Indian Insights: Buddhism, Brahmanism and Bhakti : Papers from the Annual Spalding Symposium on Indian Religions

231 Pages·2002·3.71 MB·English

by  Peter Connolly

INDIAN INSIGHTS:
BUDDHISM, BRAHMANISM AND BHAKTI
Papers from the Annual Spalding Symposium on Indian Religions
LUZAC ORIENTAL
46 Great Russell Street, London 'VI/Cl
I997
© Luzac Oriental I997
All rights reserved: no part oj this publication may be reproduced, stored in a
retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording, or otherwise without prior permission oj the Publishers.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data.
A catalogue record of this book is available
from the British Library.
Printed and bound in Great Britain by
Bookcraft (Bath) Limited,
1vlidsomer Norton, Somerset
Contents
Preface Vll
Dermot Killingley
The Paths of the Dead and the Five Fires
Peter Connolly
21
The Vitalistic Antecedents of the
Atman-Brahman Concept
Mark Allon
39
The Oral Composition and Transmission
of Early Buddhist Texts
Sally Mellick Cutler 63
Still Suffering Mter All These Aeons:
the Continuing Effects of the Buddha's
Bad Karma
Lynn Thomas 83
The Nature of the Repetition
in the Indian Idea of Cyclical Time
David Smith 91
Vi~nu and the Dance of Siva
Anthony Tribe 109
Mafijusri and 'The Chanting of Names'
(Niimasal'{lgitz): Wisdom and its Embodiment
in an Indian Mahayana Buddhist text
VI Indian Insights: Buddhism, Brahmanism and Bhakti
Robert Mayer 137
Caskets of Treasures and Visions of Buddhas
Indic antecedents qft he Tibetans g Term-rna Tradition
Theodore Gabriel
Freeing the Tiyyas: Narayar:ta Guru and
Religious Ideology in Kerala
Gavin Flood 169
Ritual Dance in Kerala: Performance,
Possession, and the Formation of Culture
L. S. Cousins
185
Aspect of Esoteric Southern Buddhism
Hiroko Kawanami
Buddhist Nuns in Transition:
the Case of Burmese thilri-shin
Notes on Contributors
225
Preface
The essays in this volume were all originally presented at the Spalding
Symposium on Indian Religions (formerly the Symposium on Indian
Religions) held annually in spring in Oxford, England. This volume,
which consists of papers given between 1989 and I994, is the fifth
generated by the annual Symposium. The previous volumes have been:
Perspectives on Indian Religion: papers in honour of Karel Werner, edited by Peter
Connolly and published in I986 by Sri Satguru Publications, Delhi; The
Yogi and the Mystic (1990), Symbols in Art and Religion (1990), and Love Divine:
Studies in Bhakti and Devotional Mysticism (1993), all edited by Karel Werner
and published by Curzon Press, London, as part of their Durham
Indological Series.
The Symposium on Indian Religions was convened for the first time in
1975 by Dr. Karel Werner, who was then Spalding Lecturer in Indian
Religions at the University of Durham. The original intention was to
provide an annual forum for scholars working and teaching in a subject the
nature of which which often placed them in institutions with no close
colleagues with whom to exchange ideas. From the beginning the
Symposium answered a real need. And though the subject has expanded
over recent years, and conferences and seminars have proliferated and
provided other opportunities for interacting with colleagues within the
discipline, the annual Symposium remains the only regular forum. Its on
going success in combining amenable informality with a useful opportunity
to share scholarly work (completed or in progress) with others in the field
has long been acknowledged and taken advantage of Over the years, it has
attracted scholars and graduate students with an interest in Indian and
Indian-derived religions from all over Britain and many other countries,
including Australia, Germany, India, the Netherlands, Sri Lanka and the
United States of America. 'While some have attended only occasionally,
others are committed regulars.
Aspects of Hinduism - from Brahmanical orthodoxy to localised
sectarian practices, Buddhism - in many of its different forms, Jainism and
Sikhism have all been explored from the perspectives of disciplines as
diverse as anthropology, philosophy, psychology, religious education and
VIII Indian Insights: Buddhism, Brahmanism and Bhakti
textual analysis'. The structure of the symposium is such that each paper
can be discussed at length by participants, a process which offers the author
an opportunity to benefit from informed comment before proceeding to
publication or further presentations.
Reflecting the diversity of topics addressed in the symposia themselves,
the present collection focuses on the Hindu-Brahmanical and Buddhist
traditions in a variety of manifestations. The volume is organised themati
cally, essays having been arranged in pairs where each contribution can be
regarded as complementary to its partner. The studies by Dermot
Killingley and Peter Connolly are both concerned with Upani~adic ideas
and their relation to other aspects of Vedic material. Dr. Killingley
discusses the possible continuity between Vedic eschatology and the
doctrine of rebirth as presented in the Upani!ads, whereas Dr Connolly
suggests that on the subject ofp raT}a Vedantic exegetes have misinterpreted
their primary sources. Mark Allon and Sally Mellick-Cutler focus primarily
on the textual tradition of Pali Buddhism. The former concentrates on the
implications of patterns and structures in key sections of the earliest stratum
of canonical texts, relating them to their oral transmission, and the latter
draws on a wide range of canonical and non".canonical material to discuss
the theme of the Buddha's bad karma. Lynn Thomas and David Smith
both explore'mythological dimensions of the Hindu tradition through
literature and art. The contributions of Anthony Tribe and Rob Mayer
deal with Mahayana Buddhist material: the former through the analysis of
a text that was influential in both India and Tibet; the latter through
investigating Indian antecedents for a practice that is often regarded as
distinctive of Tibetan Buddhism.
The final pair of essays on Hindu-Brahmanical themes focus on the
south Indian state of Kerala. That by Theodore Gabriel explores the life
and teachings of Narayar,ta Guru, one of its most outstanding religious
figures, while Gavin Flood vividly describes and offers an interpretation of
