The Forest Monks of Sri Lanka: An Anthropological and Historical Study. MICHAEL CARRITHERS: The Buddhist Saints of the Forest and the Cult of Amulets: A Study in Charisma, Hagiography, Sectarianism and Millennial Buddhism. STANLEY J. TAMBIAH (original) (raw)
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Journal of Global Buddhism, 2020
The modernization of Buddhism since the late nineteenth century has mostly been interpreted as a process of adaptation to rationalist trends of Western modernity. This understanding is particularly influential in the interpretation of modernized Buddhism in Sri Lanka via the use of the compelling term 'Protestant Buddhism', which emphasizes not only rationalist interpretations of Buddhism but also practices imitative of Protestant Christianity such as Sunday schools. This article argues that the modernizing efforts of Sri Lankan Buddhists were far more diverse than the above characterization. Further, the modernization of Buddhism was not just a project of the bourgeoisie. This paper reveals how both elite and non-elite Buddhist activists in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries made use of the newly acquired print technology to promote the devotional ritual of venerating the Buddha through printed liturgical booklets, while also recasting this ritual as a principal marker of Buddhist identity. This new emphasis on devotionalism, while seemingly traditional, was in fact another form of modernist response to colonialism and globalization.
CONTENTS The online pagination 2012 corresponds to the hard copy pagination 1992 Abbreviations............................................................................vii List of Illustrations.....................................................................ix Introduction...............................................................................xi T.H. Barrett Devil’s Valley to Omega Point: Reflections on the Emergence of a Theme from the Nō..............................1 T.H. Barrett Buddhism, Taoism and the Rise of the City Gods................13 L.S. Cousins The ‘Five Points’ and the Origins of the Buddhist Schools...27 P.T. Denwood Some Formative Inf1uences in Mahāyāna Buddhist Art…...61 G. Dorje The rNying-ma Interpretation of Commitment and Vow…..71 Ch.E. Freeman Saṃvṛti, Vyavahāra and Paramārtha inthe Akṣamatinirdeśa and its Commentary by Vasubandhu….................................97 D.N. Gellner Monk, Househo1der and Priest: What the Three Yānas Mean to Newar Buddhists...................................................115 C. Hallisey Councils as Ideas and Events in the Theravāda…………....133 S. Hookham The Practical Implications of the Doctrine of Buddha-nature……................................................................149 R. Mayer Observations on the Tibetan Phur-ba and the Indian Kīla ........................................................................163 K.R. Norman Theravāda Buddhism and Brahmanical Hinduism: Brahmanical Terms in a Buddhist Guise……………..............193 References...............................................................................201
Esoteric Buddhist Practice in Ancient Sri Lanka
Historical evidence clearly shows that during the 8 -15 century A. D. Esoteric Buddhism played a considerable role in the history of Sri Lankan Buddhism. This paper is the result of an attempt to examine two inscriptions found at the Abhayagiri Stupa during [1940][1941][1942][1943][1944][1945] and which shed light on this subject. I was able to identify the original source of these two dharani inscriptions, which have remained unidentified for five decades. These dharanis have been taken from the Sarva-Tathagata-Tattva-Samgraha-Mahayana-Sutra (STTS). This paper is mainly based on the contents of those two dharanis and other information relevant to the STTS Sutra. The first part of the paper will explain the practice of dharmadhatu deposition in stupas and esoteric fragments found at the Abhayagiri stupa. The second part will examine the accounts given in the Nikayasamgraha on esoteric Buddhism in Sri Lanka and their relations to the STTS Sutra; further it will also contain an analyse of the contents of the newly identified dharanis. Finally, the paper will discuss why esoteric Buddhism was severely criticized in the Nikayasamgraha.
Dust on the Throne: The Search for Buddhism in Modern India by Douglas Ober
Journal of Global Buddhism, 2024
Every few years, a book comes along that demands an inordinate amount of underlining, exclamation points, and notes in the margin—all the way into the depths of its footnotes. Douglas Ober’s Dust on the Throne: The Search for Buddhism in Modern India is likely to be such a book for many: a monograph crafted during a decade’s research and published in 2023 by India’s activist publishing house Navayana, as well as by Stanford University Press. Specialists with access to academic libraries will have already spotted its antecedent, Ober’s 2017 dissertation. Here, he brings significant enhancements to his work, including a map and several photographs that give even more life to his already vivid and notably readable prose. In essence, the book is an extensive subcontinental history and theorization of modern Buddhism in India, with broad implications for related fields. Ober upends the commonly held view that Buddhism all but disappeared from India sometime between the 13th and 14th centuries, through composite multi-regional and multi-linguistic evidence, including uninterrupted networks of pan-Asian pilgrimage in which India remained the “axis mundi of the Buddhist world” (6). The notion of Indian Buddhist demise has long been contested by dissenting historians, yet mostly in fragmented concerns about geography, timeframes, or seemingly isolated (and thus too easily discounted) religious activity. Weaving together a stunning amount of source material to reveal a broader pattern, Ober brings a wide-angle lens to the debate. He offers fresh analytical scrutiny to the unstable conceptual boundaries of “Indian” and of “Buddhist.” In this book, Ober has made a convincing case that Indians “were as much the ‘curators of the Buddha’ as their Western counterparts” —a friendly corrective to Donald Lopez’s (1995) famous anthology. As Ober states in his conclusion, he hopes his work will provoke long overdue conversations between scholars of modern India and those theorizing modern Buddhism, even if, on occasion, to dispute and correct his work.
