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! ! ! ! ! Faculty of Arts and Philosophy
SIMON BULTYNCK ! ! ! ! The Pāṃsukūlacīvara ! Towards an anthropology of a trans-traditional Buddhist robe ! ! ! !
Master’s dissertation submitted to obtain the degree of Master of Asian Languages and Cultures
! 2016 ! ! ! ! ! Supervisor! ! Prof.!dr.!Ann!Heirman! ! ! ! Department!of!Languages!and!Cultures! ! Dean! ! Prof.!dr.!Marc!Boone! Rector! ! Prof.!dr.!Anne!De!Paepe! ! ! !
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! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! while striving for death’s army’s rout the ascetic clad in rag-robe clout got from a rubbish heap, shines bright mārasenavighātāya as mail-clad warrior paṃsukūladharo yati in the fight. sannaddhakavaco yuddhe ! khattiyo viya sobhati this robe the world’s great teacher wore, pahāya kāsikādīni leaving rare Kási cloth varavatthāni dhāritaṃ and more; yaṃ lokagarunā ko taṃ of rags from off paṃsukūlaṃ na dhāraye a rubbish heap who would not have tasmā hi attano bhikkhu a robe to keep? paṭiññaṃ samanussaraṃ ! yogācārānukūlamhi minding the words paṃsukūle rato siyāti he did profess ! when he went ! ! into homelessness, ! let him to wear ! such rags delight ! as!one!! ! in!seemly!garb!bedight.*! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !
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Abstract
Superlatives in academics are scarce; in humanities they are almost taboo. And yet it is probably fair to say that one of the most significant robes of all Buddhist monastic attire is the pāṃsukūlacīvara. Often poorly translated as ‘robe from the dust-heap’, this trans- tradition monastic type of dress, patched from cast-off rags, has been charged with du- bious symbolism and myth throughout Buddhist literature. This thesis aims to bridge the gap between anthropological and text-critical research on the topic and to further widen both the scope of its study. So far, text-critical scholarship on the pāṃsukūlacīvara has namely mainly focused on the topic through the glasses of its critics. Inspired by and drawing from anthropological fieldwork, this thesis aims instead to look at the pāṃsukūlacīvara through the glasses of its wearers. For one part, I have focused on dis- cussions in Buddhist literature on some practical aspects as the making and mainte- nance of the pāṃsukūlacīvara, while for the other part I have explored its connotations to asceticism, authenticity and death in both primary Buddhist sources and anthropo- logical scholarly venues. This approach clearly highlights a number of interesting as- pects that help explain how and why pāṃsukūlika monks from different strands, both historically and today, aim to visually distinguish themselves from the ‘ordinary’ Bud- dhist monastic identity. Providing on top, a concrete interview schedule, this thesis, moreover, paves the way––or at least hopes to do so––to fieldwork beyond South- and Southeast Asia, to which anthropological research on the topic remains yet confined.
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Foreword
Some say your library is the window to whom you are; you are the books you read. I should perhaps start burning some. But if so, I would regret the reader not finding, among the authors in the bibliography to this thesis, the French semiotician Roland Barthes (1915 – 1980) and the German cultural critic Walter Benjamin (1892 – 1940). Both were intrigued by everyday images and products of popular culture and sought, in yet different historical, philosophical and cultural contexts, to analyse them. Barthes in specific was interested in the hidden ‘meanings’ behind these cultural phenomena and illustrated that, whereas we often take latter for granted, in nature they are not. This foreword is not so much about dedicating my thesis to these men, as it is meant to be an eulogy to the pursuit of understanding what connects us all, in the utmost ‘worldly’ matters academic scholarship has long not given the attention it deserves.
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Acknowledgements
Throughout this thesis I have extensively drawn from the most recent Princeton Diction- ary of Buddhism (2014), as well as the Encyclopedia of Monasticism (2000), for names, termi- nology, dates and background information of all kinds. In those cases where both Pāli and Sanskrit terms are present, I have tried to provide them. Likewise, I have tried to provide the corresponding Chinese terms, when dealing specifically with Chinese Bud- dhism. With the exception of citing primary sources in Pāli or Sanskrit, I consistently use the Sanskrit terms pāṃsukūlacīvara and pāṃsukūlika instead of the similarly com- monly cited Sanskrit alternatives with palatal ‘ś’ (pāṃśukūlacīvara and pāṃśukūlika) and the Pāli equivalents with short ‘a’ (paṃsukūlacīvara and paṃsukūlika). Further, I have chosen to rely on the Sanskrit denomination bhikṣu to refer to both the ‘coenobitical’ monk in the strict sense of the word and the wandering Buddhist ‘mendicant’. Deducing mainly from explicit reservations against women engaging in the ascetic practices that the pāṃsukūlacīvara is inextricably associated with, I generally only speak of bhikṣus and deliberately not of bhikṣuṇīs. I must apologize for having not dug deeper into this topic; more research could certainly be done on this issue and I can only encourage others to do so. To conclude, I will spare the reader a catalogue of poetical expressions of grati- tude, but there is one person that deserves a special word of thanks and that is my friend Ling Jing. She has been extremely patient with me and of great help to translate the idiomatic interview questions presented in this thesis.
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List of abbreviations
A. trans. W. Adamek 2007 alt. alternatively AN Aṅguttara Nikāya. See: ed. PTS. Ba Bodhisattvacaryāvatāra. See: ed. & trans. L. de la Vallée Poussin, 1907. BJT ed. Sri Lanka Tripiṭaka Project Chin Chinese CBETA Chinese Buddhist Electronic Text Association C.R. trans. C.A.F. Rhys Davids 1899-1921. DB Da Biqiu Sanqian Weiyi (Chin. ). See: T.1470. DN Dīghanikāya, ed. T.R. and trans. C.R. 1899-1921. DTX Da Tang xiyu ji (Chin. ). See: T.2087 DhgVin Dharmaguptakavinaya. See: T.1428. DWBS Dunwu wushang banruo song (Chin. ). See: trans. W. Adamek, 2007. The letter S refers to the Dunhuang Manuscripts of the Stein Collection of the British Library. E. trans. Rev. N. R. M. Ehara, et al. 1961 EB79 Encyclopaedia of Buddhism, ed. J. Dhīrasakera, 1979. EB04 Encyclopaedia of Buddhism, ed. R. E. jr. Buswell, 2004. L. trans. Lamotte, E. MaVin Mahāsāṃghikavinaya. See: T.1425. Mn Majjhimanikāya. See: ed. PTS. Mn Milindapañha. See: ed. PTS. Mpps *Mahāprajñāpāramitāśāstra. See: T.1509 Msn Mahāsīhanādasutta. See: ed. PTS. MssVin Mūlasarvāstivādavinayavastu. See: T.1448 and ed. N. Dutt, 1984 [1942]. N Ñāṇamoli 1995 Ñ Ñāṇamoli 2010
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Nks Nikāyasaṅgrahava. See: ed. E. Wickremasinghe. P. Pāli pl. plural PDB Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism, ed. R. E. jr. Buswell & D. S. jr. Lopez PTS Pāli Text Society Spp *Śāriputraparipṛcchā (Chin. ). See: T.1465. Skt. Sanskrit SQ. secondary question Vp Vimalaprabhā. See: ed. J. Upadhyaya, 1986. Vm *Vimuttimagga. See: T.1648, tr. Rev. N. R. M. Ehara, et al. 1961. Vsm Visuddhimagga. See: ed. PTS. WZY Wutai shan zan yiben (Chin. ). See: ed. and trans. Mary A. Cartelli, 2013 (The letter P. refers to the Dunhuang Manuscripts of the Pelliot Collection of the Biblothèque Nationale, Paris). T. Taishō Shinshū Daizōkyō. Citations refer to text number, volume and page number, and register (a, b or c). Th. trans. Thanissaro Bhikkhu 2013 Tib. Tibetan T.R. ed. T. W. Davids 1890-99 Q. Question XSZ Xu Gaoseng Chuan (Chin. ). See: T.2060.