'the dancing of the teyyams', one ofKerala's most dramatic religious rituals.
The collection concludes with two essays on aspects of Buddhism in south
east Asia about which little is generally known. In exploring the features
and origins of 'esoteric' Buddhism in the Theravada countries of the
region, L. S. Cousins' study demonstrates that there is far more diversity
within Theravada Buddhism than is usually acknowledged. Hiroko
Kawanami's essay addresses the position of nuns in contemporary
Burmese Buddhism. She suggests that their position is one of 'transition'
between tpe historical ambiguities surrounding the status of nuns in the
past and their defining a new more respectable and stable religiosity for
themselves in the future.
Overall this collection offers a wide-ranging yet thematically coherent
exploration of many facets of the Indian religious heritage. And in drawing
on sources as diverse as classical texts and contemporary fieldwork, the
Priface IX
essays demonstrate both the perennial interest the ancient material
commands and also the way the religious traditions they engendered are
adapting to the modern world. As such the volume should be of value to all
scholars and students with an interest in Indian and Indian-derived
religious thought and practice.
All the contributions are published here for the first time and thus
constitute a substantial body of original research. Many of the
contributors are regular participants at the annual Spalding Symposium,
so readers attending future meetings may be able to explore issues raised
in this volume with the authors themselves. Details of future symposia can
be obtained from Peter Connolly through Luzac Oriental.
Sue Hamilton and
Peter Connolly
October 1996
The Paths of the Dead and the Five Fires
Dermot Killingley, University of Newcastle upon Tyne
Introduction
The passage known as the doctrine of the five fires (paficiigni-vidyilJ, which
occurs in two versions in the Brhad-Arar;yaka Upan~ad and the Chiindogya
Upani~ad, is often cited as an early statement of the contrasting ideas of
rebirth according to one's actions, and salvation. 1 It does indeed refer to
rebirth, and in the ChUp version, though not in the BrhUp version, this is
related to a person's previous actions; both versions also contrast rebirth
with the world of Brahman. These features of the passage fit well with the
ideas of karman, rebirth and salvation; but they should not blind us to
other features which link it to older ideas, and which may help us partially
to trace the origins of the passage itself
It is commonly asserted that belief in rebirth is not of Aryan origin, and
it is often attributed to non-Aryan, or specifically Dravidian sources with
which the Vedic Aryans were in contact. The evidence for this, when it is
offered at all, seems to be that rebirth appears suddenly and without
precedent in the history of Vedic literature. A typical, and perhaps seminal,
expression of this view is Richard Garbe's 192I encyclopedia article
"Transmigration (Indian),,:
suddenly and without any transitional stages that we can perceive, the Indian
people was seized by the oppressive belief in transmigration ... the theory, as
it meets us for the first time in the literature, appears already fully formed in
the shape of belief in a permanently continued but ever-changing existence.2
A more recent writer, who sees the doctrine of the five fires as one of
"several very ancient folk explanations of the mechanism of rebirth",3
argues:
The Upani!ads and Buddhism have basically identical ideas on rebirth ...
This similarity, coupled with the absence of a Vedic karma-rebirth doctrine,
2 Indian Insights: Buddhism, Brahmanism and Bhakti
suggests that the UpaniJadic and Buddhist doctrines may be diverging inter
pretations of a common, non-Vedic rebirth tradition.4
Vedic to this writer seems to refer only to the hymns of the ~V; he does not
count the Upani~ads as part of the Veda, and he seems unaware of the
BrahmaTJas. This attitude is all too common, and makes it possible to
exaggerate the revolutionary nature of the Upani!ads.
The view which this quotation represents also oversimplifies what is said
about life after death in the Vedic hymns. The same writer says:
The afterlife belief in the J:(g Veda is simply that after death, the soul leaves
the body and enters heaven or hell or eternity.s
This statement ignores the great variety of Vedic thought on life after
death, both in the hymns and in later Vedic literature. The main way in
which Vedic thought on the subject differs from later Hindu thought is that
it usually regards life after death as something to be achieved, rather than
as something to be escaped from. But this achievement is thought of in
several ways.
Firstly, one can become immortal through one's offspring: "0 Agni,
may I reach immortality with offspring" (~V 5, 4, ro; cf. ~V 6, 70, 3).
Immortality through offspring appears in one of the many accounts of how
the creator god Prajapati, who is also the primordial sacrificer and father,
reproduced himself by creating the cosmos. This particular account occurs
in the context of the Agnihotra, the offering at sunrise and sunset. After
desiring to reproduce himself, Prajapati first produces Agni (fire), but is
afraid that Agni will devour him. He then produces milk and butter, plants,
and the ritual sound svahii; with these he performs offerings 'and turns away
Agni, who is also Death.
And il1deed, anyone who, knowing this, offers the Agnihotra, reproduces
himself with offspring even as Prajapati reproduced himself, and saves
himself from Agni, Death, when he is about to devour him (SBT 2,2,4, 7).
The idea that a man survives after death in his offspring is used in AiUp 4,
3-4 (to be discussed below). It is also mentioned in BrhUp 3, 9, 28, though
only to be rejected.
A second idea is survival through dispersal of the person into the
corresponding parts of the universe (cf. ~V IO, 58):
lVIay your eye go to the sun, your breath to the wind; go to the sky and to the
earth in due order. Or go to the waters, if that has been ordained for you;
take your stand in plants, with your body (J:(V 10, 16,3)'
Dispersal is not thought of as destruction here; it is prayed for as something
of benefit to the deceased. It appears as a reward of knowledge in SBr IO, 3,
3,8: