". As <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/emptiness-most-misunderstood-word-in-buddhism_b_2769189">one writer</a> seeks to clarify:</p><p></p><blockquote>"Emptiness is not complete nothingness; it doesn't mean that nothing exists at all. This would be a nihilistic view contrary to common sense." - Lewis Richmond. </blockquote><p></p><p>In other words, in a Buddhist the concept "emptiness" does <i>not mean emptiness</i>, at least in any general sense. Rather it means, we are told, that things are not as they appear to us. It is the difference between appearance and reality. In which case, "emptiness" is obviously <i>the wrong term </i>for this concept. Still I want to press on and consider the cognitive metaphors that apply to our English word and circle back to the doctrinal mismatch.</p>
<p>Any given container—physical or metaphorical—may contain something or not, but to be a container it must potentially contain something. If a container contains anything, then it is <i>not empty</i>. If it contains nothing, it is empty. <br /><br />Note that this is unrelated to the expected content of the container. I drink my morning coffee from a teacup I like. The rest is in a thermos and stays hot. One could say that my cup is empty of tea, for example, but by being specific one falls down a rabbit hole. My cup may well be empty of tea, water, lime-juice, cooking oil, kerosene, and <i>every other kind of liquid</i>, but it presently is filled with coffee and thus my cup is <i>not empty at all</i>. This gives emptiness an important parameter. Emptiness tends to be an absolute: if my cup has any kind of content, then <i>it is not empty</i>. My cup is only empty when there is no liquid in it; i.e. when there is emptiness.</p>
<p>So far, so logical. But this is not how Buddhists, especially Mādhyamikas, use the termin practice. Mādhyamikas use the abstract noun "emptiness" in a concrete sense. The classic example is the statement "form is emptiness". This is a valid English sentence, but there is something <i>wrong </i>with it. Even when we take "form" to be "form in the abstract" (or matter generally as many Mādhyamikas do), this sentence is not logically valid because it is trying to equate two different levels of abstraction. "Form" here is generally taken to mean "phenomena". If the metaphor is <span style="font-size: x-small;">FORMS ARE CONTAINERS</span> then we might validly state that form is empty. </p>
<p>There are several problems here. The first is that <i>rūpa</i> is (in English at least) <i>not the container </i>of experience, it is the <i>content </i>of experience (or part of it). <i>Rūpa </i>is to eye what sound is the ear. And note that this applies across the senses. Importantly, <i>rūpa </i>is to the eye as tangibles (<i>spraśtavya</i>) are to the body (<i>kāya</i>). <i>Rūpa</i> is on the wrong side of the equation to be equated with body, even metaphorically. In Chinese, <i>rūpa </i>is routinely translated as <i>sè</i> 色 "hue (from original meanings "form, appearance, complexion"); visual surface quality." (definition from Kroll). In Sanskrit, <i>rūpa </i>is typically a property of a surface reflecting light, it is not a metaphorical container. <br /><br />That said, there is no doubt that some modern Buddhists do take <i>rūpa </i>to mean "substance", "matter", or "body". We can see that this is incoherent even at face value since the word is neither defined that way nor used that way in ancient texts. Even the translation "form" misleads most English-speakers into thinking in substantive terms about <i>rūpa</i>. <i>Rūpa </i>means "appearance". Moreover, even if we invoke the container metaphor, it can't be applied to <i>rūpa </i>because <i>rūpa </i>is an element of experience, this is to say that <i>rūpa</i> <i>is content. </i>Ancient Buddhists preferred to see <i>rūpa </i>as a disturbance on the surface of the mind, but even in this metaphor, <i>rūpa </i>is not substantive. </p>
<p>The second problem is that even if <i>rūpa </i>were a container we could go as far as saying that it is empty if it did not contain anything. We could not logically assert that it is "emptiness". If emptiness is the absence of content and <i>rūpa </i>is content, then the two are logical <i>contraries</i>. Despite a great deal of hand waving in modern Buddhist philosophy, "form is emptiness" simply does not make sense in English. But then it doesn't make any more sense to state this in Sanskrit; <i>rūpameva śūnyatā </i>is still equating two different levels of abstraction. This is an egregious wrong turn in Buddhist philosophy. </p><p>I might never have thought of this had I not discovered that the phrase was not originally <i>rūpaṃ śūnyatā </i>"form is emptiness", but <i>rūpaṃ māyā </i>"appearance is illusion" (Attwood 2017). This equation occurs in <i>Aṣṭa</i> and in a few places in <i>Pañc </i>as well. It is clearly translated into Chinese by Kumārajīva as 色不異幻、幻不異色,色即是幻、幻即是色。 (e.g. at T 223, 8.239c6-7). Here <i>huàn </i>幻 translates <i>māyā </i>"illusion", though it originally meant "creation" or the creative power of the devas to keep the world in harmony (<i>ṛta</i>). Given the long history of Buddhists comparing sensory experience to an illusion this makes perfect sense. A classic example of this is the <i>Pheṇapiṇḍūpama Sutta</i>, which<i> </i>concludes with a well-known verse:</p>
<blockquote><i>Pheṇapiṇḍūpamaṃ rūpaṃ, vedanā bubbuḷūpamā /<br />
Marīcikūpamā saññā, saṅkhārā kadalūpamā; <br />
Māyūpamañca viññāṇaṃ, desitādiccabandhunā</i> (SN iii.142).</blockquote>
<blockquote>Appearance is like a ball of foam, valence like a bubble.<br />
Recognition is like a mirage, volition like a plantain.<br />
Discrimination is like an illusion. So Ādiccabandhu taught.</blockquote>
<p></p><p>Here, Ādiccabandhu means the Buddha, but it is a distinctively Brahmin name completely unconnected to any of the standard myths of the Buddha. A similar verse occurs at the end of the <i>Vajracchedikā</i>, where the simile becomes a metaphor:</p>
<blockquote><i>tārakā timiraṃ dīpo māyāvaśyāya budbudaḥ |</i><br />
<i>supinaṃ vidyud abhraṃ ca evaṃ draṣṭavya saṃskṛtam</i> ||Vaj 22 || (Harrison and Watanabe 2006)</blockquote>
<blockquote>We should see the conditioned as a star, a kind of blindness, a lamp; <br />
An illusion, a dewdrop, a bubble, a dream, a lightning flash, a cloud.</blockquote>
<p>We also find the simile in <i>Aṣṭa</i>, “appearance is like an illusion” (<i>māyopamaṃ rūpam</i>. Vaidya 1960: 9). And this is all quite straightforward: experience and reality are not the same thing; different rules apply. </p><p>There is a popular rhetorical strategy for dealing with "form is emptiness" amongst Buddhists which can be illustrated with a random example from the <a href="https://tricycle.org/magazine/heart-sutra/">Tricycle website</a>:</p>
<blockquote><p>Avalokita found the five skandhas empty. But, empty of what? The key word is empty. To be empty is to be empty of something.</p>
<p>If I am holding a cup of water and I ask you, “Is this cup empty?” you will say, “No, it is full of water.” But if I pour out the water and ask you again, you may say, “Yes, it is empty.” But, empty of what? Empty means empty of something. The cup cannot be empty of nothing. “Empty” doesn’t mean anything unless you know empty of what. My cup is empty of water, but it is not empty of air. To be empty is to be empty of something. This is quite a discovery. When Avalokita says that the five skandhas are equally empty, to help him be precise we must ask, “Mr. Avalokita, empty of what?”</p></blockquote>
<p>What we see here is a fantastic distortion of reality, leading to a false conclusion. It is nonsensical for you to ask me what my cup is <i>empty of</i>, because to be empty in any sense, it has <i>to be empty of everything</i>. As I noted above, my cup could be and regularly is empty of tea (and all other liquids) but full of coffee: in which case my cup is not empty at all. The conclusion here—<i>“Empty” doesn’t mean anything unless you know empty of what</i>—is simply not true. This is a case of the tail wagging the dog. That is to say, we know what the answer had to be in order to legitimise Buddhist dogma on emptiness, and the question is phrased in such as way as to elicit only that answer. But in doing so, Buddhists blithely defy the conventions of language. </p><p>We can never legitimately ask "empty of what?" The question is meaningless and the answer is simply a restatement of a dogma that doesn't make any sense. The idea that "empty of what" is a <i>natural</i> question is either extraordinarily naive or disingenuous. Either way, Buddhists propagate this falsehood in all sincerity. </p><p>This invalid method and false conclusion are often parlayed into an even worse question using the abstract noun: "emptiness of what?" Such a thing is not allowed under English grammar. Emptiness is emptiness. "Of what" is an entirely meaningless question because if the answer is not "everything", then the vessel is not empty at all. </p>
<p>We do sometimes suggest that emptiness might have degrees. For example, we may say that a cup may be half full or half empty. Still, it's only from the point of view of being half full that we can ask "of what?" The "of what?" question only applies to the content of the container. An empty container has no content; a half empty container is half empty of <i>all content</i>. Even if we say the glass is half empty, no one in their right mind asks "Half empty of what?". This is simply not how the container metaphor works. </p><p>We can see that the cognitive linguistic perspective is a powerful method for understanding utterances. But it also highlights how dogmatic the Buddhist discourse on emptiness is. This kind of invalid logic is de rigueur for Buddhist philosophy and is almost never questioned or critiqued: either from within or without. Rather such views are carefully curated by Buddhists, in the sense of being framed as deep truths, discovered by visionaries and mystics, and accompanied by frenzied hand waving so that they can be presented as something they are not, i.e. true. This is what we expect of a religious philosophy or theology. There are axioms that cannot be questioned or the whole thing would fall apart. The fabric of Madhyamaka is held together with unquestioned, religiously inspired, axioms. </p><p>The same argument holds for Sanskrit which has identical cognitive metaphors. In Sanskrit it is nonsensical to say <i>rūpaṃ śūṇyatā, </i>but it <i>is </i>sensible to say <i>rūpaṃ māyā, </i>and even better to say <i>rūpaṃ māyopamaṃ </i>"appearance is like an illusion"</p>
<p>So my, rather awkward conclusion is this: Buddhists don't seem to understand the concept of <i>empty</i>, let alone the concept of <i>emptiness</i>. If they did understand, the question "empty of what?" would never occur to them. Worse, Buddhists routinely insist that this flawed concept of emptiness is what makes sense of Prajñāpāramitā. Two wrongs don't make a right. </p><p>In this case, how <i>should </i>we understand the word <i>emptiness</i>?</p><p><br /></p>
<p><b>Making Sense of Emptiness</b></p><p>The key here is to note that the first use of <i>śūnyatā </i>as a technical term is to refer to the state of meditative concentration in which all sensory experience has ceased due to the withdrawal of attention from the senses. This state is called <i>suññatāvihāra</i> or <i>śūnyatāsamādhi</i>. Since sensory experience is dependent on attention (<i>manasikāra</i>), by practising non-attention (<i>amanasikāra</i>), one prevents sensory experience from arising and causes arisen sensory experience to cease. </p><p>Here, sensory experience can be seen as the content of experience or, in Buddhist terms as a distortion of the (naturally) smooth surface of the mind. As such, sensory experience may be present or absent and even admit degrees of these. Hence, between ordinary waking awareness and emptiness there are numerous stages (<i>āyatana</i>) of increasingly attenuated sensory experience. But here, too, absence is absolute; the presence of an <i>any </i>sensory experience means that emptiness doesn't apply. This point is made repeatedly in the <i>Aṣṭasāhasrikā,</i> for example. Emptiness in this case, is the complete absence of sensory experience. </p><p>There are several Buddhist approaches to analysing the content of experience: a range of reductive ontologies into which experience is analysed. For example, the <i>skandha</i>-ontology, which focuses on the processes that give rise to experience, or the <i>dhātu</i>-ontology, which is focussed on the sense faculties and their objects. Mainstream Buddhism foregrounds this reductive, analytic approach of breaking experience down into simpler components in order to eliminate it as a source of absolute being. That complex objects disappear under analysis is not some great metaphysical truth, it is simply a consequence of methodological reductionism. </p><p>If I dismantle my chariot, <i>of course </i>I no longer have a working chariot because I've just broken it on purpose. Who does that? Why would I <i>want </i>to dismantle a working chariot in the first place? And why would my destruction of the thing constitute proof that it <i>never existed in the first place</i>? This is the claim that many Buddhists make but, again, it is nonsensical. </p><p>Prajñāpāramitā Buddhists, building on a tradition that is probably older than Buddhism itself, sought first to bring sensory experience to a halt. They didn't analyse sensory experience in any depth because the acme of their program was not an insight into sensory experience. What they sought, first and foremost, was an insight into death and rebirth. The whole fetish of emptiness was originally established on the analogy of emptiness with death. Mastery (<i>vidyā</i>) over sensory experience, in the form of the ability to voluntarily make it stop, equated to <i>mastery over repeated death</i>. This mastery was and is the driving force of Buddhism, even when it is buried in centuries of intellectual accretion. </p><p>My current thinking is that the discovery of how to do this probably arose around the same time as major socio-political changes in India, reflected in, for example, the replacement of red and black pottery type by the painted grey ware style of pottery. Within a few centuries we see the emergence of walled city states which are stable for some 200-300 years before the Moriyan Dynasty of Magadha overwhelmed all the others, founding the first pan-Indian empire. One possible source of mind-training techniques that limit sensory experience is the "interiorisation" of Brahmanical rituals. In this development, some Brahmins began to perform their daily rituals in imagination rather than physically. This led to the discovery of radical changes in sensory experience, especially in the form of hallucinations due to sensory deprivation, and ultimately to the cessation and absence of sensory experience. By the time the <i>Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad </i>was composed (in or around the Kingdom of Kosala) the correct performance of rituals was being linked to one's afterlife destination. Buddhists and Jains had similar ideas but focussed on actions more generally, with Buddhists refining this to just volitional actions. </p><p>However it happened, it is apparent that in this milieu some religieux developed and shared the techniques that allowed them to bring sensory experience to a halt and to dwell in a state in which there is awareness but no content. Some Buddhists called this "emptiness" (<i>śūnyatā</i>). Other Buddhists called it "extinction"(<i>nirvāṇa</i>) and other names. This state is also known in modern times as "contentless awareness", "minimal phenomenal awareness", or "non-dual awareness". </p><p>This is how I presently understand "emptiness" in Prajñāpāramitā. I believe this is a better approach than anything based in later traditional interpretations based on the Madhyamaka telos (which sees Prajñāpāramitā merely as proto-Madhyamaka). </p><p><br /><br /><b>Dharma as Container?</b></p><p>One of the key concepts in Madhyamaka is "the emptiness of dharmas". In this usage, dharmas have to be considered as metaphorical containers. The broader translation of dharmas as "phenomena" (as distinct from noumena; i.e. appearances rather than reality) seems to fit here, but <i>what is the content of a phenomenon</i>? Is there really any phenomenon that is not sensory experience?<br /><br />Nāgārjuna tells us that he expects that <i>we </i>will expect a <i>dharma </i>to have <i>svabhāva </i>in the sense of being autopoietic or self-creating. Nāgārjuna points out that this self-creating property of dharmas cannot exist in any changeable phenomenon. So far so good. The problem is that <i>no one</i> ever believed in self-creating dharmas. No one ever proposed this before Nāgārjuna. But he said that <i>everyone </i>believed it. Nāgārjuna appears to have <i>lied </i>about this. What puzzles me is that no one really cares about the lie. Many people seem to prefer this lie. <br /><br />The <i>svabhāva </i>of a dharma, according to Abhidharma lore, is the <i>sui generis </i>quality that gives us the ability to identify it. For example, it's important to all Buddhists to distinguish skillful (<i>kuśala</i>) motivations (<i>cetanā</i>) from unskillful (<i>akuśala</i>) ones. If I experience a moment of greed or generosity, I identify it as such by introspecting the content of the experience. The fact that I can identify an experience as motivated by greed or generosity doesn't imply anything like Nāgārjuna's autopoietic dharmas. As far as I can see, there is no way to even infer autopoietic dharmas from any early Buddhist doctrine. We have different kinds of experiences and these are identifiable by certain characteristics. No one disputes this, not even Nāgārjuna. </p><p>However, Nāgārjuna also assumes that to be real a dharma must have <i>svabhāva </i>in his autopoietic sense. This axiom is incoherent, but is blindly accepted by all and sundry; even Graham Priest, the <i>academic logician</i>, seems to fail to see this basic logical error in Nāgārjuna's argument. Since he can (trivially) prove that no <i>dharma </i>can be autopoietic, he then deduces that dharmas are not real, that they don't exist. But this definition of "real" is completely <i>incoherent</i>. Not only did Buddhists never use this definition of real, they weren't even interested in the question of the reality or unreality of dharmas. They were interested in the arising and ceasing of dharmas; especially in the light of a state in which all dharmas cease except for the <i>asaṃskṛtadharma</i>, i.e. <i>emptiness</i>. Emptiness is <i>asaṃskṛta </i>because it does not occur due to the presence of a condition but rather occurs when all conditions for sensory experience are absent. </p><p>In order to square the circle, Nāgārjuna has to introduce the nonsense idea of a "relative truth", which is not true at all. The ultimate truth, in this view, is that dharmas don't exist, because they are not self-creating. I can see no good reason to take Nāgārjuna seriously as a philosopher or even, frankly, as a Buddhist. He seems to have entirely missed the point of Buddhism and has gone off on a tangent. And still, he is routinely cited as "the most important Buddhist philosopher". </p><p><br /></p><p><b>Conclusion</b> </p><p>The term "emptiness" is generally used in an incoherent way by Buddhists, especially in statements containing the idea "emptiness of...". We can never legitimately ask "empty of what?" let alone "emptiness of what?" because this is not how the container metaphor works. <br /><br />The idea that the proposition "form is emptiness" is meaningful now seems doubtful. Moreover, when we look at the kinds of <i>post hoc </i>arguments put forward to justify this proposition, they simply don't make sense. In addition, we know that it used to make sense when presented in the form: "appearance is an illusion." A sensory experience <i>is </i>like an illusion. I doubt anyone would argue with this. <br /><br />It is also true that in the state called "emptiness" there are no dharmas because that state occurs only when all dharmas have ceased and no new dharmas are arising. This sense of the term is far more coherent than the general religious consensus that emptiness is reality. </p><p>The incoherence reaches its apotheosis in Madhyamaka rhetoric about the emptiness of dharmas, by which Mādhyamikas mean that they think dharmas don't exist, since they tie <i>existence </i>to self-creation and it is trivial to show that dharmas cannot be self-creating. Nāgārjuna insists on an incoherent definition of what "real" means and uses that to argue that the concept of existence is incoherent. Prior to Nāgārjuna no one ever used this definition of real. Apart from his devotees, most Buddhists still don't use this definition. </p><p>The standard ways we have of talking about this all seem to miss the point. Early Buddhists did not venture opinions on the existence or nonexistence of dharmas, except in the case of the <i>sarvāsti</i> doctrine. Even the Sarvāstivādins did not argue that the existence of dharmas was due to <i>self-creation</i>. The logic of <i>sarvāsti </i>is completely different but not difficult to follow. If a past dharma can be the cause of a present effect, then the doctrine of dependent arising itself says that it presently exists since <i>imasmin sati, idaṃ hoti </i>and <i>imasmin asati, idaṃ na hoti</i>. If the dharma doesn't exist now, then it cannot be a factor in the arising of a dharma in the present. This central argument is not even considered by Nāgārjuna, let alone refuted. <br /><br />The <i>nature </i>of dharmas is irrelevant in light of the fact that dharmas arise and cease, depending on where our attention goes. To say that dharmas lack <i>svabhāva </i>in Nāgārjuna's sense is trivial. To say that they have svabhāva in the Abhidharma sense is also trivial since we routinely recognise hundreds of different kinds of experience (for which we have thousands of words). The key to understanding Prajñāpāramitā lies in another direction entirely. The main point is that attention can be withdrawn from sensory experience. When we withdraw attention from sensory experience, it <i>ceases</i>, leaving us in a particular state characterised by some kind of basic awareness <i>without any experiential content</i>. That is, in a state of emptiness.