Indian International Journal of Buddhist Studies
It is quite obvious that the Mahåvihåra and the Abhayagiri unanimously accepted the Påli Tipi †aka as authoritative texts, yet the latter stepped further accepting some non-Theravåda teachings including Mahåyåna and Vajrayåna, which are completely different from the ideological stance of the Mahåvihåra. Historical evidence clearly shows that Mahåyåna Buddhism had played an extensive role in Sri Lanka during the 3 rd-11 th century C.E. This article will explore the implications of the Mahåyana Bodhisattva ideal in Sri Lankan Buddhist thought during the late part of the first millennium. The aspiration of individual enlightenment is not a new ideal for Theravåda but the aspiration of supreme enlightenment of all sentient beings is less pronounced in the Theravåda. Our attempt is to highlight this deviation between the Mahåvihåra and the Abhayagiri fraternities. This study is based on historical evidence, literary sources, ancient inscriptions and some selected liturgical sources. A recently discovered inscription found in the Abhayagiri precincts is extremely important in terms of the religious goal of the Abhayagirivåsins. This article will also deals with the brief account of Bodhisattva ideal in early phase of Sri Lankan Buddhism; secondly present a discussion on Bodhisattva ideal in the Island after the arrival of Mahåyåna Buddhism. Thirdly, it will discuss the Abhayagiri Fraternity and the universally applied Bodhisattva path. * Ven.Rangama Chandawimala Thero, Centre of Buddhist Studies, The University
2021
Julia Shaw, 2021. The Late History of Buddhist Monasticism and the Unfolding of a Multi-Religious Landscape in Central India: patterns from the Sanchi Survey Project, Paper given at Conference on Monasteries in Asia: The Vihara Project. Kyoto University. 13-14 November 2021. https://networks.h-net.org/node/73374/announcements/8800082/different-perspectives-monasteries-india See summary in Vihara Project Newsletter, vol 7, March 2022 (p. 10) https://mie-u.repo.nii.ac.jp/?action=pages\_view\_main&active\_action=repository\_view\_main\_item\_detail&item\_id=15064&item\_no=1&page\_id=13&block\_id=21 ABSTRACT In this paper I outline the history and chronology of Buddhist monasteries and monasticism in Central India, based on archaeological landscape data from the Sanchi Survey Project. I will begin by discussing the distribution and morphology of monastic provisions that range from simply modified ‘natural’ rock-shelters to towering platformed monasteries, and the significance that the early appearance of courtyard-style planning has for scholarly understanding of the development of institutionalised monasticism. I will go on to present key arguments regarding associated models of governmentality (including links with water and land administration) based on the relative configuration of habitational settlements, and land and water resources in the surrounding area. The third part of the paper will focus on the later history of Buddhist monasticism and consider how the Sanchi Survey Project data relate to extant models of Buddhist decline in central and eastern India. A key argument here is that the Buddhist monastery needs to be viewed within the context of changing agrarian and economic conditions on the one hand, and changing dynamics within the broader multi-religious landscape including the proliferation of Hindu temple construction from the Gupta period onwards, on the other. I conclude by offering several suggestions for how changing perspectives on the dissolution of medieval Christian monasteries in Europe might benefit discourse on the late history of Indian Buddhism, including critiques of the traditional model of an increasingly degenerate institution whose demise was inevitable, as opposed to one whose crucial economic function and embeddedness in the local socio-economic fabric of life lent itself open to appropriation from competing forces.
“Interpreting ‘Brahmanization’ in the Indian Buddhist Monastery with J. Z. Smith”
Thinking with J. Z. Smith: Mapping Methods in the Study of Religion, 2023
This chapter will bring Smith’s insights on ritual to bear on scholarly discussions of the historical process in late ancient South Asia known as “Brahmanization.” In particular, I will discuss scholarly claims about how the political and cultural phenomenon of “Brahmanization” affected the Indian Buddhist monastic institution at the turn of the Common Era. By Brahmanization, I am referring to the spread of those social forces associated with the Brahmanical class of ritual specialists at the turn of the Common Era, which, over many centuries, and in piecemeal fashion, have insinuated purity norms into a variety of religious and political contexts throughout South Asia. In this chapter, I will challenge the notion that the process of Brahmanization in South Asia at the turn of the Common Era was the pervasive socio-religious juggernaut that it is often depicted as in Indological scholarship. In particular, I will argue that there was substantial resistance within the Buddhist establishment to the new ritual systems of the late ancient period, which was designed in Brahmanical circles of power to govern the relationship to the dead.
The Oxford Handbook of Contemporary Buddhism
As an incredibly diverse religious system, Buddhism is constantly changing. The Oxford Handbook of Contemporary Buddhism offers a comprehensive collection of work by leading scholars in the field that tracks these changes up to the present day. Taken together, the book provides a blueprint to understanding Buddhism's past and uses it to explore the ways in which Buddhism has transformed in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The volume contains 41 essays, divided into two sections. The essays in the first section examine the historical development of Buddhist traditions throughout the world. These chapters cover familiar settings like India, Japan, and Tibet as well as the less well-known countries of Vietnam, Bhutan, and the regions of Latin America, Africa, and Oceania. Focusing on changes within countries and transnationally, this section also contains chapters that focus explicitly on globalization, such as Buddhist international organizations and diasporic communities. The second section tracks the relationship between Buddhist traditions and particular themes. These chapters review Buddhist interactions with contemporary topics such as violence and peacebuilding, and ecology, as well as Buddhist influences in areas such as medicine and science. Offering coverage that is both expansive and detailed, The Oxford Handbook of Contemporary Buddhism delves into some of the most debated and contested areas within Buddhist Studies today.