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List of Images
Rag!wearer!of!Wutaishan (picture by the author, Aug. 2, 2014)….………………………………p. iii !
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Table of Contents
Abstract(...... (vii! Foreword(...... (viii! Acknowledgements(...... (ix! List(of(abbreviations(...... (x! List(of(Images(...... (xii! Table(of(Contents(...... (xiii! Introduction(...... (15! Methodological(considerations(...... (22! 1! Terminology(...... (30! 2! The(making(of(pāṃsukūla(robes(...... (33! 2.1! What(&(Where?(...... (33! 2.2! *Pāṃsukūlaticīvara?(...... (37! 2.3! How?(...... (38! 2.3.1! Sewing!pattern!...... !38! 2.3.2! Practical!requirements!and!tools!...... !39! 2.3.3! Dyeing!the!robe!...... !40! 2.4! When?(...... (41! 2.5! Why?(...... (42! 3! The(maintenance(of(pāṃsukūla*robes(...... (44! 3.1! Washing(&(clean(s)ing(...... (45! 3.2! Washing(pāṃsukūla*rags(...... (45! 3.3! Washing(pāṃsukūla*robes(...... (46! 3.4! Mending(...... (48! 3.5! Transmission(and(duration(of(use(...... (50! 4! Asceticism(...... (52! 4.1! Dhutaṅga(or(dhūtaguṇa(practices(...... (54! 4.1.1! The!philosophical!detour!...... !55! 4.2! Forest(monks(and(extraYreligious(motives(...... (68! 4.3! The(paradox(of(purity(...... (71! 4.4! From(practice(to(myth(...... (74! 5! Authenticity:(a(prototypical(identity(...... (81!
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6! Death,(pollution(and(power(...... (84! 7! A(flexible(identity?(...... (87! Conclusion(...... (88! Bibliography(...... (92!
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Introduction
A popular sūtra in the *Mahāprajñāpāramitāśāstra recounts the former births of one of the chief nun disciples of Śākyamuni Buddha, Utpalavarṇā. We are told how she used to be an actress in a former life; she memorized lines, put on various costumes and per- formed for small audiences. Once, in jest, she dressed up like a novice and unsuspecting- ly donned ‘the Buddhist robe’. As a result, the sūtra recounts, Utpalavarṇā was reborn a nun during the time of the Kāśyapa Buddha.1 When towards the end of his life, the Japa- nese monk Dōgen Zenji (1200 – 1253) cited the story of Utpalavarṇā, in a lecture pre- sented at the Fukakusa Monastery, he stated:
There is more merit in seeing the buddha robe, hearing the teaching of it, and making offerings to it than in presiding over the billion worlds.2
In Buddhist literature, the robe not infrequently serves as the ultimate emblem of ‘the’ Buddhist monastic identity.3 As one of the minimal ‘belongings’ (Skt. pariṣkāra, P. parikkhāra) a Buddhist monastic is said to be permitted, few other Buddhist objects have, as a matter of fact, been invested with so much power and symbolism other than ‘the’ Buddhist robe.4 Taking the robe became the metaphor par excellence for entering the
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! * Vsm. II.22 [PTS, p. 64] (Ñ., p. 60). 1 See: ‘Sūtra on the Former Birth of Nun Utpalavarṇā’ (*Utpalavarṇābhikṣuṇījātakasūtra), Mpps XXII.161b (L., p. 662). – The Kāśyapa Buddha (Skt., P. Kassapa) is one of the Buddhas of the past, preceding the Śākyamuni Bud- dha of our time, according to Buddhist tradition. Within the auspicious cosmological eon we are said to live in at present (Skt. bhadrakalpa, P. bhaddakappa), Kāśyapa is said to have been the third, Śākyamuni the fourth and Maitreya (Skt., P. Metteya) the yet-to-come fifth Buddha (See: PDOB, p. 409, 425). 2 See: ‘The Power of the Robe’ (Kesa Kudoku ), translated by: Tanahashi 1999, p. 78. 3 Note that ‘taking the robe’––cf. the English expression ‘throwing off the cowl’––became the metaphor par excellence for taking the monastic vows and entering the Buddhist Saṃgha (Skt., P. saṅgha) in the narrow sense of the ordained community of Buddhist monastics, as Lynne Hume (2013, p. 5) among others. 