Figments And Fragments Of Mahayana Buddhism In India: More Collected Papers

403 Pages·2005·9.432 MB·English

by  Gregory Schopen

FIGMENTS AND FRAGMENTS
OF MAHÃYÃNA BUDDHISM IN INDIA
Studies in the Buddhist Traditions
a publication of the
Institute for the Study of Buddhist Traditions
The University of Michigan
Ann Arbor, Michigan
Series Editor
Luis O. Gómez
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
Editorial Board
Carl Bielefeldt
Stanford University, Palo Alto
Donald S. Lopez
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
Gregory Schopen
University of California, Los Angeles
Daniel Stevenson
University of Kansas, Lawrence
STUDIES IN THE BUDDHIST TRADITIONS
FIGMENTS AND FRAGMENTS
OF MAHÃYÃNA BUDDHISM
IN INDIA
More Collected Papers
Gregory Schopen
UNIVERSITY OF HAWAI‘I PRESS, HONOLULU
© 2005 Institute for the Study of Buddhist Traditions
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
10 09 08 07 06 05 6 5 4 3 2 1
The Institute for the Study of Buddhist Traditions is part of the Department of Asian
Languages and Cultures at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan. It was
founded in 1988 to foster research and publication in the study of Buddhism and of the
cultures and literatures that represent it. In association with the University of Hawai‘i
Press, the Institute publishes the series Studies in the Buddhist Traditions, which is
devoted to the publication of materials, translations, and monographs relevant to the
study of Buddhist traditions, in particular as they radiate from the South Asian home-
land. The series also publishes studies and conference volumes resulting from work car-
ried out in affiliation with the Institute in Ann Arbor.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Schopen Gregory.
Figments and fragments of MahŒyŒna Buddhism in India: More collected papers /
Gregory Schopen.
p. cm.—(Studies in the Buddhist traditions)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-0-8248-2548-5 (hardcover : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 0-8248-2548-9 (hardcover : alk. paper)
ISBN-13: 978-0-8248-2917-9 (pbk : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 0-8248-2917-4 (pbk : alk. paper)
1. Buddhism—India. 2. Buddhism—Mahayana. 3. Buddhism—History—India.
I. Title. II. Series.
BQ6160.I4 S38 2005
294.3'657'0954—dc21
2003013832
University of Hawai‘i Press books are printed on acid-free paper and meet the guide-
lines for permanence and durability of the Council on Library Resources.
Designed by University of Hawai‘i Press Production Department
Printed by The Maple-Vail Book Manufacturing Group
For
the mill hands who made the paper
on which it is printed
and
the nuns of St. Ambrose School
in Deadwood, South Dakota,
who taught me how to read

CONTENTS
Acknowledgments and Other Things ix
Abbreviations xiii
FIGMENTS
I. The MahŒyŒna and the Middle Period in Indian Buddhism: Through a
Chinese Looking-Glass 3
II. The Phrase sa p¨thiv´prade§a§ caityabhèto bhavet in the VajracchedikŒ: Notes on
the Cult of the Book in MahŒyŒna 25
III. The Bones of a Buddha and the Business of a Monk: Conservative Monastic
Values in an Early MahŒyŒna Polemical Tract 63
IV. On Sending the Monks Back to Their Books: Cult and Conservatism in
Early MahŒyŒna Buddhism 108
V. SukhŒvat´ as a Generalized Religious Goal in Sanskrit MahŒyŒna
Sètra Literature 154
VI. The Generalization of an Old Yogic Attainment in Medieval MahŒyŒna
Sètra Literature: Some Notes on JŒtismara 190
vii
viii Contents
FRAGMENTS
VII. MahŒyŒna in Indian Inscriptions 223
VIII. The Inscription on the Ku·Œn Image of AmitŒbha and the Character of
the Early MahŒyŒna in India 247
IX. The Ambiguity of Avalokite§vara and the Tentative Identification of a Painted
Scene from a MahŒyŒna Sètra at Ajaö_Œ 278
X. A Verse from the BhadracaripraöidhŒna in a Tenth-Century Inscription
Found at NŒlandŒ 299
XI. The Text on the “DhŒraö´ Stones from Abhayagiriya”: A Minor Contribution
to the Study of MahŒyŒna Literature in Ceylon 306
XII. The BodhigarbhŒlaºkŒralak·a and Vimalo·ö´·a DhŒraö´s in Indian
Inscriptions: Two Sources for the Practice of Buddhism in
Medieval India 314
XIII. A Note on the “Technology of Prayer” and a Reference to a Revolving
Bookcase in an Eleventh-Century Indian Inscription 345
XIV. Stèpa and T´rtha: Tibetan Mortuary Practices and an Unrecognized Form
of Burial Ad Sanctos at Buddhist Sites in India 350
Index of Archaeological Sites and Findspots for Inscriptions 371
Index of Texts 373
Index of Subjects 377
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
AND OTHER THINGS
Patricia Crosby has told me in no uncertain terms that I must stop blaming
other people for these volumes, and so I shall. But whereas I am willing to take re-
sponsibility for this volume—the least cohesive and readable of the lot—the fact re-
mains that without, again, her...uh...persistence I would not stand so accused
because the volume would never have come to be. Here too she was abetted by Luis
Gómez, and I would like to thank them both.
Of teachers who had a part in this, as in other volumes, one is gone, but not
without another lesson. On an early summer evening in June my father, as was his
wont, went out to sit on the porch and read—read and watch the kittens of the feral
cat that lived underneath his garage and that he fed, in part at least, to irritate his
neighbor. As he sat there, something did not happen—that was the end; his heart,
having grown ever slower in spite of pills and eager doctors, simply stopped. But
that was not the lesson. The lesson came some weeks later, when we gathered to
scatter his ashes. At my mother’s insistence, my older brother, the real writer, and I
went to look for the grave of my parents’ firstborn, a son who had been named after
my father and who had lived for only a few days. He had been buried in the small,
almost abandoned Catholic cemetery high on Burnum Hill, sheltered still by enor-
mous pines, but no one was quite sure where—even my mother’s directions were
not entirely accurate. No one, to our knowledge, had been there for many years. I
had a dim memory of an already weathered stone, down a gentle slope, at the upper
end of the cemetery where its edge was only very vaguely marked off from the real
forest by a delicate, almost meaningless strand of barbed wire—boundaries in such
places are perhaps never very firm. But I was wrong. My brother and I crisscrossed
the small space within the fence, which I remembered as much larger, looking, re-
citing names we knew or at least had heard of, not really looking for what I found.
First, I saw a brightly colored pinwheel stuck and still standing firmly in the
ground—it could have been put there only in the spring. A winter’s snow would
ix