</p><p>While it is not essential to my critique of Madhyamaka, it helps to understand the cognitive metaphors of emptiness and how cognitive metaphors function generally. This is so because "the emptiness of dharmas" is a cognitive metaphor: <span style="font-size: x-small;">DHARMAS ARE CONTAINERS</span>. But this is only true if dharmas exist and are capable of acting as metaphorical containers. <br /><br />Still, it is <i>only Madhyamakas </i>who believe that in order to exist, to be real, a dharma must be self-creating. "Self-creation" is an odd choice for the content of that container. I can imagine a thing being self-creating, but I cannot imagining a thing <i>containing </i>self-creation. Self-creation doesn't fit the cognitive metaphor. </p><p>So even if we could legitimately ask "empty of what?" the answer "empty of self-creation" is nonsense on several levels. For example, it would require us to relate to "self-creation" as <i>content</i>. To my mind this simply doesn't work. "Self-creation" is not a suitable target for the source domain of things we put in containers, except in the very broadest sense that <span style="font-size: x-small;">IDEAS ARE OBJECTS</span>. The <i>idea </i>of self-creation might be the content of a metaphorical container, the <i>fact </i>of self-creation cannot be. </p><p>On the other hand, the emptiness of the mind, i.e. the concept of the absence of mental content in meditation, is not plagued by these inconsistencies and incoherences. In English it is natural to use the container metaphor for this. It is not so natural in scriptural languages, but, nevertheless, the absence of dharmas in meditation is the key concept here, not the absence of being self-creating. The whole idea of self-creating dharmas is a red herring. </p><p>The metaphysical speculations that attract us as explanations for emptiness are largely based on prior indoctrination. In my reading, such speculations are absent from both early Buddhism and Prajñāpāramitā. This is not to say that metaphysics is generally absent from or irrelevant to Buddhism. All ancient Buddhists believed in karma and rebirth, for example. These involve commitments to metaphysical views that we now know to be false, though few Buddhists will admit to this. </p><p>The methods of cognitive linguistics are a powerful tool for thinking critically about Buddhist doctrines. That said, most existing applications of these methods have been <i>in the service of tradition</i>, i.e. used purely descriptively by scholars who have no interest in critiques of Buddhist philosophy. Whatever the reason for it, this side-stepping manoeuvre allows those people to continue evangelising for traditional Buddhism without ever confronting the inevitable antinomies between Iron Age or Medieval thought in India and present day science and philosophy. Many Buddhists seem attracted by the idea of subsuming all knowledge within Buddhism. This tends to involve a rather blasé form of dualism in which science is merely concerned with the "physical" and Buddhism is concerned something that we often see called "spiritual".</p><p>Unfortunately, this exceptionalist discourse appears to obscure and devalue the real contribution of Buddhists, i.e. the cultivation and exploration of states of contentless awareness. I see this as a lose-lose scenario. I see the neuroscience community studying this phenomenon and developing their own terminology for it, though at present we still see a proliferation of different terminologies. At some point, an objective account of the methods and consequences of meditation will eclipse the religious accounts. Those who insist on the religious accounts, with all their incoherence and misdirection, will be relegated out of the conversation and become irrelevant. I'd prefer to see experienced meditators staying in the game, but as long as they cling to outmoded forms of talking about emptiness, they will not be part of the conversation for much longer. </p><br /><p></p></div>
<p style="text-align: center;">~~oOo~~</p><p><span style="font-size: x-small;"></span></p>
<p><b>Bibliography<br /></b><br /></p>
<p class="hang">Attwood, J. (2017). "Form is (Not) Emptiness: The Enigma at the Heart of the Heart Sutra." <i>Journal of the Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies</i>, 13,52–80. http://jocbs.org/index.php/jocbs/issue/view/15/showToc.</p>
<p class="hang">Johnson, Mark. (1987). <i>The Body in the Mind: The Bodily Basis of Meaning, Imagination and Reason.</i> University of Chicago Press.</p>
<p class="hang">Lakoff, George. (1987). <i>Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal About the Mind.</i> University of Chicago Press.</p>
<p class="hang">Lakoff, G. & Johnson, M. (2003). <i>Metaphors We Live By</i>. New Ed. [Originally published 1981]. University of Chicago Press.</p><p></p>Jayaravahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13783922534271559030noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19327107.post-66164902187035144482022-11-11T13:05:00.009+00:002022-12-20T23:52:48.997+00:00On the Indo-Tibetan Commentaries and Methods in Buddhist Studies<div style="text-align: justify;"><p>I have almost no interest in popular translations, or commentaries, since these all repeat the same mistakes and result in cliches that I know to be untrue. I do try to be completist when it comes to academic publications on the <i>Heart Sutra </i>(at least in English). Being completist in this sense is seldom rewarding because the standard of work coming out in this field is typically quite poor. I've published a couple of critical reviews now (2020, 2022) as well as posting quite a few more on my blog (e.g. <a href="http://jayarava.blogspot.com/2017/11/japanese-reception-of-chinese-origins.html">here</a>, <a href="http://jayarava.blogspot.com/2018/06/review-of-ji-yuns-is-heart-sutra.html">here</a>, <a href="http://jayarava.blogspot.com/2019/09/another-failed-attempt-to-refute.html">here</a>, <a href="https://www.academia.edu/48794912/The_Heart_Sutra_Was_Not_Composed_in_Sanskrit_response_to_Harimoto">here</a>, and <a href="http://jayarava.blogspot.com/2022/09/just-how-crazy-is-heart-sutra.html">here</a>). </p><p>The eight Indo-Tibetan commentaries on the <i>Heart Sutra </i>have received a relatively huge amount of attention in the form of two books by Donald Lopez; one a study and the other a complete translation with reflections on themes in the commentaries. Other commentaries, such as those by Kuījī and Woncheuk, have also been translated but, at least in English, they have not been studied with anything like the same level of attention. And what have we learned? This is summed up in the conclusion of recent article by, long-established scholar of Tibetan Buddhism, Klaus-Dieter Mathes:</p>
<blockquote>We have seen how the quintessence of the Prajñāpāramitāsūtras, the formula “form is emptiness; emptiness is form” has been interpreted in eight Indian commentaries from nearly <i>all possible Mahāyāna views and approaches. </i>(Emphasis added)</blockquote>
<p>This is no more that what Alex Wayman had observed in 1984, i.e.</p>
<blockquote>“The writers seemed to be experiencing some difficulty in exposition, as though they were not writing through having inherited a tradition about the scripture going back to its original
composition, but rather were simply arranging their particular learning in Buddhism to the terminology of the <i>sūtra</i>.” (1984: 309)</blockquote>
<p>Or Malcolm David Eckel in the same decade:</p>
<blockquote>“... to approach the Indian commentaries in the hope that they will somehow yield the ‘original’ meaning of the text is to invite disappointment... what they thought it meant was shaped as much by the preoccupations of their own time as it was by the words of the sūtra itself. (1987: 69-70)</blockquote>
<p>Mathes cites neither Wayman nor Eckel. Nor does he cite my (2017) article: "Form is (Not) Emptiness" which was directly relevant to his topic. Nor does he cite Huifeng (2014) which is also relevant. Mathes does cite Jan Nattier, but it is the most bizarre reference to her work that I have ever seen:</p><p></p><blockquote>"The Heart Sūtra lends support to a simultaneist realization of emptiness, and for that reason Jan Nattier has even argued that it was a Chinese composition and brought to India by Xuanzang."</blockquote><p></p><p>Leaving aside the fact that I don't know what "a simultaneist realization of emptiness" means, the logic here is not valid. The reason we—Nattier, Huifeng/Matthew Orsborn, Jeffrey Kotyk, and I—conclude that the <i>Heart Sutra </i>was composed in Chinese has nothing to do with "a simultaneist realization of emptiness" (to my knowledge none of us has ever used such terminology). Our argument is <i>philological</i>. Nattier (1992) showed that the core passage in <i>Hṛd </i>was too different from that in <i>Pañc </i>for <i>Hṛd </i>to have copied directly from <i>Pañc</i>. On the other hand <i>Xīn </i>and <i>Mōhè </i>are more or less identical, with a few tweaks to include some of Xuanzang's preferred translations. Clearly, <i>Xīn </i>copied from <i>Mōhè</i>. In addition, it's apparent that the differences in <i>Hṛd </i>are the result of some kind of paraphrase that is consistent with being back-translated into Sanskrit from Chinese. Huifeng (2014) and I (in various papers) have extended this observation to other parts of the text and shown that the patterns Nattier observed in the core section generalise to the other half of the text also. Moreover, I (Attwood 2018b: 19-22) showed that <i>tryadhvavyavasthitāḥ sarvabuddhāḥ </i>is a calque of <i>sānshì zhū fú </i>三世諸佛 “buddhas of the three times”, while Sanskrit Prajñāpāramitā literature has a strong preference for the unabbreviated “buddhas of the past, future, and present” (<i>atītānāgatapratyutpannā buddhāḥ</i>).</p><p>I wouldn't mind so much but, outside of our circle, Buddhist Studies scholars seem loath to give Nattier the basic respect of accurately describing her evidence, methods, and conclusions. The recent notable exception is Sarah Mattice's (2021) book which devotes fully 19 pages to this task. Mattice has devoted more space to this issue than all the naysayers and fence-sitters combined. Compared to this, Mathes' distorted account may be the worst example of this I have seen by an academic. Of course, his article was published too late to take into account my recent overview of this issue in <i>JIABS </i>(Attwood 2021), but most of the earlier works on this topic were available. And Nattier's article is thirty years old this year (2022). <br /></p><p>In a couple of polemical reviews (2020 and 2022 forthcoming) I take academics to task for not doing a proper literature review before conducting their research. This is not simply because they don't cite me, though of course this <i>is</i> an issue <i>for me</i>. I've published fourteen articles on this topic and they are all widely available. In Mathes case, half a dozen of my articles <i>could </i>have been cited. </p><p>For example, Mathes, unlike the vast majority of Buddhist Studies scholars, has noticed a problem in Conze's 1967 revised edition of the <i>Prajñāpāramitāhṛdaya</i>. In the first sentence, <i>pañca skandhās</i> (nominative plural) is impossible to relate to the rest of the sentence and the transitive verb, <i>vyavalokayati sma</i>, has no object. In 2015, I published this observation along with the solution which was inspired by two variant manuscripts, i.e. we add an <i>anusvāra </i>to the <i>dhā-akṣara </i>to give us <i>pañca skandhāṃs </i>(accusative plural). With this slight change we solve both problems at once: <i>pañca skandhāṃs </i>is the missing object of <i>vyavalokayati sma</i>. Now, I don't expect a Nobel Prize for this observation but I <i>do </i>expect to be credited as the first scholar to publish it. This is the tacit agreement that we all make; if you get there first, other scholars will acknowledge this and give credit where it is due. Mathes doesn't do this and it's bad form. </p><p>Mathes does not notice the other big mistake in Conze's text, though one can see from his translation that he struggled to know what to do with it. Conze's misplaced full stop after <i>acittāvaraṇa</i> leaves the end of the sentence hanging; it is a "sentence" with no verb and no subject, i.e. not a valid sentence. Simply removing the full stop allows one to parse the now combined passages as one sentence. Mathes' approach is to break the text apart until the garbled grammar ceases to be an issue: <br /></p><p></p><blockquote>Therefore, Śāriputra, because bodhisattvas have no attainment, they rely on, and abide in, the perfection of insight. They have no mental hindrances. Because their minds are without hindrance, they have no fear. They pass completely beyond error and go to the fulfillment of nirvāna.</blockquote></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Mathes has curiously misconstrued the Sanskrit here. The absolutive in the first clause, <i>āśritya </i>is generally translated as a gerund "having relied on" or a present participle "relying on". The text clearly says something like "having relied on <i>prajñāpāramitām"</i>, but <i>viharati </i>"he dwells" cannot also relate back to prajñāpāramitā in this sentence; whatever "dwelling" is being dwelled, it is <i>subsequent </i>to "relying on prajñāpāramitā". Contra Mathes, one thing this passage cannot say is, "[they] abide in the perfection of insight.". The bodhisatva is the agent of both verbs, but prajñāpāramitām only goes with <i>āśritya </i>here. It might have said something like that if <i>āśritya </i>were in the form of a finite verb such as <i>āśrayati</i>.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><p>Most translators, Conze included, take <i>acittāvaraṇaḥ </i>to be the state in which the bodhisatva dwells, though I admit this has never made sense to me. The case is masculine nominative singular, meaning that <i>acittāvaraṇaḥ </i>ought to be an adjective of some other noun in the masculine nominative singular and there is only one in this sentence, i.e. <i>bodhisatvaḥ</i>. Note that this relation was obscured in Conze's (1948) original edition and in the popular (1958, 1975) edition (<i>Buddhist Wisdom Books</i>) because his text has <i>bodhisattvasya</i> (genitive singular). In the revised (1967) edition, he repairs this blunder. </p><p>In Conze's editions, what follows, after the erroneous full stop, is a conjunction and a series of adjectives of the bodhisatva who relies on Prajñāpāramitā. There is absolutely no need to make these into separate sentences, let alone into four separate sentences. The revised text and my translation read<br /></p><blockquote><i>tasmāc chāriputra aprāptitvād bodhisatvaḥ prajñāpāramitām āśritya viharaty acittāvaraṇaś cittāvaraṇanāstitvād atrasto viparyāsātikrānto niṣṭhānirvāṇaḥ | <br /></i><br />Therefore, Śāriputra, because of being in a state of non-attainment, the bodhisatva who is without mental hindrance dwells having relied on perfect paragnosis; because of the nonexistence of mental hindrance he is not afraid, transcends delusions, and his extinction is complete. </blockquote>This is not beautiful prose by any means, but it does at least translate the text <i>as given</i>. It's not until we dig into the Chinese text and the relations between the two that the Sanskrit emerges as a garbled version of a much more straightforward Chinese text:<br /><blockquote>菩提薩埵依般若波羅蜜多故心無罣礙,無罣礙故無有恐怖遠離顛倒夢想究竟涅槃。<br />Since the bodhisatva relies on perfect paragnosis their mind is not attached anywhere; being detached they are not afraid, transcend illusions and delusions, and attain final extinction.</blockquote><br />Unfortunately the Chinese Buddhist monk who created the back-translation did a really terrible job of this part of the text; he got the verbs all wrong (and this much is clear from reading Huifeng 2014). Here is an alternative Sanskrit translation of the same Chinese passage showing how it might have been done better: <br /><div></div><blockquote><div><i>yato bodhisatvaḥ prajñāpāramitām niśrayati tato 'sya cittaṃ na kvacit sajjati | tena ca atrasto viparyāsamāyāvivikto niṣṭhānirvāṇa ||</i> </div></blockquote><blockquote><div>“Since the bodhisatva relies on perfect paragnosis, his mind does not adhere anywhere; and for this reason he is unafraid, isolated from delusions and illusions, and his extinction is complete.”</div></blockquote><div></div><div>How many translators have looked at Conze's defective edition and rather than asking the obvious questions, simply fudged their translation? <i>All of them</i>. And this is an indictment of Buddhist Studies. If a Sanskrit sentence is not a properly formed sentence, then one can't simply fudge the translation so that it <i>is </i>a properly formed English sentence. At least not in an academic philological study.</div><div><br />Mathes apparently understands that everything in this weird sentence relates back to "the bodhisatva" (the subject of the correct sentence) and we can forgive his use of the plural here as translator's licence. Still, his text here is entirely in the singular, so why not translate it as given? This is a minor point compared to other faults and as a standalone fault might be overlooked. </div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><p>Mathes' literature review seems to have been perfunctory at best. I don't know how they teach research methods these days, but when I was learning about doing academic research I was taught that one <i>could not</i> skip this step. And yet I see this time and again: no proper literature review, and apparently no oversight of this failure from editors or reviewers, who are equally ignorant of the literature. At times it seems to me that <i>no one</i> in Buddhist Studies knows the literature of the <i>Heart Sutra</i>, but everyone recalls it as presented in some long distant undergraduate lecture and a handful of now dated sources. And it keeps happening, despite ten years of effort on my part to do better. Somehow Buddhist Studies scholars who are otherwise extremely competent, like Mathes obviously is, let all that go when they write about the <i>Heart Sutra</i>. I previously noted this phenomenon with Harimoto Kengo, for example, a highly competent Sanskritist who wrote yet another underwhelming article on the <i>Heart Sutra.</i></p><p><br /></p><p><b>Conclusion</b></p><p>Like the general public and novels, it seems that most Buddhist Studies academics have one <i>Heart Sutra</i> in them. Some manage to write that article, but few if any ever return to the text. To be fair, Nattier intended to write more about the <i>Heart Sutra</i>, with her husband John McRae (who also wrote one article), but he died before that could be completed. Weirdly, when they tackle the <i>Heart Sutra</i>, many academics abandon doing research and write as theologians. This is a puzzling phenomenon and I hope one day an anthropologist might study it. <br /><br />One thing we can say is that the expectation of nonsense appears to be self-fulfilling, in that people don't expect the <i>Heart Sutra </i>to make sense and don't seem too bothered if writing about the text also doesn't make sense. </p><p>I see two main conclusions emerging from reading Mathes' article that are not part of his fairly prosaic written conclusions about the lack of coherence in the Indo-Tibetan commentaries:<br /><br />Firstly, there <i>was</i> no Indian tradition of commentary on the <i>Heart Sutra. </i>Hence Alex Wayman's point that the commentaries attributed to Indian pandits all take a different approach that is based on the religious professions and presuppositions of the day. There <i>is</i> no unified tradition of understanding the <i>Heart Sutra </i>anywhere in the Buddhist world. We can now safely say that the <i>Heart Sutra</i> was unknown in India. Certainly, apart from the Tibetan texts <i>attributed </i>to India pandits, there is zero evidence of the text in India. If anyone has such evidence then I would urgently like to hear from them.<br /><br />We now know that at least two of the Indo-Tibetan commentaries were based on a Tibetan<i> Heart Sutra</i> text (via Horiuchi 2021). As far as I know, no one has really investigated the plausibility of these attributions. And some of them cannot be investigated because the putative author is otherwise unknown. The idea that a canonical attribution is <i>prima facie</i> plausible seems doubtful at best. We know that, in Chinese at least, <i>many </i>of these are apocryphal: not least for the <i>Heart Sutra </i>itself, the whole standard history of which is a fiction.</p><p>This means that these Indo-Tibetan commentaries can only tell us about Buddhism in and around medieval Tibet. That is to say, they reflect what medieval pandits—possibly Indian pandits or, more likely, their Tibetan followers—made of the <i>Heart Sutra </i>when they encountered it in Tibet, often in the form of a Tibetan translation of the <i>Heart Sutra</i>. However, the sectarian approaches they adopt are all different and thus these commentaries tell us little or nothing about the <i>Heart Sutra, per se</i>. Rather, the <i>Heart Sutra </i>is shoehorned into various sectarian religious systems.</p><p>As such, these commentaries are of interest mainly to Tibetologists and contribute <i>nothing</i> to understanding Prajñāpāramitā as a form of Buddhism in its own right. A corollary of this, which is evident in Chinese commentaries as well, is that while one <i>can</i> read the <i>Heart Sutra </i>as a Madhyamaka text, one is not <i>bound</i> to do so. Some of the Indo-Tibetan and Tibetan commentaries see the <i>Heart Sutra</i> as a statement of, or consistent with, Yogācāra Buddhism. The connection between Madhyamaka and Prajñāpāramitā was not at all obvious to some ancient commentators. Indeed, Kuījī's commentary acknowledges that one can use a Madhyamaka approach, but a Yogācāra approach is superior. </p><p>None of this interests me as much as reading the <i>Heart Sutra</i> as a <i>Prajñāpāramitā </i>text.</p><p>Secondly, I think we come back to a point I have made here and in various articles: the methodologies that academics employ when studying the <i>Heart Sutra</i> leave a great deal to be desired. In particular, it seems that almost no one bothers to do a proper<i> literature review</i> before sitting down to compose an article on the <i>Heart Sutra</i>. It looks suspiciously like academics simply grab whatever is to hand rather than making an effort at comprehensive coverage. Having published fourteen articles on this topic in peer-reviewed journals since 2015, I am getting heartily sick of academics being <i>completely </i>unaware of my existence or simply ignoring me. If they do a literature review at all, they are somehow excluding all my published work from consideration, even when it is directly relevant. </p><p>And it's not just me. Sadly, for Matthew Orsborn, his seminal article on the text, i.e. Huifeng 2014 is routinely overlooked. I would argue that no one can begin to understand the <i>Heart Sutra</i> without being <i>au fait</i> with this article. To be fair, it took me a long while to come to terms with it too. Still, in order to be informed on <i>Heart Sutra</i> research, one must read Nattier 1992 and Huifeng 2014 <i>at a minimum</i>. I'm pleased to say that I have just read a draft article by a friend who is attending Dharma Drum College, Taiwan, that does give Orsborn his due. This ought to be published sometime next year (presuming China does not invade before then). <br /><br />Nattier has a different problem. Thirty years after her brilliant and insightful article appeared, academics like Mathes are still casually misrepresenting her evidence, methods, and conclusions. Mathes may be the worst example of this I have seen amongst academics. However, it is still the case that most academics refuse to acknowledge Nattier's work on the <i>Heart Sutra, e</i>xcept in Japan where Nattier's work is acknowledged in the context of a series of shoddy polemical articles by older male academics who are also high up in Japanese ecclesiastical hierarchies. </p><p>The final conclusion of Mathes (2022) is more or less the same as what Wayman and Eckels wrote in the 1980s. And one wonders whether this is an example of publish or perish, since it doesn't add much to what we already know. <br /><br />I don't particular enjoy writing these critical responses. I'd prefer to have something meaningful to engage in; I'd much prefer to be <i>learning something</i>. That said, most of the publications about the <i>Heart Sutra</i> emerging in English are very poorly researched and written. Most barely qualify as "scholarship" since the normal methods of research are seemingly in abeyance in most cases, as with Mathes (2022). The situation is so bad that to not comment at this point would amount to complicity in an ongoing <i>intellectual fraud</i>. I want it to be clear to academics that if they publish these kinds of poorly researched and badly argued articles on the <i>Heart Sutra</i>, they can expect me to dissect them in public without fear or favour. </p><div style="text-align: center;">~~oOo~~</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><p></p></div>