4 The list of “minimal possessions of food, shelter and clothing that Buddhist monks and nuns were permitted to possess as “requisites” for their physical survival”, the PDOB (p. 629) points out, varies in content and length. There are longer lists of eight, thirteen and even eighteen requisites, perhaps indeed “reflecting the increasing needs of a large and mainly sedentary monastic community”. However, a “list of four such requi- sites is commonly found in the Vinaya literature” (a body of texts regulating the lives of, mainly, fully or-
! 15! ! ordained Buddhist community or Saṃgha (Skt., P. saṅgha); while passing it on from teacher to pupil came to be seen, within certain strands, as “proof of spiritual lineage”.5 It would seem that Buddhist monastics gave due consideration to their distinctive ap- pearance from a very early date, and watched with perennial vigilance over the bounda- ries of their visual identity.6 ‘Buddhist Studies’ is––or better: has become––a vast field of interdisciplinary schol- arship that focuses on a multifarious phenomenon that “spans millennia in time and continents in expanse”, as Jonathan Silk has put it, and is commonly labelled as ‘Buddh- ism’.7 Over the last few decades, this field has drastically changed its methods and spec- tacles. As a rule, it has excited the interest of an increasing amount of academic disci- plines; slowly but surely let go its “quest to comprehend Buddhist culture in its entire- ty” and it more and more opened its eyes for previously, often completely ignored as- pects of ‘Buddhism’.8 Dress for instance only came to the attention of Buddhist scholars, from the late second half of the 20th century, following the remarks of social anthropol- ogists as Cordwell & Schwarz, who noted that:
Compared to other dimension of human behavior, we […] are relatively silent about the meaning and function of dress and adornment. While we rigorously analyze kinship, language, and movement, clothes are usually ignored and rarely given systematic consideration. In contrast, the natives who are the subject of our queries are generally very cognizant of how they and others are dressed. Clothing and adornment are universal features of human behavior and an examination of what they reveal, and attempt to conceal, contributes to our knowledge about the fabric of cultures and to our understanding of the threads of human nature.9
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! dained Buddhist monastic). This list comprises a robe (Skt. & P. cīvara), an alms bowl (Skt. pātra, P. patta), a bed (Skt. śayanāsana) and “medicine to cure illness (glānapratyayabhaiṣajya).” 5 Tanabe 2004, p. 734. 6 Wijayaratna (1990, p. 32) points out that one of the presumably oldest stata of the various Vinayas we pos- sess, the Pāṭimokka (P., Skt. Prātimokṣa), boasts already more rules concerning clothing, than for example food or housing. At least 19 (of the 30) Nissaggiya Pācittiya and 7 (of the 92) Suddha Pācittiya rules concern the monk’s habit, he indicates. In the Mahāvagga or “Great Chapter” of the Pāli Vinayapiṭaka, he further argues, at least 3 (of the 10) chapters are moreover devoted to clothing. 7 Silk 2008, p. 3. 8 I will speak of dress as defined by Eicher & Roach-Higgins (1992, p. 15) as “an assemblage of modifications of the body and/or supplements to the body displayed by a person in communicating with other human beings”. 