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Mārga: Paths to Liberation in South Asian Buddhist Traditions: Papers from an international symposium held at the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna, December 17 – 18, 2015 PDF

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The “Path” to attain liberation (“mārga”), a central N S Cristina Pecchia and IN notion of Buddhist praxis and thought, designates N O OI Vincent Eltschinger (Eds.) T specific patterns of behaviour and methods of practice TIDI A connected with transformative powers and soteriological A R R Mārga E goals. This volume shows the plurality and complexity of BT IT Buddhist views on the Path found in Buddhist doctrinal, LS O HI narrative and philosophical literature, epigraphic sources TD SD Paths to Liberation in and iconographic programmes from South Asia. Through H U T B new analyses—rather than general pictures—of A South Asian Buddhist Traditions PN different kinds of sources, this volume examines how . A AI the Path was interpreted, discussed and represente d in GAS R Buddhist traditions of South Asia. It traces the contours ĀH MT U of ideologies of the Path that have variously influenced O S the formation and development of Buddhist identities in the religious and intellectual landscape of premodern South Asia and contributes to revisiting modern descriptions of the Buddhist Path. M ĀR G A ) . s Cristina PECCHIA is research fellow at the Institute d E ( for the Cultural and Intellectual History of Asia at the r e g Austrian Academy of Sciences , Vienna. n i h Pa Asc T H S TO Vincent ELTSCHINGER is Professor for Indian hiElt Buddhism at the École Pratique des Hautes Études, eccnt Pe PSL Research University, Paris. ina Vinc std rin Ca L I B E R AT I O N ISBN 978-3-7001-8549-9 SBph 9 783700 185499 900 Made in Europe CRISTINA PECCHIA AND VINCENT ELTSCHINGER (EDS.) MĀRGA PATHS TO LIBERATION IN SOUTH ASIAN BUDDHIST TRADITIONS ÖSTERREICHISCHE AKADEMIE DER WISSENSCHAFTEN PHILOSOPHISCH-HISTORISCHE KLASSE SITZUNGSBERICHTE, 900. BAND BEITRÄGE ZUR KULTUR- UND GEISTESGESCHICHTE ASIENS, NR. 100 HERAUSGEGEBEN VOM INSTITUT FÜR KULTUR- UND GEISTESGESCHICHTE ASIENS UNTER DER LEITUNG VON BIRGIT KELLNER Mārga Paths to Liberation in South Asian Buddhist Traditions Papers from an international symposium held at the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna, December 17 – 18, 2015 Cristina Pecchia and Vincent Eltschinger (Eds.) Angenommen durch die Publikationskommission der philosophisch- historischen Klasse der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften: Accepted by the publication committee of the Division of Humanities and Social Sciences of the Austrian Academy of Sciences by: Michael Alram, Bert G. Fragner, Andre Gingrich, Hermann Hunger, Sigrid Jalkotzy-Deger, Renate Pillinger, Franz Rainer, Oliver Jens Schmitt, Danuta Shanzer, Peter Wiesinger, Waldemar Zacharasiewicz Gedruckt mit Unterstützung aus dem Holzhausen-Legat der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften Printed with support from the Holzhausen-Legat of the Austrian Academy of Sciences Diese Publikation wurde einem anonymen, internationalen Begutachtungsverfahren unterzogen. This publication was subject to international and anonymous peer review. Peer review is an essential part of the Austrian Academy of Sciences Press evaluation process. Before any book can be accepted for publication, it is assessed by international specialists and ultimately must be approved by the Austrian Academy of Sciences Publication Committee. Die verwendete Papiersorte in dieser Publikation ist DIN EN ISO 9706 zertifiziert und erfüllt die Voraussetzung für eine dauerhafte Archivierung von schriftlichem Kulturgut. The paper used in this publication is DIN EN ISO 9706 certified and meets the requirements for permanent archiving of written cultural property. Alle Rechte vorbehalten. All rights reserved. ISBN 978-3-7001-8549-9 Copyright © by Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Wien 2020 Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna 2020 Satz/Layout: Vitus Angermeier, Wien Druck/Printed: Prime Rate, Budapest https://epub.oeaw.ac.at/8549-9 https://verlag.oeaw.ac.at Made in Europe Contents Foreword . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1 Rupert Gethin Schemes of the Buddhist Path in the Nikāyas and Āgamas . . . . . . . . .5 Naomi Appleton The Story of the Path: Indian Jātaka Literature and the Way to Buddhahood . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79 Vincent Eltschinger The “dhyāna-Master” Aśvaghoṣa on the Path, Mindfulness, and Concentration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99 Vincent Tournier Stairway to Heaven and the Path to Buddhahood: Donors and Their Aspirations in Fifth- and Sixth-Century Ajanta . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177 Nobuyoshi Yamabe Ālayavijñāna in a Meditative Context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249 Daniel M .Stuart Map Becomes Territory: Knowledge and Modes of Existence in Middle Period Buddhist Meditation Practice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 277 Malcolm David Eckel The Poetics of the Path: Bhāviveka’s Tattvāmṛtāvatāra (“Introduction to the Ambrosia of Reality”) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 303 Jowita Kramer Concepts of the Spiritual Path in the*Sūtrālaṃkāravṛttibhāṣya (Part II): The Eighteen manaskāras and the adhimukticaryābhūmi . . . 329 vi Péter-Dániel Szántó The Road Not to Be Taken: An Introduction to Two Ninth-Century Works Against Buddhist Antinomian Practice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 363 Anna Filigenzi Visual Embodiments of the Buddhist mārga: Space, Place and Artistry in Ancient Swat/Uḍḍiyāna . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 381 Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 415 Foreword Mārga, the “Path” to attain liberation, is a central notion of Buddhist praxis and thought . Revolving around the practical rather than the theoretical, and interwoven with visions of liberation, mārga designates specific patterns of behaviour and methods of practice connected with transformative powers and soteriological goals . Ideologies of the Path have variously influenced the formation and development of Buddhist identities in the religious and intel- lectual landscape of Asia . In South Asia, in particular, such ideologies were reflected in Buddhist doctrinal and narrative literature, philosophical views and iconographic programmes for more than one-and-a-half millennium . This volume collects ten papers on mārga in Buddhist traditions of South Asia . The papers derive from the contributions presented at the international symposium Mārga: Paths to Liberation in South Asian Buddhist Traditions, convened by the editors of this volume from 17 to 18 December 2015 at the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna . On that occasion, seventeen schol- ars from various areas of Buddhist Studies shared aspects of their research connected with the topic of mārga . The principal aim of the symposium was to revisit this topic, which became an explicit focus of consideration for the first time in the 1992 book edited by Robert E . Buswell and Robert M . Gimello, Paths to Liberation . The Mārga and its Transformations in Bud- dhist Thought (Honolulu, University of Hawai‘i Press) . Its editors identified the concept of mārga as “a theme central to the whole of Buddhism” and potentially useful “in the cross-cultural study of religion and in the study of religions other than Buddhism .”1 Their book offered an overview of the meaning and role of Buddhist theories of the Path in premodern Asia . In the same year, Rupert Gethin’s Buddhist Path to Awakening (Leiden, Brill) presented a thorough study of the “thirty-seven conditions that contribute to awakening” based on Pāli sources, while Wilhelm Halbfass’s Tradition and Reflection (especially Chapter 7; State University of New York Press, 1991) provided insightful reflections on the relationship between philosophy and soteriology in South Asia . In showcasing the complexity of the concept of 1 See Buswell and Gimello 1992, Introduction: 2 . Cristina Pecchia and Vincent Eltschinger (eds .), Mārga. Paths to Liberation in South Asian Buddhist Traditions . Papers from an international symposium held at the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vi- enna, December 17 – 18, 2015 . Vienna: Austrian Academy of Sciences Press, 2020, pp . 1–3 . 2 Cristina Pecchia, Vincent Eltschinger mārga and related issues, these and a few other publications expanded our common understanding of the Path, as reflected in descriptions of “the noble eightfold path” or “the Bodhisattva path” . In the last three decades, the study of (sometimes newly available) texts and other types of sources concerning South Asian Buddhist traditions has increasingly addressed topics concerning the Path, such as the dynamics between insight, meditative practices, and ethical commitment; the inter- play between the Path and rituals or ritual-related actions; and the reciprocal influence that soteriological and philosophical discourses exerted on one an- other . Following the concept of the symposium, the chapters comprising this volume form a partial update of Buswell and Gimello’s book insofar as they are a series of case studies on the Buddhist mārga, but are limited in scope to traditions of South Asia . The chapters are loosely arranged according to the chronological se- quence of the sources discussed therein . With mārga as their common focus, the authors offer new analyses—rather than general pictures—of particular texts, textual corpora or iconographic materials . They explore specific as- pects of descriptions of the Path as expounded or reflected in those sources, and show the links between mārga and a variety of views and concerns . Also, they unfold some more general research on Buddhism in South Asia . Overall, this collection of papers makes a significant contribution to our understanding of the Path by displaying important facets of how it was inter- preted, discussed and represented in premodern Buddhist traditions of South Asia . Moreover, the volume shows that there are many historically-given embodiments of the Path which still need to be fully explored, thus possibly opening up new avenues of investigation that look into the entanglements between views of the Path and the religious and intellectual discourses of South Asia and beyond . It is our pleasure to thank the Institute for the Cultural and Intellectual His- tory of Asia (IKGA) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences for its gener- ous financial and organisational support of the symposium Mārga: Paths to Liberation in South Asian Buddhist Traditions, out of which this volume has grown . Our thanks also go to all the symposium participants . In addi- tion to the authors represented in this volume, contributions were presented by Martin Delhey, Harunaga Isaacson, Anne MacDonald, Cristina Pecchia, Francesco Sferra, Federico Squarcini, and Alexander von Rospatt . The ini- tial impulse to organize the symposium came from the need to understand in Foreword 3 more detail the critique of other Paths in a sixth/seventh century philosophi- cal text in Sanskrit, Dharmakīrti’s Pramāṇavārttika . It was this critique that was the focus of investigations in the project Indian Buddhist Epistemology and the Path to Liberation (2013–2016) and is one the subjects of the current project The Nobles’ Truths in Indian Buddhist Epistemology—both conduct- ed by Cristina Pecchia at the IKGA and financed by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) (Project Numbers P 26120-G15 and P 30710-G24) . Vincent Eltschinger’s confidence in the importance of the symposium and the related publication provided and maintained momentum in the course of events . By the end of December 2015, when the symposium took place, he had left the IKGA and become Professor for Indian Buddhism at the École Pratique des Hautes Études in Paris . The editorial work carried out for the completion of this volume has given us a rewarding opportunity for continuing our conver- sation between Paris and Vienna . For the care they have put into finalizing their respective chapters, we are very grateful to the authors who contributed to this volume . Cristina Pecchia and Vincent Eltschinger Vienna and Paris, December 2018

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