<h3>Bibliography</h3>
<p class="hang">Attwood, J. (2015). "Heart Murmurs: Some Problems with Conze’s Prajñāpāramitāhṛdaya." <i>Journal of the Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies</i> 8, 28-48. http://jocbs.org/index.php/jocbs/article/view/104</p>
<p class="hang">Attwood,J. (2017). "Form is (Not) Emptiness: The Enigma at the Heart of the Heart Sutra." <i>Journal of the Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies</i>, 13,52–80. http://jocbs.org/index.php/jocbs/issue/view/15/showToc.</p><p class="hang">Attwood, J. (2020). "Studying The Heart Sutra: Basic Sources And Methods (A Response To Ng And Ānando)." <i>Buddhist Studies Review</i>, 37 (1-2), 199–217. http://www.doi.org/10.1558/bsrv.41982.</p>
<p class="hang">Attwood, J. (2021) "The Chinese Origins of the Heart Sutra Revisited: A Comparative Analysis of the Chinese and Sanskrit Texts." <i>Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies</i> 44: 13-52. DOI 10.2143/JIABS.44.0.3290289</p><p class="hang">Attwood, J. (2022 forthcoming) "The Heart Sūtra Revisited: The Frontier of Prajñāpāramitāhṛdaya Studies. Acta Asiatica [No. 121]. 2021." <i>Buddhist Studies Review</i>, 39(2).</p><p class="hang">Horiuchi, Toshio. (2021). “Revisiting the ‘Indian’ Commentaries on the Prajñāpāramitāhṛdaya: Vimalamitra’s Interpretation of the ‘Eight Aspects’.” <i>Acta Asiatica </i>121: 53-81.</p>
<p class="hang">Mathes, Klaus‑Dieter. (2021). "The Eight Indian Commentaries on the Heart Sūtra’s Famous Formula 'Form Is Emptiness; Emptiness Is Form'." In <i>Gateways to Tibetan Studies: A Collection of Essays in Honour of David P. Jackson on the Occasion of his 70th Birthday</i>. (2 vols. Indian and Tibetan Studies 12.1–2). Edited by Volker Caumanns, Jörg Heimbel, Kazuo Kano and Alexander Schiller, 659–84. Hamburg: Department of Indian and Tibetan Studies, Universität Hamburg.</p>
<p class="hang">Mattice, Sarah A. (2021). <i>Exploring the Heart Sutra</i>. Lanham: Lexington Books.</p>
<p class="hang">Wayman, A. (1984) <i>Buddhist Insight: Essays</i>. Motilal Banarsidass.</p>
<p class="hang">Eckel, M. D. (1987) "Indian Commentaries on the Heart Sūtra: The Politics of
Interpretation." The <i>Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies</i> 10(2): 69-79.</p><p></p>Jayaravahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13783922534271559030noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19327107.post-53842673028612501902022-09-30T08:53:00.004+01:002023-02-26T21:11:53.136+00:00Some Issues of Pāli Chronology<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhog2dEv1fzHzyKV4VRad8VF38EAVFr_LsOTkYgc6zQz-STmyOuihMb6EQOojOnE7xcuEnWHUOzcG5ST4en64dnE_qIlegv5mhXXBXyydoH0Khef_C3z1U4_1BYc2z5eZ2agjZFjI8LB7RpuJgzdnuU4bOLUofhJVjo6cnaVOd-yxqDWSvGxQ/s2122/RhysDavidses.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2122" data-original-width="2031" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhog2dEv1fzHzyKV4VRad8VF38EAVFr_LsOTkYgc6zQz-STmyOuihMb6EQOojOnE7xcuEnWHUOzcG5ST4en64dnE_qIlegv5mhXXBXyydoH0Khef_C3z1U4_1BYc2z5eZ2agjZFjI8LB7RpuJgzdnuU4bOLUofhJVjo6cnaVOd-yxqDWSvGxQ/w191-h200/RhysDavidses.jpg" width="191" /></a></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><p>The matter of which parts of the Pāli <i>sutta-piṭaka </i>are older is one that has a tragic past. The first scholar to look systematically at the issue was Caroline Augusta Foley Rhys Davids. As a student, Caroline A. Foley married her (much older) Pāli teacher, Thomas Rhys Davids and together the pair [pictured left] not only became the leading experts on Pāli, but also created a lasting organisation, <a href="https://www.palitext.com/">The Pali Text Society</a> (founded 1881), and made the Pāli suttas available to the masses, perhaps for the first time.</p><p></p><p></p><p>Caroline and Thomas had three children but their son Arthur was the apple of her eye. The <a href="https://www.ames.cam.ac.uk/faculty-library/archive/collection-rhys-davids-family-pali-scholars#cafrd">Rhys Davids family archive</a> (Cambridge University) contains no less than 262 letters from Arthur to his mother. Arthur is famous in his own right for being a highly decorated fighter pilot in WWI (one of the original "aces"). But he was tragically killed in action in 1917.
</p><p>Caroline was heartbroken and, like many others of that time, she turned to spiritualism, seeking a sense of connection with Arthur. She was a very intelligent and successful woman and she did not start attending tawdry seances or consulting fraudulent "mediums". Rather, she took up the more private practice of "automatic writing". This involves taking both sides of a written conversation, but in a detached way that allows a stream of consciousness to flow. She filled many notebooks in this way and they are still held in the <a href="https://www.ames.cam.ac.uk/faculty-library/archive/collection-rhys-davids-family-pali-scholars#cafrd">archives</a>. This turn only intensified after the death of Thomas Rhys Davids in 1922. </p><p>This change in her circumstances forced Rhys Davids to confront the Buddhist view, which till then she had accepted, that there is no soul, nothing substantial that can pass from one life to the next. This would make spiritualism practically impossible. She began to comb through the suttas and eventually concluded that the Buddha had taught an <i>ātman </i>doctrine after all, but covertly, and thus she rescued spiritualism from Buddhism. Much to the disgust of her colleagues, I gather. But Rhys Davids was ambitious and talented, and her next move was to try to prove that the Buddha's <i>ātman </i>doctrine was <i>older </i>than the Buddhist <i>anātman </i>doctrine.
</p><p>Rhys Davids invented the methods which we use to form conjectures regarding the relative dating of suttas. Still, as with so much else about early Buddhism, there is no <i>external </i>evidence with which we can corroborate or refute these conjectures. We do know that Pāli was a somewhat artificial language built on one or more Prakrit languages. Pāli was likely never anyone's first language, but was rather a "church language" that could be a <i>lingua franca</i> for Prakrit speakers. These days we might call it a "<a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/conlang">conlang</a>". </p><p>We have to keep in mind that our evidence for Pāli in the ancient world is scarcely better than our evidence for the Buddha (which is nonexistent). The very oldest extant Pāli document is a small piece of <a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1O3GVZ3s3sXwnzeRQpVxixDPOnxdXZ7NM/view">gold foil from the sixth-century</a>. The oldest complete Pāli Canon is no older than the 15th century. People say that the Pali canon was written down in the first century, but this is conjecture based on internal references in documents that post-date the suttas by several centuries. The whole history of Buddhism is based on such conjectures with little or no supporting evidence, or based on the naive use of religious documents for historical purposes. Scholars have, until recently, simply accepted the emic accounts of Buddhist history, adopted emic terminology and time periods, and generally been far too credulous with respect to tradition.</p>
<p>By way of contrast we have several very old physical manuscripts of Buddhist texts from Gandhāra that can be carbon-dated to the first or second century before the Common Era. These are, in fact, the oldest Buddhist documents of any kind. Moreover, a text like the <i>Aṣṭasāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā </i>is known to have been written by the end of the first century CE because, again, we have a carbon-dated manuscript on birch bark. This is about 400 years earlier than the first physical evidence of Pāli texts.</p><p><br /></p>
<p><b>Magadhisms</b></p>
<p>A few passages in Pāli contain evidence of case endings from a different Prakrit dialect than the one that mainly forms the basis of Pāli. For example, in Pāli the nominative form of the stem <i>buddha</i> is <i>buddho</i>. E.g. <i>buddho dhammaṃ deseti</i> "the Buddha teaches the Dhamma". In day-to-day use, the nominative singular is considered the most basic form of the verb. Traditional dictionaries, for example, use the nominative form. European dictionaries of Indic languages tend to use the "stem" form, a notional form that is rarely (if ever) encountered in practice that has no case information. The only place they regularly crop up is as the first member of a compound word. </p><p>In a few cases in Pāli we see a nominative form like <i>buddhe</i>. Same word, same case, different pronunciation. Think here about the <i>Heart Sutra dhāraṇī</i>: <i>gate gate</i>... scholars have long tried to shoehorn this into a Classical Sanskrit mould, but really it's Prakrit. "<i>Gate</i>" is not some convoluted feminine locative of the past participle <i>gata </i>or whatever. Rather <i>gate </i>is the nominative singular of <i>gata</i>, i.e. it's just the basic form of a word in practical use in that dialect.
</p><p>In stories about relative dates, the stray occurrence of such forms as a nominative singular in <i>-e </i>is seen as evidence of antiquity. The idea here is that the case marker <i>-e</i> is archaic and older texts are more likely to have archaic forms.</p><p>Frankly, this makes no sense to me. Dialects are, generally speaking, regional. For example, people often remark on the Tibetan spelling of <i>vajra</i>, i.e. <i>badzra</i>. The substitution of /b/ for /v/ is normal for Eastern India. Tibetans got their Sanskrit terminology from Eastern India. The state of Bihar, for example, derives from the presence of many Buddhist <i>vihara </i>in the past. Indeed, we sometimes see this variation in Pāli: both <i>byāpāda </i>"malevolence" and (Skt <i>vyāpāda</i>). To the best of my knowledge, this substitution (or the similarly regional initial l/r substitution) are not seen as signs of antiquity. </p><p>We know, from the distribution of Asoka inscriptions, that eastern dialects of Prakrit prefered the -<i>e</i> ending. And the -<i>e </i>ending found in Pāli is sometimes called a "Magadhism" to reflect the usage in the language used in the Asoka inscriptions around Patna, the capital of Magadha. It's possible that what we call Māgadhī was the mother language of modern Bihari.</p><p>This is not to say that dialects did not change over time. Pāli is a Middle Indic language from a pre-classical form of Old Indic (not necessarily the same one as gave rise to Classical Sanskrit). If we accept the conjecture that Pāli was written down circa first century BCE, and that this fixed the forms at that point, though later editing is clearly evidenced, then we really have to wonder how an archaic form survived for <i>several centuries</i>. I can tell you that when you stumble across one of these forms in practice, it can be very confusing because <i>buddhe </i>is something in Pāli also. It is the <i>locative </i>singular (the locative is mainly used to indicate the location of the action of a verb in a sentence), e.g. <i>buddho gahe dhammaṃ deseti </i>"the Buddha taught Dhamma in the house". This is to say, that these odd case endings stand out; one stumbles over them. How does something like <i>that </i>survive in an oral literature for centuries when, every time one encounters it, one is struck by the cognitive dissonance. </p><p>On the other hand, some Magadhisms are ubiquitous, such as the honorific <i>bhante</i> (vocative singular) or the term <span style="font-family: "Times Ext Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><i>yebhuyyena </i>"generally"<i> </i>which corresponds to Sanskrit </span><span style="font-family: "Times Ext Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><i>yadbhūyasā. </i>Following regular patterns of sound change, we expect the Pāli to be <i>yad-bhūyena</i> or <i>yad-bhiyyena. Ye </i>is Māgadhī for <i>yad. </i> And note also that we have some Sanskrit loanwords like <i>brāhmaṇa </i>for which we expect the Pāli to be <i>bāmaṇa</i> (see my discussion of this: <a href="https://jayarava.blogspot.com/2010/08/pali-pun.html">A Pāli Pun</a>). </span></p><span style="font-family: "Times Ext Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"></span><p>Had we not been <i>looking for evidence of chronology</i> we might have concluded those texts that preserve so-called Magadhisms were preserved in a Māgadhī-speaking region where they recognised the forms. In other words, these Magadhisms in Pāli need not be evidence of change over time, they may reflect a text compiled in a different region. The presence of alternative case endings reflects contemporary regional differences in pronunciation. Not that this conjecture is any more solid than the change over time conjecture. Once again, we simply <i>don't know</i>. A chronological explanation is not the most obvious one to me and I think some kind of geographical explanation is probably better.</p><p><br /></p><p><b>Systematic</b></p><p>Another argument for the antiquity of some texts is that they are "less systematic" (with reference to the standardised Buddhism of modern Theravāda) and thus older. This is a form of the teleological fallacy. The idea here is that ideas become more sophisticated and more organised over time. The presumption here is also that the Pāli texts are otherwise homogeneous and forms a static backdrop against which change can be discerned. I would argue that Theravāda Buddhism, as we meet it in the twenty-first century, is a simplified, less sophisticated form of the pluralistic Buddhism we find in early Buddhist texts. </p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.jayarava.org/texts/nidana-seqences.jpeg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="799" data-original-width="800" height="200" src="http://www.jayarava.org/texts/nidana-seqences.jpeg" width="200" /></a></div>I once again refer readers to my chart of <i>nidāna</i> doctrines. Here we see a number of different lists with different sequences. We note many variants of the standard <i>nidāna </i>sequence with fewer members, notably what's missing is often the first two items: <i>avidyā</i> and <i>saṃskāra</i>. One of the main variants (DN 15) begins with <i>nāmarūpa </i>and <i>vijñāna </i>mutually conditioning each other. <br /><p></p><p>Some of the texts use very different terminology. It is true that one of these is in the <i>Suttanipāta </i>(Sn 862-877) which experts say makes it old, based on the methods we are exploring now. But the sequence in DN 21 is just as odd. Moreover, it partially reverses the order of causality found in, say, MN 18. A <i>more </i>sophisticated variant of the standard 12 <i>nidānas </i>is also found in <i>Suttanipāta </i>(Sn 722-765) which in the standard view makes is later than most other <i>nidāna </i>texts. </p><p>The idea of using structural features like how "systematic" a doctrine is to determine relative age is starting to look quite doubtful. The logic of it does not account for which variations of the <i>nidānas </i>that we find here. Again, the standardisation on 12 <i>nidānas</i>, ignoring variants, is considerably less sophisticated than we see in Pāli. In order to interpret such differences in terms of chronology we have to presume that differences are <i>caused </i>by passing time (that is to say time passing is what causes variations to arise). But again, we could have chosen to see these as contemporary sectarian differences, for example. It's only when we ignore the obvious sectarianism in Pāli that we see anything like an "underlying unity".</p><p>Under this heading we may also discuss the fact that no one claims that the whole <i>Suttanipāta </i>is old. Only <i>parts </i>of it. And yet there is no evidence that the <i>Suttanipāta </i>circulated in fragments. It is true that a few parts of <i>Suttanipāta </i>turn up in other places. The <span style="background-color: #fcfcfc; color: #2b2b2b; font-family: "Skolar Sutta Web", serif; font-size: 16px;"><i>Sela Sutta </i>(Sn 3.7) is identical to MN 92, </span>while the <i>Vāseṭṭha Sutta</i> (Sn 3.9) also occurs at MN 98. But this just tells us that the compiler of the <i>Suttanipāta </i>had access to the same sources as the compiler of the <i>Majjhimanikāya</i>. </p><p><br /></p><p><b>Metre.</b> </p><p>I know little about meter, though I have dabbled in analysing Pāli meter from time to time. The argument in this case is that the use of certain metres in, say, <i>Suttanipāta</i> reflects antiquity. These are referred to by Roy Norman as "old metres". I've never been clear how anything can be considered <i>a priori</i> "old". We have no evidence of Buddhist literature before the written texts. We cannot judge the antiquity of a metre in a Buddhist text from the types of metres used in non-Buddhist texts. And I cannot think how else this chronological distinction could be made. </p><p>Metred verses are common enough in Pāli and some texts show a preference for one metrical scheme over another. But in a Buddhist context, what constitutes "old"? Old in comparison to what? We have nothing to base a chronology of metre on in a Buddhist context. We may be able to say that non-Buddhist texts show an evolution of the use of metres, but showing that the same evolution happened in Buddhist texts is not possible.</p><p><br /></p><p><b>Self-referential.</b></p><p>A number of suttas quote other suttas, sometimes verbatim, sometimes by name. An example I have encountered is the <i>Channa Sutta</i> (SN 22.90) in which Ānanda recalls hearing the <i>Kaccānagotta Sutta </i>(SN 12:15) being preached. The <i>Channa Sutta</i> repeats the <i>Kaccānagotta Sutta</i> in its entirety. And this, so the argument goes, proves that the <i>Channa Sutta </i>presumes the prior existence of the <i>Kaccānagotta Sutta</i>. But does it? What if the <i>Channa Sutta</i> is the original context for this text and the <i>Kaccānagotta Sutta</i> is simply a cut-down version of the story? </p><p>This alternative possibility is given credence when we study the Pāli version alongside the <i>Āgama </i>version which exists in a Chinese translation (from a Prakrit other than Pāli) and a Sanskrit translation that more or less corresponds to the Chinese. In my (to date) unpublished study of the three versions side by side I note: </p><p></p><blockquote>[The Pāli] as well has having an abbreviated opening, has no end. It just finishes abruptly, and this reinforces other hints that it is a somewhat fragmented memory of the text. </blockquote><p>It is clear that the Pāli record of the <i>Discourse to Kātyāyana</i> is not the ur-text. It's a fragment, with a slightly different selection and arrangement of sentences than the Chinese or Sanskrit versions. </p><p><br /></p><p><b>Interpolations. </b></p><p>One of the most striking examples of interpolation I know of comes in the <i>Mahāparinibbāṇa Sutta</i> (DN 16; DN II.141). In the middle of a discussion between Ānanda and the Buddha about the Buddha's funeral arrangements, we suddenly find Ānanda asking "How should we behave towards women?" (<i>Kathaṃ mayaṃ, bhante, mātugāme paṭipajjāma</i>). The word for "women" here is a colloquialism made from <i>mātā </i>"mother" (in the genitive case <i>mātu</i>) and <i>gāma </i>"village". The Buddha tells Ānanda to ignore them (<i>adassanaṃ</i>;<i> </i>literally "don't look"). After a few more lines of this misogyny, we go back to discussing the Buddha's funeral arrangements. The change of subject is quite disorientating. </p><p>In this one case, I agree that there is an obvious reason to consider the passage on how to behave towards women has been inserted into the text at some point <i>after </i>the text was initially composed. It was done so badly that we cannot help but be struck by the incompetence of the editor. Still, it was done <i>early </i>enough to be considered canonical. On the other hand, this interpolation does not occur in any other surviving version of the <i>Mahāparinibbāna Sutta</i>. So we can conjecture that it was a Theravādin monk who did the interpolating. The negative attitude towards women is typical of Theravāda monasticism.</p><p>On the other hand, the sharing of passages between texts is so common as to constitute a major feature of Pāli texts. Suttas have a kind of modular structure with a framework of common tropes and expressions (aka <i>pericopes</i>). Shared stock passages are the norm. </p><p>Compare the Pāli, Chinese, and Sanskrit texts of the <i>Kaccānagotta Sutta</i>, for example. They are all closely related, but in some cases whole phrases are present or missing in one. And this in a very short text. Quotations in Mahāyāna texts make it seem that the core of this text is a statement against applying the duality of existence/nonexistence (<i>astitā/nāstitā</i>) to the world (<i>loka</i>). The framing details of this important statement vary considerable. Notably the <i>nidāna </i>is different in all three, and the name of the main protagonist also takes three different, though closely related, forms, i.e. P. Kaccāna, Skt. Sandhākātyāyana, C. <i>Shāntuó Jiāzhānyán </i>𨅖陀迦旃延. Moreover, Sandhākātyāyana is almost certainly a mistake for Saddhā Kātyāyana, which means something like "Faithful youth of the Kātya clan." </p><p><br /></p>
<p><b>Conclusion</b></p>
<p>Having briefly surveyed the main kinds of evidence that are used to try to establish a relative chronology within the Pāli suttas, I find that, except in the case of obvious interpolations, I can <i>always </i>think of a plausible alternative reading that does not result in any chronological speculation. That which is presented as evidence of chronology could just as well be evidence of <i>regionalism </i>or <i>sectarianism</i>. </p>
<p>The idea that we can discern any systematic chronology within Pāli suttas seems quite fanciful. It certainly appeals to Buddhist theologians, but it's a house of cards. The foundations are essentially religious beliefs that are not open to discussion. The most striking of these is the religious conviction that the Buddha was a real person. This is axiomatic, for example, for bhikkhus Sujato and Brahmali who have put a great deal of effort into arguments for the "authenticity" of the Pāli canon. But their definition of authenticity is itself incoherent. In their accounts of authenticity they assume that both the Buddha and Ānanda were real people who were just as described in the literature. There are no <i>external </i>criteria because there is no external evidence. Thus the whole rests on religious commitments rather than historical facts or events. </p>
<p>Moreover, the kind of relative chronology that is produced by these speculations offers little in the way of explanatory power. It is self-contained with very few exceptions, the most notable being that the cities in which the stories are largely set are real cities, although none of the characters in the stories can be considered historical characters. </p>
<p>As someone who likes to state clear conclusions, I sympathise with the historians who scrabble around trying to put things in chronological order. But the very aim of the project—to produce a chronology—determines what kind of outcome we get, i.e. <i>a chronology</i>. Other explanations for the same facts are never even considered as far as I can see. And despite all the efforts that go into this project we still cannot explain anything of importance using this artificially constructed chronology. This is partly because the relative chronology is not anchored to history at any point. Again, the lack of external evidence of any kind is telling. <br /><br />As far as I can see the only "real" thing in the Pāli suttas are the cities. The stories are set in cities that we know from archaeology. I've walked among the ruins of Sāvatthī, for example. One can see it on <a href="https://goo.gl/maps/8fYk6moBKx2NKgxp6">Google Maps</a>. The evidence that comes from analysing religious texts is something else again. And this may be part of the problem. Historians of Buddhism seem to forget that Buddhist texts are <i>religious</i> texts. And I'm not the only one pointing out the problems with this.</p><p style="text-align: center;">~~oOo~~</p></div></div>Jayaravahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13783922534271559030noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19327107.post-19633923711182606622022-09-23T12:00:00.549+01:002022-09-23T12:00:00.164+01:00Just How "Crazy" is the Heart Sutra?<div style="text-align: justify;">
<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh39FgUV4hqkJmAVkpeb9YyoLTDHK0ccsuO-I5orAqTeV71uPcZ68kp88ZlrswezoXOoRSO9Vd9s8voiwHP0euDz4pbRON5_VQkXRbRH3IWai-1z-z_1Ksld5PUjZPtkl6QkaP24_x1Q1453yCqOQSmKrKghBoC_mbnqJzlRlNqi7eJNRu4uw/s300/Karl_B.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="300" data-original-width="300" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh39FgUV4hqkJmAVkpeb9YyoLTDHK0ccsuO-I5orAqTeV71uPcZ68kp88ZlrswezoXOoRSO9Vd9s8voiwHP0euDz4pbRON5_VQkXRbRH3IWai-1z-z_1Ksld5PUjZPtkl6QkaP24_x1Q1453yCqOQSmKrKghBoC_mbnqJzlRlNqi7eJNRu4uw/w200-h200/Karl_B.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>I recently read Karl Brunnhölzl’s absurdist article “The Heart Sutra Will Change You Forever” in the Buddhist magazine <i>Lion’s Roar</i> (September 29, 2017). I composed this response and sent it off to the magazine asking that they consider printing it, but they did not respond at all (Unlike Brunnhölzl, I have no <i>caché </i>in the world of North American celebrity Buddhism).<p></p>
<p>Brunnhölzl adequately covers the basic ground as established by D. T. Suzuki and Edward Conze, and even cites Sangharakshita, the founder of the Order I was ordained in. However, based on 10 years of forensic research and fourteen published articles on the <i>Heart Sutra</i>, I thoroughly disagree with Brunnhölzl (and Sangharakshita) over what the <i>Heart Sutra </i>is about or how it was intended to work. </p>
<p>Brunnhölzl begins by stating: <br /></p><blockquote> “One thing we can safely say about the <i>Heart Sutra </i>is that it is completely crazy. If we read it, it does not make any sense.” </blockquote><p>
</p><p>He goes on in this vein for quite some time. Why do people say things like this about the <i>Heart Sutra</i>? We know, from Michel Foucault’s book <i>Madness and Civilisation</i>, that “crazy” is an ambivalent term in Europe and her colonies, especially since the 19th century Romantic/Idealist movement in Europe (and the parallel of Transcendentalism in the USA). In the romanticized view, the madman often stumbles on the truth precisely because they lack rational faculties. In reality, being crazy is an entirely unromantic catastrophe. Madness is a terrible affliction and people who are insane are inevitably the most unhappy people of all. We should really stop trying to make it sexy.</p><p>By asserting the "craziness" of the <i>Heart Sutra</i>, Brunnhölzl can be seen to both acknowledge that the <i>Heart Sutra</i> is confusing for most readers and to celebrate that ongoing confusion as a positive. Like many Buddhists who tell us that we cannot possibly understand the <i>Heart Sutra</i>, he then goes on to tell us (without a hint of irony) exactly how to understand the <i>Heart Sutra</i>. And he does so without apparent confusion on his part. Conze was a master of this old rhetorical trick of intimating that he was a Master of secret knowledge that we was willing to share with us. </p>
<p>When I read the text closely and across canonical languages, however, I arrive at a very different conclusion. For a start, there are several mistakes in the Sanskrit text, as edited by Conze. I have outlined these errors in my published articles and shown how to resolve them and have recently submitted some revised editions to a peer-reviewed journal (fingers crossed). There are also several ancient mistakes in the Chinese text. These were detailed by Matthew Orsborn aka Huifeng (2014). And when we deal with all these textual errors the whole business of paradox and contradiction simply disappears. There <i>are </i>no contradictions in the <i>Heart Sutra</i>. The <i>Heart Sutra</i> is not "crazy", not even a tiny bit. Then again, nor is it a text for beginners. It has a context and that context can take some years of study to understand. And I've had to do that without a teacher. </p>
<p>At any time since Conze published his edition in 1948, the mistakes he made could have been repaired. Illustrious scholars (including Brunnhölzl), deeply versed in Buddhist canonical languages and doctrines, have read the text and simply overlooked all of these problems. It appears that when one <i>expects </i>nonsense in a text, one is unable to distinguish between simple grammatical errors and genuine mysticism. Readers should keep in mind that all modern translations are based on faulty recensions of the text. If something doesn’t make sense, then it’s probably a mistake.</p>
<p>The “crazy” approach of asserting that all contradictions are true (<i>A is not-A</i>) was very much an aspect of D.T. Suzuki’s approach to Zen Buddhism and was taken up enthusiastically by Edward Conze. Conze had already arrived at similar conclusions while he was a grad student. His dissertation on Aristotle’s law of noncontradiction was published in 1932, but subsequently burned with other Marxist tracts by the Nazis (meaning that Conze's doctoral-level academic qualification was incomplete). Both men’s views on this were shaped by their reading of the <i>Vajracchedikā Prajñāpāramitā </i>(incongruously) known as the <i>Diamond Sutra</i>. In 2006, Paul Harrison showed that Suzuki and Conze had misread the <i>Vajracchedikā</i>. The apparent contradictions they saw there are based on a misunderstanding of the Sanskrit grammar (which does not occur in the Tibetan translations). Richard H. Jones has independently confirmed this in his work. Rather, the <i>Vajracchedikā</i> takes what is generally called a “nominalist” approach of asserting that abstractions are not entities, they are ideas about entities. Just because we have a name for an idea, does not make it a thing. </p><p>There are no contradictions in the <i>Heart Sutra</i> and no contradictions in the <i>Diamond Sutra</i>. There are only contradictions in the minds of Buddhists who cannot adequately parse a Sanskrit text.
</p><p>Another problem highlighted by both Jones and Huifeng is the tendency to read Prajñāpāramitā through a Madhyamaka filter or, worse, as unadorned Madhyamaka. Although there is a old Buddhist tradition of doing so, it is wholly unjustified and distorts the message of the texts. We need to be clear that Prajñāpāramitā is neither Madhyamaka nor proto-Madhyamaka. I suspect, but cannot yet prove that Madhyamaka had begun to influence Prajñāpāramitā by the time the <i>Large Texts</i> (in 18k, 25k, and 100k lines) began to be produced. </p><p>As Sue Hamilton has said of early Buddhism, it was not concerned with whether or not something exists, nor with what something <i>is</i> or <i>is not</i>. Rather, early Buddhists were concerned with experience and the cessation of experience. Commenting on his repaired text of the <i>Heart Sutra</i>, Huifeng (2014) argued that it suggested the necessity of an epistemic approach to the <i>Heart Sutra</i>. In my recent article (2022) on Prajñāpāramitā and cessation, I started to outline what such an epistemic approach would look like. Here I will précis that approach (at the risk of oversimplification). </p>
<p>Since Jan Nattier’s (1992) landmark article we have known that the <i>Heart Sutra</i> is a Chinese text. This result has been independently verified by Huifeng (2014) and by me (see esp Attwood 2021). Huifeng (2014) showed that where the Sanskrit <i>Heart Sutra</i> text reads <i>aprāptitvād</i>, the Chinese text has a jargon term—<i>yǐwúsuǒdégù</i> 以無所得故—coined by Kumārajīva specifically to translate <i>anupalambhayogena</i> “by means of practising nonapprehension”. This discovery has some major implications. For one thing, this fact can only be explained as a translation error going from Chinese to Sanskrit, not the other way around. The term <i>anupalambhayogena</i> is frequently used in the <i>Large Prajñāpāramitā Text </i>to qualify statements. So, for example, in Chapter 16 of Conze’s <i>Large Text</i> translation (p. 153 ff.) we see this term being used to qualify answers to the question “What is Mahāyāna?” It turns out to be the thirty-seven <i>bodhipakṣa-dharma</i>, but with this qualification, i.e. “by practising nonapprehension” (<i>tac cānupalambhayogena</i>). Note that Conze mistranslates this term as “without a basis” about half the time. </p><p>The essence of Prajñāpāramitā practice, in this view, is nonapprehension (<i>anupalambha</i>). Huifeng, Anālayo, and I all independently realised that this must relate to the Pāli <i>Cūḷasuññata Sutta</i> (MN 121) which describes a meditation practice in which one withdraws attention from sensory experience causing it to stop arising and ultimately leaving the meditator in a state called <i>suññatāvihāra </i>"dwelling in absence [of sensory experience]. In parallel texts from the Chinese <i>Āgama</i> translations, this is referred to as <i>kōng sānmèi</i> 空三昧 (Skt <i>śūnyatā-samādhi</i>) (Choong 1999).
</p><p>Let us look more closely at what one of the “crazier” passages says. This part of the text begins “In absence” (Ch. <i>kōng zhōng</i> 空中; Skt. <i>śūnyatāyām</i>). That is to say, in the <i>samādhi</i> of absence. In my view, this refers to a person who is meditating and has undergone the cessation of sensory experience (<i>saṃjñā-vedayita-nirodha</i>) and now dwells in the absence (<i>śūnyatā</i>) of sensory experience. In that state, no dharmas can arise because the conditions for their arising are absent. In standard dependent-arising doctrine, the absence of the condition prevents the consequent state from occurring. What follows is a list of lists, in which each member of the lists is negated. What no one realised until Huifeng (2014) was that there is a second qualification that comes immediately afterwards. As noted above, Huifeng shows that the lists are followed by this word, <i>yǐwúsuǒdégù</i> 以無所得故 and this means “by practising nonapprehension” (<i>anupalambhayogena</i>)<i> </i>rather than the usual “from a state of non-attainment" (<i>aprāptitvāt</i>). This tells us how the interlocutor arrived in the state in which one or more of the necessary conditions for the arising of sensory experience, usually attention, is absent.</p><p>Now, if I am in this state, then by definition there is no sensory experience. The existence of this state is confirmed by numerous accounts of meditation and now by neuroscientific studies. In this state, the <i>skandhas</i>, as the apparatus of sensory experience (c.f. Sue Hamilton 2000), have stopped functioning. The content of experience is minimal or absent. All of the categories of Buddhism are absent for anyone who is in that state. The text does not say that sensory experiences don’t exist, let alone that objects don’t exist. The whole rhetoric of existence and non-existence is irrelevant, as Elder Subhūti tells Elder Śāriputra in Chapter One of the <i>Aṣṭasāhasrikā</i>.
</p><p>In other words, this is not, as popularly supposed, a statement that “form doesn’t exist” or a repudiation of the basic categories of Buddhist analysis. Instead, this is a straightforward statement about what it is like for sensory experience to stop, and why this state is the acme of Buddhism. It boils down to this: in the absence of sensory experience there is no sensory experience. This is so <i>not crazy </i>that it seems positively boring.</p>
<p>Another famously “crazy” passage comes a little earlier and equates <i>kōng</i> 空 (<i>śūnyatā</i>) with <i>sè </i>色 (<i>rūpa</i>). We usually see this translated as “form is emptiness” and so on. Some translators and scholars persist in mistranslating <i>rūpa</i> as “matter” but this is an egregious mistake. In Sanskrit, <i>rūpa </i>means “outward appearance; visage”; it never connotes substance or matter. In Buddhist terms, <i>rūpa </i>is to the eye as sound is to the ear. We don’t hear the sound of a conch by cramming the shell into our ear canal. Sounds waves emanate from the object and stimulate our hearing sense at a distance. Buddhists intuited that something similar happened with sight, but they didn’t understand the physics of light well enough to just say, “Light reflected from the object hits the eye”. Rather they intuited that something (which they referred to as <i>rūpa</i> “appearance”) was given off by an object and it was this that crossed the distance between object and subject and hit the eye causing a visual experience. This understanding is reflected in the Chinese choice of <i>sè</i> 色 to translate <i>rūpa</i>. In Medieval Chinese, <i>sè </i>色 meant “outward appearance” and in modern Chinese, it means “colour”. Most scholars try to say that rūpa-skandha must be something other than rūpa. Hamilton (2000) opts to refer to it as "body". In my view this must be incorrect. It is rather that rūpa, the appearance of a visual percept is here a metonym for all sensory appearances. (I've explained this recently in a blogpost: <i><a href="http://jayarava.blogspot.com/2022/09/notes-on-translating-skandhas.html">Notes on Translating the Skandhas</a></i> (16 September 2022). </p>
<p>To understand this passage, we have to dig. We know for example, that the <i>Large Text</i> is an expansion of the <i>Small </i>or <i>8000 Line Text</i>. Incidentally, the small/large (<i>xiǎo </i>小/ <i>dà </i>大) distinction was invented by Kumārajīva in the fifth century. Although the <i>Large Text</i> contains a lot of new material, we can often identify the corresponding passages in the <i>Small Text</i>. When we do this for the phrase <i>rūpaṃ śūnyatā</i>, we don’t immediately find anything. This is because in the <i>Small Text </i>the phrase is <i>rūpaṃ māyā</i>, i.e. “appearance is an illusion”. This statement does not exist in a vacuum, it occurs throughout Buddhist literature often in the form of a simile: <i>rūpaṃ māyopamaṃ</i> “appearance is like an illusion”. In his book, <i>The Notion of Emptiness in Early Buddhism</i>, Choong Mun-Keat (1999) has noted many instances of the word <i>śūnyatā</i> being shoehorned into Buddhist texts which didn’t originally include it. This reflects, I think, the growing influence of Madhyamaka and appears to have affected the <i>Large Text </i>much more than the <i>Small. </i></p>
<p>The appearance of a sensory experience can be likened to an illusion, i.e. the illusion that is sensory experience. This is in no way paradoxical or contradictory. It certainly does not involve holding contradictory statements to be true. It is not at all crazy. Indeed, the idea that sensory experience is a kind of “illusion” is rather banal these days. We know that experience and reality are governed by different rules. Just because we represent the world to ourselves based on sensory experience, does not mean that the objective world is not real or nonexistent.</p>
<p>The <i>Heart Sutra</i> is demonstrably <i>not</i> “crazy”. The idea that it is or was “crazy” is rooted in <i>misunderstanding </i>the text and its practical context (especially the <i>śūnyatā-samādhi</i>). This is not to say that Buddhists are not fascinated by paradox, because evidently they are. Historically, however, contradiction played no role at all in Buddhist thought before Nāgārjuna. As Huifeng (2016) argues, the association of Prajñāpāramitā and Madhyamaka is not a given. The two earliest known <i>Heart Sutra </i>commentaries, from the late seventh century, both eschew the Madhyamaka connection in favour of a Yogācāra-inspired interpretation. To be fair, the Yogācāra reading is only marginally more coherent. It still stuffs the <i>Heart Sutra </i>in a box that it was not made to fit.</p>
<p>It is not until we begin to read Prajñāpāramitā <i>as Prajñāpāramitā</i>, i.e. until we pay attention to both text and context, that we begin to glimpse what the author(s) wanted us to see. Buddhists have long practised the techniques for bringing sensory experience to a halt. This is an aspect of early Buddhism, with hints that it might predate Buddhism (c.f. Anālayo 2022). And it means we need to step back from Madhyamaka metaphysics and consider Huifeng’s suggestion that we read the text more as epistemology than metaphysics. I find that Buddhism makes a great deal more sense when I take this approach. That is to say, I now read everything in Buddhist texts as being principally concerned with experience and the cessation of experience and I don't have to deal with any contradictions or paradoxes. The craziness is adventitious, not inherent. That is to say, it is projected onto the text, it does not emerge from the contents of the text. Contradiction plays no role in Prajñāpāramitā despite the central role it has in the thought of D. T. Suzuki and Conze </p><p>In this sense, Karl Brunnhölzl was right; studying the <i>Heart Sutra</i> did change my life. Not because "the Heart Sutra is <i>crazy</i>" but because I discovered that the <i>Heart Sutra</i> is <i>not </i>crazy. The <i>Heart Sutra </i>began to make a lot more sense when I dropped all the "crazy" nonsense and the unsupported metaphysical speculation and began to read it as being concerned with experience. Moreover, by applying this hermeneutic across the board, I was finally able to reconcile being a faith-type Buddhist with my love of science. Epistemic Buddhism does not encroach on the subject matter of science (i.e. ontology) leaving almost no room for conflict, whereas metaphysical Buddhism (which purports to inform us on the nature of reality) is almost a complete bust.</p>
<div style="text-align: center;">~~oOo~~</div>
<h3>Further Reading</h3>
<p class="hang">Anālayo. (2015). <i>Compassion and Emptiness in Early Buddhist Meditation</i>. Windhorse Publications.</p>
<p class="hang">——. 2021. “Being Mindful of What is Absent.” <i>Mindfulness</i> 13: 1671-1678.</p>
<p class="hang">Attwood, J. (2021) “The Chinese Origins of the Heart Sutra Revisited: A Comparative Analysis of the Chinese and Sanskrit Texts.” <i>Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies</i> 44: 13–52.</p>
<p class="hang">——. (2022). “The Cessation of Sensory Experience and Prajñāpāramitā Philosophy.” <i>International Journal of Buddhist Thought & Culture</i> 32(1):111-148.</p>
<p class="hang">Brunnhölzl, Karl. (2017) “The Heart Sutra Will Change You Forever”.<i> Lion’s Roar</i> September 29, 2017. https://www.lionsroar.com/the-heart-sutra-will-change-you-forever/</p>
Choong, Mun-keat. (1999). <i>The Notion of Emptiness in Early Buddhism</i>. 2nd. Ed. Motilal Banarsidass.
<p class="hang">Hamilton, Sue. (2000). <i>Early Buddhism: A New Approach</i>. London: Routledge.</p>
<p class="hang">Harrison, Paul. (2006) “Vajracchedikā Prajñāpāramitā: A New English Translation of the Sanskrit Text Based on Two Manuscripts from Greater Gandhāra.” In <i>Buddhist Manuscripts in the Schøyen Collection</i> (Vol. III), 133-159. Hermes Publishing, Oslo.</p>
<p class="hang">Huifeng. (2014). “Apocryphal Treatment for Conze’s Heart Problems: Non-attainment, Apprehension, and Mental Hanging in the Prajñāpāramitā Hṛdaya.” <i>Journal of the Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies</i> 6: 72-105.</p>
<p class="hang">——. (2016). <i>Old School Emptiness: Hermeneutics, Criticism, and Tradition in the Narrative of Śūnyatā.</i> Kaohsiung City, Taiwan. Fo Guang Shan. Institute of Humanistic Buddhism. </p>
<p class="hang">Jones, Richard H. (2012). <i>The Heart of Buddhist Wisdom: Plain English Translations of the Heart Sutra, the Diamond-Cutter Sutra, and Other Perfection of Wisdom Texts</i>. New York: Jackson Square Books. </p>
<p class="hang">Nattier, Jan. (1992). “The Heart Sūtra: a Chinese apocryphal text?” <i>Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies</i> 15 (2) 153-223</p>
<p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p></div>Jayaravahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13783922534271559030noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19327107.post-1554875728761217542022-09-16T08:46:00.000+01:002022-09-16T08:46:00.170+01:00Notes on Translating the Skandhas<div style="text-align: justify;">
<p>I dislike it when translators adopt idiosyncratic translations, since they tend to dislocate us from the source text and the general body of translations. That said, I find some standard translations of Buddhist technical terms incomprehensible, even after almost thirty years of being Buddhist. To date I've only published a full-length article on one such term: <i>vedanā</i>. The <i>vedanā </i>article in <i>Contemporary Buddhism</i> (Attwood 2018) introduced the idea of "Humpty Dumpty linguistics" to Buddhist Studies (though with nods to Lewis Carroll, Ludwig Wittgenstein and others who first described these cases). Most linguists in our field are fully committed to the semantic paradigm in which meaning is inherent in morphemes. </p>
<p>If we take this approach with <i>vedanā </i>however, we learn that the word comes from the causative root √<i>ved </i>"cause to know", from √<i>vid</i> "to know, understand, learn, be acquainted with, etc". The -<i>ana </i>suffix is used for actions nouns, that is nouns that name actions. So <i>vedana </i>means something like "that which causes knowledge", or as Monier-Williams defines it: "announcing, proclaiming, making known". As with a number of other Buddhist technical terms, the word is then used in the feminine gender <i>vedanā</i>, presumably to mark it as a technical term (as far as I know, this feature of the Buddhist lexicon has yet to be studied).</p>
<p>To be clear, a noun in Sanskrit cannot change its gender except when it is the second member of an adjectival compound, in which case it takes the case, gender, and number of the noun (or pronoun) it describes. Only adjectives routinely change their gender. Thus the existence of a form like <i>vedanā </i>is hard to explain using etymology and semantics. Wittgenstein pointed out: </p>
<blockquote>“For a large class of cases—though not for all—in which we employ the word “meaning” it can be defined thus: the meaning of a word is its use in the language.” (Wittgenstein 1967, section 43)</blockquote>
<p>This passage is often condensed into "meaning is use", which is not a bad rule of thumb despite the impression compared to what he actually said. <i>Vedanā</i> is a case in point. Buddhists <i>use</i> it to mean "the positive and negative hedonic responses to the appearance (<i>rūpa</i>) of sensory experiences." And this is completely unrelated to its etymology. Translators have long argued whether these hedonic responses constitute "feelings" or "sensations", but really they are <i>neither</i>, they are <i>hedonic responses</i>, i.e. the judgement that something experienced is pleasant or unpleasant. Neuroscience has a term for this, i.e. <i>valence</i>. "Valence" is itself and example of Humpty Dumpty linguistics. The etymological sense is "strength, strong, etc"; from which we might take it to refer to "that which stands out". The use here also seems to draw on the chemistry sense of "capacity to form combinations": atoms that gain valence electrons are "electronegative" and those that lose them are "electropositive". And the amount of electro-positivity or -negativity is called the atom's "valency". Terms like "ferrous" and "ferric" for iron compounds reflect the different valencies of iron atoms. Incidentally, what do you call a load of Fe<sup><span style="font-size: x-small;">2+</span></sup> ions in a circle? <i>A ferrous wheel</i>. (About all I remember from 2nd year inorganic chemistry). </p><p>In what follows, I take a pragmatic approach, informed by my epistemic reading of Buddhists texts generally, and argue for a new <i>approach</i> to translating the <i>skandhas</i>. I pay attention both to pragmatic and prosodic factors rather than merely relying on semantics and the etymological fallacy. </p><p>Conze’s translation of <i>skandha </i>as “heap” makes no sense, even as a metaphor, though it does seem to have some roots in later Buddhism. I have never found the standard translation—“aggregate”—helpful either. An aggregate (singular) is a loose collection of similar parts with no structure. One <i>skandha </i>is not an aggregate, and all together simply cannot be "the aggregates" (plural). In other words, the usual translations are incoherent. Conze was a great one for saying that logic had no place in Prajñāpāramitā, an attitude he developed at least ten years before he learned Sanskrit, as a graduate student in Germany ca 1928-1932. But he was wrong about logic generally, wrong about the role of logic in Buddhism, and wrong about the presence of logic-defying contradictions in Prajñāpāramitā texts. Rather, Mr Conze simply misunderstood the texts. </p>
<p>I've dug into both the etymology and use of <i>skandha </i>previously (e.g., <a href="http://jayarava.blogspot.com/2013/03/panca-skandha-etymology-and-dynamics.html"><i>Pañca-skandha: Etymology and Dynamics</i></a> 2013) and concluded that the main reference is to "branching", though this is debatable, it suits my purposes very well. In 2021, I did a series of essays on the <i>khandhas </i>in Pāli according to Sue Hamilton (2000) and Tilmann Vetter (2000), the two most extensive surveys of the idea of the skandhas in Pāli, summed up here: <a href="http://jayarava.blogspot.com/2021/11/im-writing-up-notes-on-skandhas-which.html"><i>Skandha</i></a> 2021; individual essays begin here: <a href="http://jayarava.blogspot.com/2020/12/modern-interpretations-of-khandhas.html"><i>Modern Interpretations of the Khandhas: Intro and Rūpa</i></a> (2020). </p><p>Sue Hamilton (2000) refers to the skandhas as the “apparatus of experience”, which I think is a useful way of thinking about them. However, a detailed comparison of Hamilton (2000) and Vetter (2000),revealed one main weakness in both accounts: both place entirely too much emphasis on the <i>Khajjanīya Sutta </i>(SN 22.79) which turns out to be misleading. </p>
<div style="float: right; margin: 0px 0px 20px 40px; text-align: center; width: 150px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b><i>rūpa</i> is to the eye as sound is to the ear</b></span></div>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><i>Rūpa </i>cannot mean “matter” for example, though it is frequently translated that way. Nor, contra both Hamilton and Vetter, can it mean “body”. <i>Rūpa </i>is to the eye as sound is to the ear. That is to say, <i>rūpa </i>does not refer to substance, it refers to outward appearance, to how things appear. In the <i>Khajjanīya Sutta</i>, <i>rūpa </i>is glossed as related to <i>ruppati</i> “it destroys” but I discovered a passage in Sanskrit that suggests this is simply a mistake. The noun <i>rūpa </i>is completely unrelated to the verbal root √<i>rup</i> “destroy, harm”. In a similar passage in <i>Aṣṭa</i>, the verb is <i>rūpayati </i>which is a denominative verb (e.g. like the verb <i>medalling</i> “to receive a medal”). <i>Rūpa </i>means “appearance” and <i>rūpayati </i>means “to appear”. And <i>rūpa-skandha </i>is a metonym for the general appearance of any sensory experience in the sensorium. That is to say <i>rūpa </i>reflects coming into sensory contact with an object: light hitting the eye, sound waves hitting the ear, chemicals wafting into the nose, etc. This is what kicks off sensory experience according to early Buddhist texts. </p>
<p>Our immediate response is hedonic, we enjoy the appearance or we don’t. Traditionally, as I said above, <i>vedanā </i>is the positive or negative hedonic response to sensory experience. Although it is less well known that some of the preferred translations, this concept actually corresponds very closely to what neuroscientists, such as Lisa Feldman-Barrett (2017) calls "valence". Valence means precisely the positive and negative hedonic response to sensory experience. </p><p><i>Saṃjñā </i>is typically translated as "perception", but we can already see that this cannot be right. We must already have perceived an object in order to experience it, and in <i>vedanā </i>we are already experiencing it. In ordinary Sanskrit, <i>saṃjñā </i>is used in the sense of "designation" or "name". One of the main senses of the word is “to acknowledge or recognise” something. What we recognise at this point is the experience itself. This is where we discern the <i>sui generis</i> characteristics of the experience and put a name to the experience. Sui generis is more or less identical with the Sanskrit term svabhāva, at least as used in early Buddhist and Abhidharma literature. It was Nāgārjuna who introduced the idea that <i>svabhāva </i>means autopoietic, i.e. self-creating, the (faintly ridiculous) idea that something can be a condition for its own existence. Nāgārjuna insists that for something to be real, it must have <i>svabhāva </i>qua autopoiesis. Since nothing has or can have <i>svabhāva </i>in this sense, nothing is real. And hence many Buddhists (rightly) saw Madhyamaka as nihilistic. </p>
<p><i>Saṃskāra </i>is a borrowed word and we get a sense of how Buddhists used it from looking at the original context. In Brahmanical religions, <i>saṃskāra </i>denotes a rite of passage: birth, death, marriage, first born son, etc. During such rites, the priests carry out specific ritual actions (<i>karman</i>). Thus a <i>saṃskāra </i>is "an occasion for performing karma". And this is why we say that <i>samskāra </i>is linked to volitions and explained by various types of <i>cetanā </i>"intention". </p><p>Finally, the one thing that <i>vijñāna </i>absolutely cannot mean is “consciousness” since there is no parallel concept in Buddhism because Buddhists resisted reifying sensory experience. Rather I take <i>vijñāna </i>to suggest that we discern the sensory experience as related to an object. This is the final stage in the objectification of experience. Something appears in our sensorium, we have a hedonic response, we recognise the experience and put a name to it, our hedonic responses drive karmic actions (those that contribute to rebirth), and finally we identify the object itself.</p><br />
<p><b>Conclusion</b></p><p>The <i>skandhas</i>, then, refer to a process of objectification of experience. This is how Iron Age Buddhists thought that humans processed sensory experience. The word itself probably means something like "branch" and the <i>pañca skandhāḥ</i> are "the five branches of experience". Individually the branches refer to </p>
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li><i>Rūpa </i>= appearance</li>
<li><i>Vedanā </i>= valence</li>
<li><i>Saṃjñā </i>= recognition [of the experience]</li>
<li><i>Saṃskāra </i>= volition, i.e. an opportunity for karma</li>
<li><i>Vijñāna </i>= discrimination of the object one is perceiving. </li></ul>
<p>And this account is far more coherent than any other I have come across. Moreover, properly contextualised by the <i>absence </i>of sensory experience it helps to explain Buddhist approaches to meditation and insight. This helps explain, for example, why withdrawing attention from sensory experience leads to an altered mental state in which we do not objectify experience. </p>
<p>As scholars and Buddhists both, we have to keep in mind that this is an Iron Age account of human perception. We live more than twenty centuries after it was current and we know a great deal more about this process now. </p>
<p>That said, the framework retains some usefulness for Buddhists as a framework for reflecting on the nature of sensory experience. By identifying such aspects in experience and noting that experience all has the same nature: i.e. experience is ephemeral, compared to the absence of experience it is unsatisfactory, and within experience, no entity (no thing) is to be found. </p>
<p>At the risk of flogging a dead horse, I have to insist that the <i>absence</i> of sense experience in <i>samādhi</i> is essential for contextualising Buddhist ideas. Moreover it is the metaphysically reticent accounts of this that are crucial: samādhi tells us nothing about reality, except that it allows for sapient beings to cut themselves off from sensory experience, ride out the effects of sensory deprivations, and arrive at a state of absence, cessation, extinction, etc. Without this perspective we are bound to come to the wrong conclusions about what Buddhists were getting at. </p><p>Of course a good deal of modern Buddhism completely lacks this perspective. Theravādins, for example, completely gave up on awakening, despite preserving instructions for how to attain it. They eventually abandoned meditation in favour of dry analysis of mental states. Traditions of awakening continued to exist in Mahāyāna Buddhist milieus however. Absence was still cultivated and still occurred in some meditators leading to traditions of "non-dual awareness". </p>
<p style="text-align: center;">~~oOo~~</p></div>
<div><b>Bibliography</b></div>
<p class="hang">Attwood, J. (2018). "Defining Vedanā: Through the Looking Glass." <i>Contemporary Buddhism</i>, 18(3): 31-46. https://doi.org/10.1080/14639947.2018.1450959</p>
<p class="hang">Wittgenstein, L. 1967. <i>Philosophical Investigations</i> (3rd Ed). Basil Blackwell, 1986.</p>Jayaravahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13783922534271559030noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19327107.post-61512829715255617662022-09-09T12:00:00.910+01:002023-08-27T10:28:43.617+01:00On the Historicity of the Buddha in the Absence of Historical Evidence<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoKjXsZrseRw7oHWUM8_lqTkIafJDkK44bcO-iRUqZhzDce_B2qYhV3rRUbWgZaZKlecYaLJLQkbiwwfrszUT3Zzk2y7sp7DLT4rdNNosWHwly2Cc0DlQpHSczrRh6OBL5RGfcFS7MC-s68M2_z0KjmO5PM32GPQgjPgX-vLoO8Qz6PEav6w/s602/main-qimg-24200db4bb4a3035207d2e0c66c4aa46-lq.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="502" data-original-width="602" height="167" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoKjXsZrseRw7oHWUM8_lqTkIafJDkK44bcO-iRUqZhzDce_B2qYhV3rRUbWgZaZKlecYaLJLQkbiwwfrszUT3Zzk2y7sp7DLT4rdNNosWHwly2Cc0DlQpHSczrRh6OBL5RGfcFS7MC-s68M2_z0KjmO5PM32GPQgjPgX-vLoO8Qz6PEav6w/w200-h167/main-qimg-24200db4bb4a3035207d2e0c66c4aa46-lq.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> I recently posted an appreciation of David Drewes' recent IABS conference presentation on the historicity of the Buddha to a Triratna Buddhist Order forum and got bushwhacked by a couple of traditionalists who both have PhDs. Let me tell you that PhD-level trolling is something else entirely and it did my head in for a while. Worse, Drewes (whom I admire greatly) was targeted by these doctors for <i>ad hominem </i>slurs based on strawman arguments, and I was tarred with the same brush. The insult <i>du jour </i>is "positivist": which is what they call anyone who <i>asks for evidence</i> for an assertion that we all know is not supported by any evidence. It was one of the most spectacular examples of patriarchal white male gatekeeping I've seen in a while.<p></p><p>One of the things I noted was that arguments for the historicity of the Buddha take much the same form as arguments for the existence of God. I could see that one of the good doctors was in favour of the ontological argument, for example. I thought it might be interesting to see how these arguments work. But let me begin by stating the problem. </p><p>The figure of the Buddha is ubiquitous in the Pāli suttas. We may glean all kinds of information about him from reading the Pāli suttas and their counterparts in Gāndhārī and translations into Sanskrit and Chinese. What we cannot do is definitely link the Buddha with any historical event or fact. There is no archaeology of the Buddha, for example. There are no contemporary coins or artworks that feature his image or symbol. There are no inscriptions or texts. There are no mentions of the Buddha or even early Buddhism in the texts of other (non-Buddhist) communities. Moreover, it turns out that no figure from the Pāli suttas, including the kings, can be linked to any historical evidence. The kings named in Pāli do not appear, for example, in the old Purānic lists of kings that do include Asoka. Worse, there are two different biographies of the Buddha in the Pāli suttas that disagree about substantive details. </p><p>And this is a problem <i>for academic historians</i>. That is, it is a problem for those whose <i>job</i> is to produce and teach <i>objective </i>accounts of history if there is no objective evidence to draw on. If there is no evidence from which to construct an objective narrative, academic historians are bound to say nothing or to mark anything they do say as speculation. Academic historians are not barred from speculation, but they cannot treat speculation as a <i>form of knowledge</i>. When we speculate that the Buddha was a real person this does not imply that we <i>know </i>this. Rather, if speculation is all we have, then we <i>don't know</i>. And if someone makes a claim to knowledge, this begs the question: <i>How </i>does that person <i>know?</i></p><p>So at present, academic historians in Buddhist Studies have a problem in that they are tacitly taking speculation as knowledge. This is not necessarily a problem for anyone else. Religieux tell stories about the Buddha for reasons other than composing and teaching objective history. We tell stories to inspire, edify, affirm, and indoctrinate the audience with the views of our religion. The historicity of the Buddha is not generally speaking a problem for religious believers, because they simply believe without objective evidence. Like every other religious person on the planet believes what they believe. </p><p>The best we can do with objective history of the beginnings of Buddhism is locate the stories in cities that we do know existed. I have wandered through the ruins of Sāvatthī and Rājagaha, for example. They were real cities. And archaeology tells us that these city states began to emerge around seventh century BCE. We know what kind of pottery they made and we can contrast it with the contemporary pottery of the Brahmins living in Punjab. This tells us something about the cultures involved but not about any individual in those cultures. </p><p>That is to say, it is not that we lack any contemporary archaeological evidence. In fact, we have a good deal of evidence, it's just that it <i>does not mention or even indirectly refer to the Buddha in any way</i>. It is as though the cities are real but the people in the stories are not. It's easy to imagine why a storyteller might adopt this device of setting mythic stories in real places. In a feudal age where kings had absolute authority, it would not do to portray them in a poor light because they might just kill you (entirely legally). Moreover, by the time of Asoka, because of the rising power of monarchs, the Buddhist community had become dependent on royal patronage in addition to the support of wealthy merchants. </p><p>The first historical person in Indian history is Asoka. We can link Asoka to any number of historical facts and figures: inscriptions, art, architecture, mentions in foreign literature, and links with kings of bactria who dates are well attested. Either of Charles Allen's (popular history) books <i>The Buddha and the Sahibs </i>or <i>Ashoka </i>contain good outlines of this evidence and how it was discovered (the two books overlap substantially in content). <br /><br />By contrast the stories about the Buddha all have a strongly religious character. They almost always include some supernatural element, a feature that intensifies in texts from later periods. A figure whose main features include supernatural powers is difficult to locate in an objective historical narrative, since objectively there <i>are </i>no supernatural powers. Objectivity is not neutral. No objective history includes accounts of supernatural powers because such powers are a product of the religious imagination.</p><p>Though most people <i>believe </i>that the Buddha existed, Drewes argues that academic historians are bound to use a higher evidential bar, and all things considered the Buddha <i>does not meet that bar</i>. As a result Drewes argues that <i>academic historians</i> should not continue to speak of the Buddha as an historical person. He is a figure of myth and legend. </p><p>Drewes is specific about who his target audience is: it is academic historians. It is not Buddhists <i>per se</i>, except where they are also academic historians, which is quite often in Buddhist Studies. So having established this, let's look at how Buddhists argue for the historicity of the Buddha, using a framework I've cribbed from a popular philosophy book (i.e. <i>50 Philosophy Ideas You Really Need to Know</i> by Ben Dupré). </p>
<p><br /><br /><b>The Teleological Argument (or Argument from Design)</b></p><p>In this approach, the theologian argues that the "beauty, order, complexity, and apparent purpose" observed in the world cannot have come about by chance. Some mind or intelligent force had to <i>shape </i>things to make them so perfect. And in our case that intelligent force was the Buddha. </p><p>In 1802, the theologian William Paley used the phrase "the divine watchmaker" to reflect a mechanistic view of this argument. It was this that gave Richard Dawkins the idea of referring to evolution by natural selection as "the blind watchmaker". But any view of evolution with a "watchmaker" in it is teleological. <i>There is no watchmaker</i>. The "watch" makes and remakes itself in this case, by evolving according to patterns that seem to be properties of the universe. </p><p>Applied to the Pāli suttas we see this argument at various levels of sophistication. The most brute form of this is "The Pāli suttas exist, therefore the Buddha exists". A more sophisticated version says that the stories are too complex, too connected by an "underlying unity", too realistic, for the Buddha <i>not </i>to have been an historical person. </p><p>As one of my doctorate-holding detractors said, "Why go to all that trouble if the Buddha wasn't real?" This simply begs the question, "Why do religions create and transmit religious stories at all?" This is not a hard question to answer.</p><p>We use stories, images, and symbols because people relate more strongly to stories with people in them. They also relate strongly to what Justin L Barrett (2004) calls <i>minimally counterintuitive </i>elements, like animals playing the parts of people or supernatural powers. Indeed, research cited by Barrett seems to show that embedding one's message in a story with minimally counterintuitive elements makes it <i>more memorable</i>. So a Buddha with supernatural powers occupies our minds more strongly that a Buddha without them. Just as a talking wolf is what makes the story of Little Red Riding-Hood so memorable and so useful as a warning against <i>naïveté</i>. </p><p>We tell stories, including religious stories, to communicate values, attitudes, and ideas. And we use storytelling devices to reinforce the message. We think of the narrative arc or structure, characterisation, world-building, and so on. The best stories combine the best of each element. There is no doubt, for example, that the Buddha we meet in Pāli is a compelling character, even if the prose is generally turgid and repetitive. The settings of the stories do a good job of world building. And so on. </p><p>The problem is that no evidence exists outside of the stories that supports the idea of an historical Buddha. Which may be fine for believers, but we are considering the position of the academic historian. </p><p>We might ask, for example, if can we imagine this body of literature emerging and taking the form that it does, in the absence of a human founder of Buddhism. And I have no problem at all imagining this. However, I cannot conclude from this that I know that the Buddha did not exist. On the contrary, I am admitting my ignorance: <i>I don't know </i>if the Buddha was an actual person or not. And this is my official position on the matter unless and until more evidence emerges. </p><p>Still, if I don't know then, unless you have better evidence than I have access to, then <i>you </i>don't know either. And if you have new evidence then, as an academic historian you are bound to <i>publish </i>it in order to be taken seriously. As of today (9 Sept 2022) no such evidence has been published. Academic historians do not know if the Buddha was a real person. No one knows. </p><p>A body of literature was surely shaped by <i>some </i>human mind or minds. But it need not have been the Buddha. Humans have been telling mythic stories for as long as we have had language, which is likely in the order of 200,000 years (On the antiquity of human mythology see Witzel 2012). But the early Buddhist texts are very pluralistic and are clearly shaped by <i>more than one </i>mind. Below I will discuss the hidden (in plain sight) pluralism of dependent arising. Now let us looks at some of the main arguments that theologians have tried for the existence of God and how Buddhists use similar arguments. </p><p><br /></p>
<p><b>The Cosmological Argument</b></p>
<p>The cosmological argument in its simplest form is that "Nothing can come from nothing". Everything is caused by something other than itself (<i>autopoiesis </i>is just as forbidden for European intellectuals as it was for Nāgārjuna). </p><p>This is a form of argument that we see a lot in Buddhism because of our emphasis on phenomena having necessary conditions. The logic follows from the Buddhist axiom that "things arise in dependence on conditions". The trick is what we mean by "things". There is no doubt that the majority of contemporary Buddhists mean "everything" by this, indeed "every possible thing". For modern Buddhists, dependent arising is their <i>theory of everything</i>. As Evitar Shulman has said, there is no reason to believe that early Buddhists intended this explanation to go further than mental activity or that they saw it as a theory of everything. Many historians of Buddhist ideas now believe that the received interpretation came along substantially later. What we see in the early texts is not this metaphysical speculation, but a rather smaller epistemic claim: all mental phenomena arise in dependence on conditions. And the main condition is <i>attention</i>. Withdraw attention and sensory experience ceases. And then life starts to get interesting. </p><p>One form of this argument—<i>everything happens for a reason</i>—is known as the teleological fallacy. </p><p>Reasons are ideas or propositions evinced by humans to explain their actions in terms of internal states such as motivations, desires, etc or external circumstances such as peer pressure, coercion, etc. As Mercier and Sperber (2016) have argued, reasons qua explanations of actions, are entirely <i>post-hoc</i>. Careful study of reasons and reasoning shows that our decisions are mainly driven by unconscious inferences, and then consciously justified only in retrospect. And reasons are subject to all the usual biases and fallacies. For example, we tend to settle on the first plausible reason that comes into our mind (anchoring bias). We tend seek confirmation of our stated reason, rejecting any counterfactual information (confirmation bias). And so on. </p><p>Outside of human and animal behaviour it is not even true to say that everything that happens can be traced to a cause. Causation is tricky, especially after David Hume (1711–1776), who pointed out that we <i>never </i>observe causation <i>per se</i>, we only ever observe sequences of events. "Causation" seems to be a structure that we impose on experience to make sense of it rather than a feature of reality. Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) developed this idea by showing that metaphysics generally are imposed on experience by us, rather than emerging from within experience.</p>
<p>Against this is our everyday experience of causing things to happen by desiring them to happen. As John Searle (1932– ) is fond of saying "I think about my arm going up, and the <i>damn thing </i>goes up" (always accompanied by the appropriate action). That is the archetype of causation for human beings. Although philosophers often prefer to discuss causation in the abstract, I think this is both a red herring and an intellectual <i>cul de sac. </i>That said, our experience of causing things doesn't generalise to a theory of causation. Physical processes don't involve an agent having a desire. A rock rolling down a hill follows the applicable physical laws, but it has no agency. It cannot <i>chose </i>not to roll down hill, for example. A rock rolling down a hill is simply following inherent patterns of the evolution of matter and energy over time. There is, at the very least, an epistemic distinction between agent driven change and non-agentive change. They follow different patterns that we are pretty good at distinguishing. </p><p>Moreover where we have been able to identify non-agentive patterns of change, which were known as Laws by nineteenth century natural philosophers, they don't include the concept of causation. When we examine classical laws of motion or laws of thermodynamics, for example, there is no term that indicates "causation". When we see a classical law like <i>F=ma </i>we assume or intuit that the force <i>causes </i>the acceleration, but this is not the case. Rather it tells us how to calculate the magnitude and direction of the force having observed an accelerating mass. It does not tell us <i>anything </i>about causation. Forces do affect how matter behaves, but the idea of causation is just that, an idea. An idea we project onto the situation, when it fact it only exists in our minds. </p><p>The cosmological argument for the Buddha goes like this. The Pāli suttas exist, therefore they must have had a cause. For Buddhists that cause is assumed to be the Buddha. Since the Pāli suttas exist, the Buddha must have caused them existed. According to this view, if Buddhism is not the product of the Buddha, then <i>it is incoherent</i>. One has to be careful here, because there is much about the Pāli literature than <i>is </i>incoherent. One will not find a coherent theory of karma and rebirth, for example. One will find numerous contradictions in the stories. And so on. </p><p>There is a further fallacy about the Pāli suttas that contributes to this and other arguments for the Buddha, which is often phrased in terms of "underlying unity". In this view, observers claim to see a uniformity of expression and thought that the suttas must have been conceived by a single mind. That mind was the Buddha's mind, even if the Buddha is not accurately portrayed in the stories. Without the idea of the Buddha, many people apparently struggle to make sense of Buddhism (the many beloved characters of fictional literature notwithstanding). <br /><br />The absence of evidence often forces those who try the cosmological argument to retreat into a <i>god-of-the-gaps </i>approach. Since the Buddha cannot be found in the evidence, he must exist in the <i>absence of evidence</i>. This stymies any discussion since insisting on the absence of evidence does not refute a god-of-the-gaps argument, because it relies on the absence of evidence. And it becomes rather like trying to have a discussion about anything with a Mādhyamika: pointless.</p><p><br /></p>
<p><b>Aesthetic Arguments</b></p><p>Some Buddhists argue that they don't give a <i>focaccia </i>about history, it just <i>feels right</i> to believe in the Buddha. Or it just "makes sense", i.e. they find it intuitive. This is often followed by a denunciation of reason, reasoning, intellect, or anything other than aesthetic judgement when considering the historicity of the Buddha. The obvious intellectual influence here is Romanticism, i.e. sensibility over sense. Although the English Romantic movement itself was short-lived, the impact on English intellectuals is still profound. In Triratna, for example, Romanticism is sometimes equated with Buddhism <i>without qualification</i>. For those who take this approach, the poems of English Romantic poems appear to have the same status as Pāli suttas. I'm definitely not on board with this. Romanticism is an ideology and the English Romantic poets were a bunch of feckless aristocrats out of the heads on drugs half the time. </p><p>Since the evidence for the Buddha is inconclusive, at best, some Buddhist adopt a version of Pascal's wager: all things considered it is best to act <i>as if</i> the Buddha was a real person, because if we are right then we are right and it's all good, but if we are wrong there is still the consolation of acting correctly according to Buddhist norms (which Buddhists hold to be the highest form of morality). The Buddhist argues that it is better to be a Buddhist than not to be. Funny that. </p><p>Drewes, however, was talking about academic historians doing academic historiography. As historians we are bound to take the evidence seriously. In the absence of evidence we may speculate, but this has to be sharply distinguished from a claim to knowledge. If we are speculating, then <i>we don't know</i>. As an academic historian, one has to be able to say "We don't know". And in the case of the Buddha, we really just <i>do not know</i>. </p><p><br /></p><p><b>Evidence</b></p><p>Positivism is a particularly rigid idea about what constitutes evidence, usually in relation to the empirical sciences. Positivists are rigidly empirical about evidence: if you can't measure it, it doesn't exist. </p><p>The false claim put forward by the two doctors was that Drewes and I were excluding <i>valid </i>evidence on ideological (i.e. positivist) grounds. The evidence we are excluding from objective history is the Pāli suttas themselves. And we are excluding them in particular ways. I have no doubt, for example, that the Pāli suttas reflect the culture in which they were written. </p><p>This is completely uncontroversial in the case of the Pāli commentaries. For example, the commentaries construct elaborate family trees for the Buddha and other characters linked to him. But these family trees exhibit a preference for marriage patterns that only exist (in India) amongst Dravidians and their neighbours in Sri Lanka. We see, for example, an emphasis on <i>cross-cousin marriage</i>. A cross-cousin is a first cousin from your parent's sibling of the other gender. So, a Sri Lankan boy might be married to his father's sister's daughter, or to his mother's brother's daughter. Either way, first cousin marriage was considered incest in North India and it is presently illegal to marry a first cousin in India. By contrast in Sri Lanka first cousin marriages are normal, a custom absorbed from Dravidian India, and presently legal. So when the commentaries composed in Sri Lanka make cross-cousin marriage a feature of the Buddha's family, we know that this reflects Sri Lankan culture not the Buddha's culture. <br /><br />Those who assert that the Buddha is an historical person ought to be prepared to say <i>how they know</i>. But when you ask them this open, perfectly valid, and <i>not at all positivist</i> question, those who assert the existence of the Buddha respond with one or other of the theological arguments outlined above. But none of those arguments holds water for academic historians.</p><p>It should be noted that nowhere in mainstream academia, except perhaps in Christian Studies, does any academic accept these arguments applied to the existence of God. And no Buddhist has ever defended these arguments for God, even when they use exactly the same form of argument for the existence of the Buddha. There are differences, of course, since the Buddha can't be held responsible for the problem of evil, for example, despite being routinely referred to "omniscient" (<i>sarvajñā </i>"all knowing") in later texts. Nor is the Buddha is implicated in the creation of the universe either, though Buddhists still insist on a cyclic universe in blatant contradiction of the facts. We live in a universe that, as far as we know, was created once, and only once, and will exist forever. But still the forms of argument are recognisable. </p><p>The supposedly "authentic" texts routinely describe the Buddha in supernatural terms. He reads minds, he converses with gods, he goes to and from the god-realms, he flies, he does miracles, his tongue can cover his face, and so on. These magical elements of his character are only magnified as time goes on. The Buddha of the later hagiographies is far more magical and supernatural than in earlier stories. The plethora of Buddhas that replace Gautama, beginning with Akṣobhya and Amitābha, are almost completely magical and hardly human at all. They exist in <i>other universes </i>and cross the barriers to rescue us (from ourselves) if we only have faith and chant their name. I still have no idea where Bhaisājya Buddha ("the medicine Buddha) comes from or how he works. We have moved well away from Buddhism qua "philosophy", "moral system", or any other bowdlerised European way of talking about it. </p><p>As part of their denunciation of Drewes and I, one of the PhDs accused us of being positivist, and I want to circle back to this assertion. </p><p><br /></p><p><b>What Kind of Historian am I?</b></p>
<p>I find it hard to credit that <i>anyone </i>would call me a positivist, though this is not the first time. I mean, just look at how I handle evidence in my history articles. We have to be quite flexible in many cases. I know for example that the Fangshan stele was commissioned on 13 March 661 because an inscribed colophon says so. The positivist might ask what evidence we have to support this date? I mean, the scribe could have been lying, right? We don't <i>know </i>the date of the Fangshan stele except when we assume that the scribe wasn't lying. The positivist would not accept this, but with some caution, I do. Because there <i>are </i>times when it is reasonable to trust the evidence, even as an academic historian. </p><p>My approach is roughly speaking Bayesian. I look at all the possibilities based on what I currently know and give each a probability. All possibilities have a non-zero probability. Then I see what more I can learn and use what I've learned to reassess the probabilities. I don't do this formally. I don't, for example, assign numerical values for the probabilities. I weigh them up quite intuitively, though I'm usually more conscious of deciding which factors I consider salient to the question. I try to adopt the most likely position, but with a mind open to and actively seeking further evidence.</p><p>If we are dating the <i>Heart Sutra</i> then we know, for example, that the commonly cited date of 609 CE for the copying of the Hōryūji manuscript is objectively false. This date first appears in a Japanese book published in the 1800s. And it is widely acknowledged amongst academic historians that the book lacks credibility. Moreover, it contradicts more weighty evidence. The script and writing appear to be consistent with the 9th or 10th centuries. </p><p>Also I have suggested that the Heart Sutra was composed after 654 CE, based on the assumption that <i>Xīn jīng</i> copied the <i>dhāraṇī </i>from <i>Tuóluóní jí jīng</i> 《陀羅尼集經》 (T 901). This text was translated by Atikūṭa in ca. 654 CE. It didn't arrive in China until ca 651 CE. Since the <i>Xīn jīng</i> has <i>apparently </i>copied the <i>dhāraṇī</i> in Chinese rather than Sanskrit we may conjecture that it was composed after 654 CE. I don't know this. But I think it is the most likely scenario given the evidence. It is of a piece with better established facts that I have discussed in my publications. No positivist would give this the time of day. </p><p>Based on the present state of our knowledge, the <i>Heart Sutra</i> simply could not have existed in 609 CE and the Hōryūji manuscript itself is highly unlikely to be from that date. <br /><br />Now this evidence is vague and my conclusions provisional. I'm proposing what seems like the most likely scenario, <i>given the evidence</i>. Where the evidence is vague or ambiguous discussion may ensue about which is the better interpretation of it. And in these circumstances we may expect historians to wade in and express opinions, but not to express their opinions as a kind of knowledge. The only escape from (typically ego-driven) opposition of opinion is to find and write about new evidence. Which is what I have been doing to the <i>Heart Sutra</i> for 10 years now. </p><p>There is little point arguing about the existence of the Buddha until new evidence arrives. We've seen all the theological arguments for interpreting the texts as being the product of one person, but most academic historians find this far-fetched at best. </p><p>And so on. No one who took the time to read my historical scholarship could rightly accuse me of being a positivist. I'm far more flexible than that. I do try to be clear about how confident I am about various claims to knowledge, and in each case I have <i>published </i>the extensive arguments for what I take to be the case. Unlike some of my interlocutors, I don't make unsubstantiated claims in my published work and I do raise many still unanswered questions. I may indulge in more speculation informally, but the argument here is about <i>academic historiography</i> and, given that, I'd prefer to be judged on my publications in academic journals than on work completed under less rigorous conditions.<br /><br />If you are going to accuse me of <i>intellectual bad faith</i> then you had better have a bit more on your side than not liking me or not liking my conclusions. You better not be promoting religious claptrap on the side. </p><p><br /></p><p><b>Objectivity is Not Neutral. </b></p><p>Modern academic historians, even the non-positivists, strive towards more objective accounts of history. At the same time we still argue about what "objective" means. I take it to mean that which is the same for all observers. Even then, seeing the objective requires clearing away the subjective, which we do by comparing notes (which is why scholarship is necessarily a dialogue).</p>
<p>One of the reasons history is so often about famous people and battles, about dates and numbers is that the objectivity of these can be confirmed with reference to multiple sources. Ancient history presents increasing problems as we go back in time because evidence simply no longer exists. Ancient written records, especially religious tracts are, generally speaking, <i>highly unreliable </i>historical sources, as any number of academic historians have said and continue to say. </p><p>These days the only people producing tracts with titles like "The authenticity of the Pāli Suttas" are Theravādin bhikkhus and their academic allies. I once upset Sujato by referring to him, in passing, as a Theravāda apologist, though this was some years before he and Brahmali published the apologetic tract just mentioned. Bhikkhus submit to the <i>Vinaya </i>(an Iron Age code of monastic etiquette) and notably take a life-long vow to refrain from all sexual activity. No one who is attempting to live such a vow can be objective about the circumstances in which the vow makes sense. Because, for most of us, monastic chastity makes no sense and has been demonstrably harmful. Yes? Having strong, lifelong commitments, that in turn shape one's role and status in one's community and beyond, makes it hard to be objective. Because if being objective disproves some basis on which your commitment is based, then you are in real danger of losing that role and that status. </p><p>An historical Buddha seems intuitive to a Buddhist who has spent decades talking about the Buddha as a special kind of person (a magical person, though perhaps not quite a god). Of course, the familiar seems intuitive to the person immersed in it. What always seems counter-intuitive is the new and novel. The sensibilities of Buddhists, therefore, have to be eliminated from consideration of academic history. We fully expect Buddhists to believe in the Buddha, but that belief is not evidence for the Buddha anymore than Christian faith is evidence for the existence of God.</p><p>The Buddhist anxiety about issues of legitimacy and authenticity seems quite universal. We see it in the earliest texts in which Buddhism is apparently a heterodox view that has to be carefully distinguished from other contemporary forms of religious asceticism. Buddhists were also at pains to insist that Buddhist methods were distinct from those of other religions, though there is some evidence to suggest that Buddhists <i>inherited </i>existing meditation techniques and modified them precisely to make such a distinction. Hence the complex position that we see in Pāli suttas on the respective <i>jhāna </i>and <i>āyatana </i>meditations and the weird combination of them both in some places.</p><p>The much vaunted "underlying unity" is clearly a figment of the imagination. And if you want a demonstration then I suggest looking into the various formulations of the <i>nidānas</i>. Here is the diagram I made when I was studying them:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.jayarava.org/texts/nidana-seqences.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="799" data-original-width="800" height="399" src="http://www.jayarava.org/texts/nidana-seqences.jpeg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p>