9 Throughout this thesis will speak of ‘Buddhologists’ and ‘Buddhology’ as defined by Frank Hoffman (2000, pp. 225-226) who discriminates it from the interdisciplinary field of ‘Buddhist studies’, within which it may, “some specific sense or another” unfold. Hoffman distinguishes between four types of Buddhology: “Buddhology as hermeneutics, Buddhology as exegesis, Buddhology as ontology and Buddhology as the study of attributes of the Buddha (Buddhalogy)”. The type of Buddhology I will be referring to in this thesis is ‘Exegetical Buddholo- gy’ mainly, which Hoffman describes as follows: “As currently practiced in the writing of dissertations within academe, Buddhology makes use of present-day exegetical techniques and modern scholarly methods. […] It involves the application of critical scholarship to Buddhist texts by translating and/or making interpretative
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Whether it was the legacy of Cordwell & Schwarz or a more general ‘awakening’ at the time, one of the first ‘Buddhologists’ perhaps to focus explicitly on dress was the German Sinologist, founder of the Cahiers d’Extrême Asie and pioneering scholar on Dao- ism, Anna Katharina Seidel (1938 – 1991). Seidel, who moved to Paris and later Japan, was “neither a Sanskritist nor a Buddhologist in the strict (and often narrow) sense” as Robert Duquenne remembers her, but someone extremely interested in the “social, ma- terial, and literary implications of Buddhism”.10 At the beginning of the 1980’s, Seidel drew attention to the significant symbolism of the ‘transmission of the robe’ (J. Den’e) in especially Chan/Zen Buddhism, where the robe serves
as the primary means of asserting the passing on of one’s teaching lineage, some- thing that was traced all the way back to the Buddha (or at least to the founder of Chinese Chan, Bodhidharma).11
Seidel’s article has remained unpublished up until now, but four years after Seidel passed away, however, the French scholar Bernard R. Fauré published an article in the eight volume of Seidel’s Cahiers d'Extrême-Asie, bilingually entitled––in the style of the journal––Quand l'habit fait le moine: The Symbolism of the kāsāya in Sōtō zen (1995).12 Encour- aged by “many lively discussions” on the topic with Seidel, Fauré pursued the study of the robe’s symbolism in Chan/Zen Buddhism in its entirety.13 As one of the leading Buddhologists to do so, Fauré raised the following questions:
Why was it precisely the robe that was chosen as the symbol of the Dharma [i.e. Buddhist ‘teachings’], among other symbols or relics? How does it differ from the- se other symbols? How did it come to occupy such a central place in Buddhist im- agination?14
Struck by the abundance of textual data on the topic, Fauré’s article laid the founda- tions for a text-critical study of the historic significance of ‘the robe’ in Buddhist litera- ture and culture. Five years after the publication of Fauré’s article, and focussing on China instead of Japan, John Kieschnick published an article on The Symbolism of the Monk’s Robe in China (1999). Kieschnick’s interest in Buddhist material culture had al- ready manifested itself in his work on The Eminent Monk: Buddhist Ideals in Medieval Chi- nese Hagiography (1997), and would most prominently reveal itself later in his extensive in-depth study on The Impact of Buddhism on Chinese Material Culture (2003), which includ- ed much of his article on the symbolism of the robe. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! commentaries on them. Thus, Buddhology in this sense is a descendant of philology. This type of Buddhology can be understood as philology applied to Buddhist texts.” 10 Duquenne 1992, p. 108. 11 Strong 2007, p. 218. 12 See: Faure 1995. 13 Faure 1995, p. 337 & EB04, p. 734. 14 Faure 1995, p. 337.