<p>I count seven distinct formulations of the <i>nidānas</i>, sometimes using completely different terminology. The underlying unity here seems to be "one thing leads to another" and I doubt even the most ardent Buddhist theologian would claim that this idea was profound or only found in Buddhism. Back in 2011, I did a blog on many historical examples of the idea that <a href="http://jayarava.blogspot.com/2011/09/everything-changes-but-so-what.html">everything changes</a>. A completely ubiquitous idea across cultures that owes nothing to Buddhism. It's just that Buddhists also noticed this thing that everyone notices eventually (getting older makes this a lot more clear). </p><p>And this is the norm. What we see in Pāli suttas is an unevenly <i>imposed uniformity </i>that barely hides a pluralistic past in which Buddhists believed a much broader range than can be accounted for in traditionalist approaches, including the modern Theravāda. </p><p><br /></p>
<p><b>Afterword</b></p>
<p>As I was thinking about this and scanning the historical literature I came across some academic accounts of why arguments are inherently adversarial. The problem according to Howes and Hundleby (2021), is that beliefs are not something we choose. <i>Beliefs are involuntary</i>. And this means, that whenever a believer enters into an argument they risk a belief-changing event and this makes for a certain kind of vulnerability. </p>
<p>This is interesting, because if true, it explains why Buddhists tend to be so vicious in debate (and my goodness Buddhists can be extremely vicious if their beliefs are challenged). Just being in a debate, they risk losing their faith and they fight as if that would be the end of the world. For example, a Theravāda bhikkhu with both institutional and ecclesiastical titles and privileges could lose both if they stopped believing. Even for a rank and file Buddhist, loss of faith might result in social isolation and loss of status. For a social primate these are very high stakes indeed. <br /><br />By inadvertently starting an argument about the historicity of the Buddha with true believers (PhD's notwithstanding) I accidentally triggered that sense of vulnerability that all religieux have. </p></div>
<p style="text-align: center;">~~oOo~~</p><p style="text-align: center;"><br /></p><b>Bibliography</b><br />
<p class="hang">Barrett, Justin L. (2004). <i>Why Would Anyone Believe in God?</i> Altamira Press.</p>
<p class="hang">Drewes, David. (2017). "The Idea of the Historical Buddha". <i>JIABS </i>40: 1-25.DOI: 10.2143/JIABS.40.0.3269003</p>
<p class="hang">——. (2022). "The Buddha and the Buddhism That Never Was". <i>XIXth Congress of IABS</i>, Seoul, August 2022. </p>
<p class="hang">Howes, M., and Hundleby, C. (2021). "Adversarial Argument, Belief Change, and Vulnerability." <i>Topoi</i> 40, 859–872. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-021-09769-8</p>
<p class="hang">Mercier, Hugo and Sperber, Dan. (2017). <i>The Enigma of Reason: A New Theory of Human Understanding</i>. Allen Lane.</p>
<p class="hang">Witzel, E. J. Michael. (2012). <i>The Origins of the World's Mythologies</i>. Oxford University Press.</p>Jayaravahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13783922534271559030noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19327107.post-20935523755544398862022-09-02T11:48:01.018+01:002023-02-26T21:23:12.019+00:00Some Notes on Cessation and Prajñāpāramitā<p>My thirteenth article on the <i>Heart Sutra </i>has been published. </p><p></p><blockquote>(2022) "The Cessation of Sensory Experience and Prajñāpāramitā Philosophy" <i>International Journal of Buddhist Thought and Culture</i> 32(1):111-148. <a href="https://ijbtc.dongguk.edu/">IJBTC Website</a>. [free download]. Academia.edu</blockquote><p>In this article I directly address the philosophy of Prajñāpāramitā as it occurs in Prajñāpāramitā texts for the first time (for me, and probably for you too). I'm not the first to attempt to explain Prajñāpāramitā, by any means. That said, these days I'm operating in an entirely different paradigm to scholars like Edward Conze or Linnart Mäll, or religious leaders like the Dalai Lama and Thich Nhat Hanh. I never did fully accept the metaphysical speculations that surround this genre, which always sounded screwy to me, but now I know there is a better alternative. As usual, I rely a great deal on pioneering work by Sue Hamilton, Jan Nattier, and Matthew Orsborn (aka Huifeng).</p><p>Hamilton (2000) explores an epistemic reading of early Buddhism, notably the khandhas. She shows that it is far more coherent to think of the Buddha as being concerned with experience rather than with reality. Indeed, there is no Pāli word that corresponds with our concept "reality" and few, if any, texts that discuss reality or the nature of reality. What the Pāli suttas mainly discuss, amidst all the myth and miracles, is sensory experience and, in particular, the cessation of experience during meditation. That sensory experience can cease without loss of consciousness is the key discovery that sets Indian religion and philosophy apart. A great deal of Indian religion seems to me to be bound up with the implications of this discovery.</p><p>Nattier (1992) showed that the text was composed in Chinese, and both Huifeng and I have independently confirmed this by showing that the patterns she observed in the core passage can be seen throughout the Heart Sutra. Huifeng (2014) was the first to notice certain mistakes in the Sanskrit text that have contributed to our misreading of the Chinese <i>Xīn jīng</i> «心經». He noted, at the time, that the corrected text points to the need for an epistemic reading if the Heart Sutra. In 2015, I published the first of a series of articles pointing out long-standing, but unrelated, mistakes in Conze's critical edition of the <i>Prajñāpāramitāhṛdaya</i>. Between us, we ought to have created enough doubt to suggest the need for a reappraisal of Prajñāpāramitā philosophy. </p><p>This essay is a kind of supplement to the published article, with more background information. I begin with some history.</p><p><br /></p>
<p><b>Some History</b></p>
<p>At around the time that city states were emerging on the central Gaṅgā Valley floodplains, new religions , or Dharmas, were emerging in the region: theistic Brahmanism, Sāṃkhya, Jainism, Ajivaka-ism and, of course, Buddhism. And these appear against a backdrop of local animistic religions from which Buddhism  got yakkhas, tree-spirits, and other non-human (<i>amanussa</i>) beings. Archaeologists tell us the new cities begin to appear in the sixth century BCE. The cities are mainly kingdoms and several of them are characterised by imperialism and military conquest. The Moriya dynasty of Rājagaha and Paṭaliputta went on to spawn a subcontinent spanning empire in the third century BCE. Of the ancient cities from that time, only Varanasi (Pāli: Kāsī) has been continuously occupied.</p>
<p>Incidentally, although it is de rigueur to give historic names in Sanskrit, the practice is incoherent. Almost no one outside of the Punjab spoke Sanskrit at that time. The other thing that emerged at this time were the Middle Indic (or Prakrit) languages, the everyday speech of people in those regions was not the Old Indic <i>saṃskṛtabhāṣya</i> recorded by Pāṇini. The new vernacular languages probably don't derive directly from the language of the Brahmins, either, since that was only one form of Old Indic and preserved only within a hermetic community of Brahmins. In particular, there can be no suggestion that Lāja Piyadasi, aka King Asoka, ever spoke or used Sanskrit in any way. It is anachronistic to refer to him in Sanskrit as Aśoka (or Ashoka).</p>
<p>I have speculated (Attwood 2012), based some informal comments by Michael Witzel, that one catalyst for the social transformation that resulted in city and Prakrits emerge was the arrival of small groups of people (including the Vajji, Mallas, Kāmālas, and Sakkas) who initially migrated into India from Persia (bringing with them some Persian ideas and customs, a few of which were incorporated into Buddhism). After a dry spell, they moved into the interior, avoiding the Brahmin territories to the north, and settled on the margins of the emerging city states in the Gaṇgā Valley, where they took up the patterns of life that we see depicted in Pāli stories.</p>
<p>We have little reliable evidence for this period, but it seems likely, from texts like the <i>Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad</i> and the <i>Ariyapariyesanā Sutta</i>, that meditation in the sense of withdrawing attention from sensory experience was discovered by a group of migrant Brahmins living around the city of Kosala who were experimenting with visualising rituals, rather than acting them out (sometimes called the "interiorisation of ritual").</p>
<p>However it happened, the early hagiographies of the Buddha show him learning how to meditate from non-Buddhist teachers whose attainment of the <i>āyatana </i>states are consistent with attention-withdrawal being their main technique and who are distinguished only by how far they got with it. Buddhists, especially the Theravāda sect, were at pains to show the Buddha breaking away from his early teachers and finding his own technique, which we now refer to as <i>jhāna </i>(Skt <i>dhyāna</i>). But there are also suttas in Pāli, notably the <i>Cūḷasuññata Sutta</i> (MN 121), that show Buddhists still doing the older style of meditation in which one withdraws attention and reflects on the absence of sensory experience that results from this. The persistence of this thread in Buddhism in the Buddhist canon is all the more interesting when we consider that it went against the flow of Buddhist orthodoxy, which at that time was rapidly moving towards focus on Vinaya and Abhidharma. In this sense we can think of <i>Prajñāpāramitā </i>as an innovative literary form emerging from a conservative community of meditators. </p>
<p>Learning to withdraw attention from sensory experience can be fascinating. Not least because it is functionally identical to sensory deprivation and has the same side effects, i.e. visual, aural, and somatic hallucinations. Experienced meditation teachers tell us that the weird sensations, lights, and even sounds that we encounter <i>in our minds</i> when we first learn to meditate are not significant. However, as sensory deprivation intensifies we may have more vivid hallucinations with a hyperreal quality that very often are judged to be significant. We tend to call these types of hallucinations "visions" and attribute a heightened meaning to them. Many meditators feel that their "visions" have revealed an ineffable truth about the universe to them. As yet there seem to be no scientific studies of the role that sensory deprivation and consequent hallucinations play in Buddhist meditation (I've dropped hints with some of the leading neuroscientists via Twitter: look up people like Karin Matko, Heleen Slagter, Thomas Metzinger, Ruben Laukkonen, etc).</p>
<p>Ancient texts like the <i>Cūḷasuññatā Sutta</i> tell us that beyond all this foam of ephemeral sensory experience there is a state (variously deeper or higher depending on preferred cognitive metaphors) in which all sensory experience has ceased (<i>nirodha</i>), is extinguished (<i>nirvāṇa</i>), or absent (<i>śūnya</i>). I speculate that after emerging amongst Brahmins in the Kosala region, these techniques were taken up by all the religions of Second Urbanisation India. People of those various religions were all practicing attention withdrawal but (then as now) interpreting the results differently according to their own doctrines. </p>
<p>The Buddhist explanation of the absence and presence of sensory experience became the dependent arising doctrine, which some Buddhists sought to make a theory of everything. In this view, sensory experience arises dependent on the presence of conditions (<i>imasmin sati idaṃ hoti</i>), one of the main conditions being "attention" (<i>manasikāra</i>). In <i>manasikāra</i>, the <i>kāra </i>refers to "a maker" and <i>manasi </i>is <i>manas </i>"mind" in the locative case. In English we naturally want to read this as "in the mind", but I'm a little doubtful about whether ancient Buddhists had the cognitive metaphor: <span style="font-size: x-small;">MIND IS A CONTAINER</span> (see <a href="http://jayarava.blogspot.com/2012/07/the-mind-as-container-metaphor.html">The 'Mind as Container' Metaphor</a> 27 Jul 2012). In translation the locative typically becomes the prepositions "in, on, at, etc," but we can also read it as "with reference to". So <i>manasikāra</i> would be "a maker with respect to the mind". It is apparent that in some contexts words like <i>manas</i>, <i>citta</i>, and <i>vijñāna </i>were seen as interchangeable; while in other contexts they have distinct technical meanings. We typically take this context to be <i>temporal</i>, with technical terms emerging relatively "later" than undifferentiated forms. But this is a presupposition and as far as I know there is no evidence external to the texts that could corroborate this. Such differences need not be temporal at all. They might be sectarian, for example, or geographical. We really don't know. </p><p><br /></p><p><b>A Digression on Causality and Proximity</b></p><p>I'm sometimes chided by orthodox Buddhists for saying that dependent arising implies the <i>presence </i>of the condition; a view on this that I notably share with Anālayo (2021). A prominent Theravāda scholar and journal editor once insisted that the formula only requires the <i>existence </i>of the condition. At the time, I was flummoxed by this but found it difficult to articulate why. </p>
<p>In modern arguments about causality (which is more rigorous than mere conditionality) physical proximity (or locality) is required for causation. Causation or action <i>at a distance </i>is a deeply problematic idea. Where we see apparent action at a distance, such as magnetic attraction, we always find some intervening medium (the electromagnetic field) or an alternative explanation (gravity is not a force, but an effect of the geometry of spacetime). Most modern scientists and philosophers would question whether any action at a distance is possible on the macro-scale that Buddhism deal with. There is an exception for nanoscale at which is seems that locality may be up for grabs. Causation, as far as any Iron Age Buddhist could have understood it, at a minimum requires the cause to be <i>in the same physical location </i>as that which it acts on, or immediately physically proximate to it. This is not only a logical necessity, but is also implied by the grammar of the Pāli formula of dependent arising. </p><p>So, I can now more confidently insist that the dependent arising formula states that a condition must be <i>present </i>for an effect to arise. It's existence is insufficient if, for example, the condition existed on the other side of the planet at the bottom of the ocean, then there is no possibility of it causing an effect here in my house. </p><p><br /></p>
<p><b>From Experience to Reality</b></p>
<p>Causality is a tricky topic (especially if we are trying to understand an Iron Age worldview), but it is easy compared to "reality". The word is used so vaguely and ambiguously that sometimes it hardly seems to mean anything. Defining "reality" is next to impossible without invoking some other metaphysical quality. For example, we might say that reality is that which exists. But what does it mean to exist? Philosophers are still arguing about this one.</p>
<p>In my view, to be "real" is to have some observable quality that is, or some qualities that are, independent of any particular observer or their beliefs. It is entirely possible that some real things cannot ever be observed by us. About such things we know nothing and at this stage we likely never will. Many things that might be observed have not been. Think of bacteria which existed for billions of years, but were first observed in the eighteenth century. </p><p>For those aspects of reality that are apparent, all observers agree on some ontologically objective facts. For example, gravity on earth is experienced as an acceleration of 9.8 ± 0.03 m/s<sup><span style="font-size: xx-small;">2</span></sup> towards the centre of the planet, and everyone who measures it accurately gets a value in that range. Variations can be explained by the inherent measurement error, and the thickness and density of the earth's crust at the point of measurement (the oblate-spheroid shape of the planetis a factor in this). Gravity is not a matter of opinion. It is not produced by each person individually. Gravity is a fact that transcends the observer. How we explain the universality of gravity depends on the context. </p><p>Those who argue that the material world is an illusion or is generated by the mind, have no interest in explaining a phenomenon such as gravity. It's just part of the "illusion". Illusion and related words are often bandied about in this context. We often see clickbait headlines like "Reality is an illusion" or "self is an illusion". But this is not a form of explanation: it does not help us to understand the concepts involved. Even if something is <i>actually an illusion</i><span style="font-family: "Times Ext Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">—like "<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_dress">the dress</a>"</span><span style="font-family: "Times Ext Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">—simply calling it an illusion leaves open all the important questions. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: "Times Ext Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">That said, gravity certainly does not behave like an illusion, it behaves like a "brute fact". Anyone who seriously doubts this could try jumping off a tall building while fervently imagining that they can fly to test their belief (Darwin Awards await). </span></p><p>Some Buddhists are surprised to discover I distinguish experience from reality. They wonder if they not one and the same thing (i.e. they are Idealists). The reasoning is usually along the lines of "mind creates reality". This is a misconception. If mind did create reality, then there would be no reason for everyone to imagine gravity being 9.81 ± 0.03 m/s<sup><span style="font-size: xx-small;">2</span></sup>. There would be nothing to prevent me from inventing gravity at 5.6 ± 0.3 m/s<sup><span style="font-size: xx-small;">2</span></sup>. or any arbitrary figure. In the absence of an objective world, what could possibly account for the uniformity and universality of gravity? I've yet to see any convincing explanation of this from an Idealist. </p><p>NB the standard figure for gravity is often given with greater precision that the measurement error allows. The standard figure is 9.80665 m/s<sup><span style="font-size: xx-small;">2</span></sup> but the variation due to error is on the order of two significant figures (0.03 m/s<sup><span style="font-size: xx-small;">2</span></sup>), so the standard figure cannot have a precision greater than that, i.e. 9.81 m/s<sup><span style="font-size: xx-small;">2</span></sup>.</p><p>Gravity is just one of many universal quantities that we know of. Others include the mass of a proton, the charge of an electron, and the speed of light in a vacuum. Explaining these from an Idealistic worldview is difficult at best. Universality seems to requires something extrinsic to the observer in order to impose standardisation but how to achieve this in a nonmaterial, idealistic worldview? An objective universe, independent of observers, is far and away the simplest and most elegant solution to shared knowledge and universal constants. Over the last 450 years, scientists have described our universe to an exquisite level of detail, often to 10 or 12 decimal places, so that in terms of our everyday world, we now completely understand the processes involved. On this see these blog posts by Sean Carroll. </p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><a href="https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2010/09/23/the-laws-underlying-the-physics-of-everyday-life-are-completely-understood/">The Laws Underlying The Physics of Everyday Life Are Completely Understood</a>.</li><li><a href="https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2010/09/29/seriously-the-laws-underlying-the-physics-of-everyday-life-really-are-completely-understood/">Seriously, The Laws Underlying The Physics of Everyday Life Really Are Completely Understood</a>.</li></ul><p></p><p>The gaps in our understanding of the universe as a whole are huge, but they are at the extremes. The physics of human scales of mass, length, and energy are fully comprehended by the atomic theory of matter and forces. Buddhist idealism is forced to sweep 450 years of science under the carpet and pretend that it is inconsequential compared to what Buddhists say they learn in meditation about the nature of reality. </p><p>Early Buddhists didn't explicitly say, but they did <i>imply </i>that they accept the existence of an objective world. An objective world is not a problem for early Buddhist doctrine, or for Prajñāpāramitā, because the focus is on sensory experience and what happens to our minds when we withdraw attention from sensory experience. The nature of the objective world is, at best, secondary to questions about the nature of experience and the meaning and significance of the complete cessation of sensory experience. As long as the nature of reality allows for sensory experience and cessation it doesn't matter what we believe about it. Especially in Iron Age India when it seemed plausible to take <i>nirvāṇa </i>as an analogue of death, so that by attaining the former, we bring the latter to an end. Once rebirth caught on, the end of it became the avowed goal of all known Iron Age Indian religions. </p><p>Still, getting from <i>objectively real</i> to <i>objective reality </i>is a much bigger step than most people realise.</p><p><br /></p><p><b>From Reality to Myth</b></p><p>My approach to abstract concepts like "reality" is broadly speaking <i>nominalist.</i> In this view, reality is the abstract notion that all real things have something in common that qualifies them <i>as real</i>. This common quality then <i>retrospectively </i>authenticates a phenomena as "real". On a nominalist reading, however, abstractions themselves are not real. Abstractions are <i>ideas </i>that we have about experience. Abstracting a perceived commonality and then <i>retrospectively</i> using that abstraction to define what is "real" is a method that produces nonsense. I noted above that it's very difficult to define reality from first principles. Part of the problem is that "reality" is an abstraction; an idea. And this allows that different people can define reality differently depending on their idea. This also means that a phenomenological account of "reality" is no help: what kind of phenomena is an idea? Ideas are subjective phenomena. So how can a subjective phenomena be used to <i>define </i>something objective? </p><p>A further problem we routinely face in Buddhism is that many Buddhists believe in a magical reality over and above "mundane reality". In other words, many Buddhists are openly dualistic about this world (<i>ayaṃ loko</i>) and the world beyond (<i>paraṃ loko</i>). This is typical of all religions that emphasise "life after death". Many Buddhists insist that there is a more real world, or a real world juxtaposed with the world of illusions reflected by sensory experience, waiting for us after death, be it <i>nirvāṇa </i>or a <i>buddhakṣetra</i>. The world of experience is, at best, a poor reflection of a "spiritual" (read "magical") reality beyond. For example, my <i>bête noire</i>,<i> </i>Edward Conze openly argued for a magical [his word] reality existed over and above physical reality. Moreover, he apparently believed this for many years before he ever encountered a Sanskrit text. He managed to shoehorn this view into a Marxist analysis of Aristotle long before he shoehorned it into Prajñāpāramitā. </p><p>There is an obvious attraction in the idea of a "world beyond"; a world that has none of the flaws of our world; a world that is not broken, cruel, and merciless; a world in which all of our desires are fulfilled, and so on. One need not labour the point since a better afterlife is the essence of what all religions promise followers. Although it is notable that some early Buddhists stated that their intention was "the end of the world" (<i>lokassa anto</i>). </p><p>It's not until the Pure Land texts that we see this idea of a magical reality beyond the "mundane" world begin to take hold in Buddhism. Before this there were better and and worse rebirths, but all rebirth was problematic. Rebirth in a "heaven" (<i>devaloka</i>) only prolongs the inevitable and has no soteriological value. Indeed, some Buddhists say that liberation is only possible from the human realm (<i>manussaloka</i>).</p><p>Because there can only be one Buddha at a time (by Buddhists' own definition) and Gautama disappeared from our world when he died. Gautama brought rebirth to an end and his post-mortem status was officially "indeterminate" (<i>avyākṛta</i>). But this was apparently interpreted in some quarters as Gautama abandoning us to our fate. In response to this Buddhists invented alternative universes where living Buddhas could still be found who were willing to "save" us. These Buddhas effectively live forever and would rescue any faithful devotee from <i>saṃsāra</i>. At first this centred around the Buddha Akṣobhya and his buddhafield Abhirati, but he was soon eclipsed by Amitābha who lives in Sukhāvati and is much less demanding: a single act of recalling his name (<i>nāmānusmṛti</i>) is enough to draw his attention and he comes to our universe to collect us <i>after death </i>so that we are reborn in Sukhāvati and from there attain liberation from rebirth. The two sutras that describe this are both called the <i>Sukhāvativyūha Sūtra</i>. They seem to have appeared around the same time as Prajñāpāramitā literature and have proved to be amongst the most influential texts in Buddhist history. It's likely that theistic Pure Land followers are the majority of all Buddhists worldwide. </p><p>Such stories are <i>mythological</i>. That is to say, these stories reflect the <i>values </i>of some Buddhists at some point in time and space, expressed in symbolic, often anthropomorphic, terms. The stories don't reflect actual events. Myths are not objective histories to inform us about the past. As noted, Buddhist myths reflect a growing dissatisfaction with the idea that Gautama simply left us behind when he ended his own stream of rebirths. A really good person, they reasoned, would have stuck around to give us a helping hand: who could look at the world and not conclude that it desperately needs help? Not me. The Buddha was supposed to be the epitome of good. </p><p>A little later a related idea emerges, i.e. the idea of a pluralistic Buddha who at one level seemed to be a human man, but the mortal man was merely a material manifestation of a timeless, immaterial, undying principle of awakening. The issue of the Buddha's apparently short lifespan is tackled in this way in the <i>Suvarṇabhāsottama Sūtra</i> (aka the <i>Golden Light Sutra</i>). These are religious myths, but Buddhists the world over either believe that they are objectively true or behave as if they describe reality. Again, this is theism, turning the Buddha into a god.</p><p>At around the same time as these myths were emerging and taking Buddhism in innovative directions, some Buddhists, notably one known as Nāgārjuna, began to assert that the absence of sensory experience <i>is reality</i>. This is the essence of Madhyamaka metaphysics, for example. We often see this stated as "emptiness is reality" as though this means something, although I think it does not. Mādhyamikas also say things like "dharmas don't exist", although whether or not Nāgārjuna said this or even implied it is moot. The problem here is that although there <i>is</i> a state in which all sensory experiences cease, asserting that this state <i>is reality</i> is problematic since it lumps <i>all phenomena</i> into the "not real" category, which is completely absurd and <i>creates </i>paradoxes. In short, reifying the absence of experience following gets us nowhere. But some Buddhists still value the contradictions and paradoxes that this stance throws up. They seem to find the existence of paradox as confirmation that they are on the right track whereas I would say that a paradox either reflects our ignorance or a mistake. In the case of Prajñāpāramitā it is both: we were naively ignorant of the context and misled by the lies of Edward Conze (et al) to believe that paradox was normal when, in point of fact, paradox and contradiction play no role in Buddhism until substantially later. </p><p><br /></p><p><b>Not Doing Metaphysics</b></p><p>Talk of grand abstractions like truth, reality, and existence all comes under the heading of metaphysics. Anyone who gives an opinion on "reality", let alone the "nature of reality" is <i>ipso facto </i>doing metaphysics. Hence, I do not believe Mādhyamikas when they claim not to be doing metaphysics but assert that they understand or have experienced the nature of reality. </p><p>Humans are constantly trying to discern the reality that lays behind or beyond sensory experience because we all know that our eyes can be deceived. In modern terms, the world we experience is a virtual model created by the brain (as demonstrated, for example, by phantom limb syndrome or the Capgras delusion). The better our model of the world is, the better our chances of survival and procreation. Most of us are not naive realists. We do understand that reality and experience are not identical and we strive to minimise the differences or errors. When we foreground this in our thinking we may become more reticent about drawing conclusions about reality based on unusual experiences. </p><p>When someone makes an assertion about reality or has an opinion on what is real, it is always legitimate to ask "How do you know?". Doing this we find that Buddhists place high value and significance on experiences in meditation. Some of these experiences have all the hallmarks of hallucinations caused by the brain's response to sensory deprivation. In the end, the one thing that makes all the difference is the fact that sensory experience can cease, though I still hesitate to call this "an experience". Along the way we lose our sense of our body, our sense of self, and our sense of a world "out there". In the end, when all sensory experience has stopped and we are still alive and aware, we find ourselves in an contentless but nonetheless <i>hyperreal </i>state that begs to be assigned meaning and significance. The cessation of the sense of self, for example, is often seen as evidence of the nonexistence of self. </p><p>However, "I don't see it" and "It doesn't exist" are very much <i>not</i> the same thing. </p><p>The mystic says that the experience of, say, selflessness, is sufficient to establish that our "self" is not real. This is a metaphysical conclusion. But it's also solipsistic (i.e. egocentric). One of my most striking memories of timelessness in meditation was on a long retreat. I was deeply concentrated and sat on after the bell rang for the conclusion of the session. While I was there not noticing the passing of time, the other retreatants prepared, cooked, and served a meal. That <i>took time;</i> about one hour in fact. Time that I didn't notice passing. The obvious conclusion here is not "time is not real" or "time doesn't exist", but that I was <i>unaware of time passing </i>for about an hour while everyone around me had a pretty normal experience of time. This is an epistemic conclusion. It lacks the panache and glamour of metaphysics, it doesn't cast me as the hero of the story, but it's more intellectually honest. </p><p>The weight of evidence is that most of these kinds of metaphysical conclusions that appeal to Buddhists are factually wrong. What other conclusion might someone who has experienced, say, the cessation of their self come to? I like to use the example of Gary Weber who reports that he has no sense of self. I find Weber very credible, so I believe him when he says that he doesn't experience much if any sense of self. And yet, wildly contrary to Buddhist doctrine, he takes this to mean that everything that happens is predetermined and events unfold without any influence from us whatever. He will tell you that we don't really make decisions, we are just carried along falsely believing that our desires cause our actions, when in fact it's all just a fixed set of events playing out as they were always going to. Clearly this is a very different metaphysical conclusion than your average Buddhist would arrive at based on experiences that seem to be <i>exactly the same</i>. </p><p>An alternative explanation that occurs to me is that the apparently selfless might conclude that selfing, the activities of the self, is now going on <i>unconsciously</i>. This would help explain why a person with "no self" is able to carry on a conversation for example, as Gary Weber obviously does. A conversation is a complex social interaction in which each participant has to keep track of who said what to whom, and whose turn it is to talk. It seems to me that this would be impossible without some sense of self/other dichotomy. If someone who has no sense of self is conversing normally, we might want to conclude that their selfing was now <i>unconscious</i>. Unconscious selfing presents fewer problems than conscious selfing, because the role of self-centeredness is reduced. Moreover it is considerably less problematic than the view that no self exists, even in people who sincerely believe that they are experiencing themselves as a self from moment to moment. <br /></p><p>In Triratna we often talk about this in psychological terms, particularly in terms of the subject/object duality "breaking down". Many, perhaps most, of us take this to mean that the subject/object duality is not real. The corollary, that the absence of a subject/object duality <i>is reality</i>, follows but all the same caveats apply to us as to others. Just because we can experience the subject/object duality breaking down, does not mean that it is not real or that it doesn't exist. And so on. </p><p><b><br /></b></p><p><b>The Alternative: An Epistemic Approach</b></p><p>Reality is a complex subject. And the relationship of experience to reality is not clear either in Buddhism or in some modern accounts of mind. </p><p>The mind-body problem is one of the most famous philosophical conundrums. My own view is that the dichotomy is not really one of mind and body but is, more fundamentally, a matter-spirit dichotomy. That is, I take the distinction to have deeper roots in our basic ideas about the material world and another world of invisible life-force often associated with the afterlife. This is a prominent topic in my book <i><a href="https://www.lulu.com/shop/-jayarava/karma-and-rebirth-reconsidered/paperback/product-16r5nkye.html?page=1&pageSize=4">Karma and Rebirth Reconsidered</a></i> and in a <a href="http://jayarava.blogspot.com/2014/06/spiritual-i-lifes-breath.html">range of blog posts</a>. My sense is that while most scientists now eschew the grosser forms of matter-spirit dualism (since they don't believe in "spirit"), the average person still has a profoundly dualistic outlook. Almost everyone I know believes in an afterlife for example, and this necessitates some ontological dualism. </p><p>In epistemic terms the subject/object duality is real since we get information about subjectivity and objectivity through completely different sensory modalities: introspection and extrospection. One way of thinking about meditation is that it shuts down extrospection and leaves us in a purely subjective state. If we mistake this purely subjective state for objective reality, then we may be tempted into the conclusion that "mind makes reality", but this requires that we give no value whatever to objectivity. And this seems a perverse way of thinking about it. </p><p>Dualisms are deeply embedded in how humans conceptualise the world. And when we take the distinctions to be metaphysical, as we do in matter-spirit dualisms, we find ourselves in tricky territory. What usually happens is that having divided the world into two, we dismiss one part (usually matter) as unreal. Materialism, as John Searle pointed out, is a dualism in which proponents divide the world into material and non-material halves and declare the non-material to be unreal. This manoeuvre has consequences. If the mind is non-material, then the materialist is left with no explanation of it except to argue that it is an illusion. </p><p>An epistemic approach to this problem rapidly finds purchase and leverage over this particular dualism. As I say, there is an obvious epistemic distinction between how we get information about the world and how we get information about ourselves. We have a range of external senses that inform us about the world in particular modalities: sight, sound, smell, taste, touch. This information allows us to construct virtual models of the world that are efficient for navigating the world. We have a different set of senses for the internal states of our body, many of which are not available to introspection or conscious control (e.g. blood sugar levels). Notably our mind<span style="font-family: "Times Ext Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Unicode MS"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: DFKai-SB; mso-fareast-language: ZH-TW;">—</span>thoughts, feelings, emotions, etc<span style="font-family: "Times Ext Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Unicode MS"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: DFKai-SB; mso-fareast-language: ZH-TW;">—</span>is an important source of information about our own internal states. </p><p>There is some crossover, as when we gain information about our body by looking at it. But generally speaking there is a clear <i>epistemic</i> distinction between "in here" and "out there". Just as there is an epistemic distinction between, say, seeing light reflected from an object and hearing the physical vibrations that it makes. To my knowledge, and despite the phrase "seeing is believing", no one has ever argued that seeing is real and hearing is unreal, or vice versa. We acknowledge that both occur, that they are different modes of sensing, and give us different information. And we can always ask another person, "Did you see/hear that?" and compare notes. Problems emerge when we jump to metaphysical conclusions based on epistemic differences without first establishing whether there is some metaphysical basis for the differences. </p><p>As far as anyone can tell, there is no mind/body dualism in the sense that they are different substances. But that said, we do have an undeniable experience of an <i>epistemic </i>difference between mind and body. We gain knowledge of each in different ways. One cannot introspect an external object for example. Nor can one use empathy to project the emotional disposition of a non-sentient object. When I put my cup down I don't wonder how the table will feel about it. There is no way for the table to support sentience let alone forming an opinion. </p><p>At this point, Buddhist cite mystical experiences as evidence for their conclusions. The problem with mystical experiences, is that they are interpreted differently according to one's preferences. I have already cited the example of Gary Weber, the Advaita Vedantin. But there are also Christian mystics, for example who interpret what seem like the same experiences as evidence for the existence of God. </p><p><br /></p><p><b>Conclusion</b></p><p>Everyone is trying to make sense of their world. Some go about it more systematically than others. The less systematic our approach, the more likely that errors and infelicities will creep into our worldview. Early Buddhists systematically explored mental states that occur in the process of withdrawing attention from sensory experience. The results are practices that we call "meditation", a word that goes back to an Indo-European root *<a href="https://www.etymonline.com/word/meditate"><i>med</i></a> and (rather appropriately) means "take appropriate measures". Early Buddhists did not systematically investigate anything else. They showed no interest in "reality" or the "nature" of reality, except insofar as it pertained to karma and rebirth, which they accepted <i>a priori</i> as true. </p><p>Here we see the disadvantage of religious modes of thinking. Religieux begin reasoning from a metaphysical commitment; a belief. And recall Michael Taft's aphorism: <i>belief is an emotion about an idea</i>. From the belief, religieux look for evidence that is consistent with that belief and hold it up as confirmation of the belief. At the same time they overlook, ignore, or dispose of any counterfactual information. </p><p>Religious metaphysics are <i>not </i>motivated by a search for the truth. Religieux invariably believe they <i>already know the truth</i>. This applies to Buddhists as much as any other religion. We start from certainty and then inquire as to how reality confirms our assumptions. A procedure known as <i>confirmation bias</i>. </p><p>Buddhist metaphysics, of which there are several, are fine except that they disagree in every possible way with physics. Buddhists who are aware of this fact (and appalled by it) will often invoke Eugene Wigner's version of Niels Bohr's interpretation of the Schrödinger equation, i.e. "consciousness collapses the wavefunction". Back in the real world, physicists universally agree that Wigner was <i>talking bollocks</i>, and most of them have abandoned Copenhagen (though they continue to teach it to undergraduates). Buddhists seldom, if ever, come out in defence of other valid interpretations of the Schrödinger equation. We see no Buddhist essays arguing that, for example, Bohmian mechanics (aka pilot-wave theory) reflects the Buddha's insight. Buddhists are attracted to the deprecated Copenhagen interpretation because purely by confirmation bias. There really is no connection between the Iron Age observations of Buddhists about how their minds work and the twentieth century observations about how matter changes over time on the nanoscale. </p><p>That said, like other physicists, Bohm himself later went into the business of speculative metaphysics. It is a quirk of many physicist that they start to believe that they really do understand <i>everything</i>. There are any number of books of unscientific (but influential) nonsense from people like Eugene Wigner, Linus Pauling (<a href="http://jayarava.blogspot.com/2014/11/common-credulity.html">Vitamin C</a>), and including Bohm himself, and even the Venerable Albert Einstein. </p><p>When I began to adopt an epistemic approach to Buddhism, I realised that I no longer had any conflicts with my education in the physical sciences (I majored in chemistry). </p><p>Buddhist metaphysics as reflected in various texts across time have no advantages over any other religious metaphysics. The Buddhist worldview is always stated in such a way as to allow for the supernatural (or what I sometimes call "the unnatural"): karma, rebirth, gods, demons, spirits, heavens, hells, ESP, etc. At best these views approach the sophistication of Descartes, accepting a dualistic world in order to preserve a place for non-natural entities, forces, locations, and events. Buddhism provides us with nothing approaching the physical laws of nineteenth century science. No equivalent to, say, the universal principle of conservation of momentum. Which is hardly surprising given that most Buddhists think the real world is "an illusion" and that a "spiritual" Reality is to be found in purely subjective mental states. Why <i>would </i>this approach produce any insights into the real? </p><p>While religious Buddhists have an ongoing battle with the real, in that it clearly does not conform to Buddhist orthodoxy, I no longer have this problem. I no longer feel any tension between my scientific outlook and my Buddhist vocation based on working with my mind. They are two distinct provinces of knowledge, at least for the time being. </p><p>Why does this matter? I think religion in Europe (and her colonies), generally, is struggling with two tendencies: the tendency towards fundamentalism and the tendency towards rationalism. The former stymies all intellectual progress, while the latter sees no value in religion. We've all watched secular mindfulness rapidly become very much more popular than religious Buddhism. We've seen many emotive arguments against practising mindfulness outside of the metaphysical commitments held by most Buddhists. How much worse will it be when we begin to see secular training in attention withdrawal (if it does not already exist) and a secular "enlightenment". That could easily eclipse European Buddhism, though my sense is that Asian Buddhism is more insulated from this kind of discourse.</p><p>Central to my faith in 2022 is this credo: I believe that sensory experience can cease without loss of basic awareness. I believe this knowledge was discovered in ancient India and became the basis for a number of religions. </p><p>Although the result is described as "contentless awareness" those who undergo this can remember what it was like and are usually eager to offer an interpretation. To date religious explanations have dominated the field. Nascent academic attempts to characterise and categorise such phenomena are fascinating, but still lack coherence. While I mainly write for a Buddhist audience, I kind of hope that some academic will also notice my epistemic approach and see how it disentangles religious sentiments from the difficult work of identifying and characterising what is real. </p><p>In this sense, then, I think enlightenment, awakening, liberation, purification, or whatever we call it, is a <i>real </i>phenomena. I feel fairly confident that I've met people who are "in that state" (<i>tathā-gata</i>, as we say in Pāli). And scientists are right now measuring the neural activity of people in a state of contentless awareness looking for, and <i>finding</i>, neural correlates of cessation and awakening. Where Buddhism and science part company is precisely where all religions breakdown, that is on the interpretation of experience, especially with respect to what experience tells us about "reality". </p><p>Cessation is something we can systematically cultivate. The way to cultivate it is to minimise sensory experience, both in daily life and more radically in meditation. The goal of practice is a form of knowledge, not a form of existence. We call this knowledge <i>prajñā </i>or <i>paragnosis</i>, knowledge from beyond the cessation of sensory experience. Without the supernatural elements, with the view that the Buddha was talking about experience rather than reality, we can drop all the metaphysical speculation about what it all means, and arrive at a simpler, more coherent view of Buddhism, that has realistic goals for maximising human potential. </p><p style="text-align: center;">~~oOo~~</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p></p>Jayaravahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13783922534271559030noreply@blogger.com