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Ever since the 1970’s, an increasing amount of social anthropologists had meanwhile, as urged by Cordwell & Schwarz, turned to dress as a particular ‘identity’ marker and a means through which the human species actively and deliberately defined itself “in terms of sameness and difference to the various subjects of one’s environment”.15 More gener- ally, anthropologist began to approach ‘identity’ more as “an explanatory force”, than as something “to be explained”.16 How do we see and define ourselves? How do we see and define ‘others’? How do ‘others’ see and define themselves? And ultimately, what makes people think of themselves as personally or socially different from ‘others’ while at the same time sharing certain ‘affinities’ with yet ‘others’? One of the very first anthropologists to focus specially on a particular type of Bud- dhist dress was the French anthropologist François Bizot. Ten years after being released from his captivity under the Khmer Rouge regime, Bizot published an article in 1981, entitled Le Don de Soi-Même, in which focussed on a specific Buddhist dress in Cambodian Buddhism: the pāṃsukūlacīvara.17 Without really knowing, Bizot had touched upon one of a robe Buddhologists considered to be part of an evaporated tradition: a robe that was not representative of a specific Buddhist strand, but of a specific, trans-traditional Bud- dhist identity. It certainly wasn’t the case that in Buddhist literature the pāṃsukūlacīvara did not occur, but where it did, it was particularly vague and taciturn about this trans- traditional ‘identity’. To begin with, its name itself is already rather dubious. As a compound, it consists of pāṃsukūla (Skt., alt. pāṃśukūla or P. paṃsukūla) and cīvara (Skt. & P.). Cīvara is the generic term used in Buddhist literature “to refer broadly to the different items of clothing ap- proved for the use of the monks and nuns.”18 For male Buddhist monastics (Skt. bhikṣus, P. bhikkhus) in particular, one sometimes speaks of the ‘triple robe’ (Skt. tricīvara, P. ticīvara), consisting of: an inner robe (Skt. antarvāsas, P. antaravāsaka); an upper robe (Skt. uttarāsaṃga, P. uttarāsaṅga); and a double or larger outer robe (Skt. saṃghāṭī, P. saṅghāṭī).19 Pāṃsukūla, in turn, is itself another compound consisting of pāṃsu and kūla and literally translates as ‘dust-heap’. Hence, at least literally speaking, the
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 15 Maes 2015, p. 1. 16 Fearon 1999, p. 1. – Fearon has argued that despite the centrality of the concept in especially social sciences, ‘identity’ has remained a rather polysemous, ambiguous term. This might be due to the fact that identity is ultimately a matter of definition itself, and not just a definition of ‘something’ but of the slippery “notion of an individual or collective self” (Maes 2015, p. 1). We know of cultures “without knowledge of other traditions”, as Jonathan Silk (Silk 2008, p. 3) has argued, that they don’t have “names for [their] native tradition”. And so it would seem that acquaintance with or notion of a contextual ‘other’ seems conditional to the slippery notion of the ‘self’. 17 See : Bizot 1981 – also cited in: Strong . 18 EB97, p. 183. 19 PDOB, p. 922 - For female Buddhist monastics (Skt. bhikṣuṇīs, P. bhikṣuṇīs), one sometimes speaks of a ‘five- fold robe’ (Skt. & P. pañcacīvara) as they are allowed two other robes in addition to the ‘triple robe’, namely: a vest or bodice (saṅkacchā) and a bathing cloth (udakasāṭikā).
! 18! ! pāṃsukūlacīvara denotes a robe made of textile or rags found in public places, commonly translated into English as of ‘rag robes’. To the present day, neither anthropological fieldwork, nor text-critical research on the pāṃsukūlacīvara agrees on what pāṃsukūlacīvara is––not to mention yet the discus- sion over its place and significance in Buddh-ism’ (cf. infra). What Buddhist literature tends to agree on however is the negative definition of the pāṃsukūlacīvara: it is not a robe made of textile obtained from the laity (Skt. *gṛhapaticīvara, P. gahapaticīvara). As a matter of fact, the two are contrasted in a tradition that is brought back all the way to Śākyamuni Buddha, who is said to have worn these two types of robes in chronological order, namely the pāṃsukūlacīvara first and later, a robe made of cloth that was given to him by his noble physician Jīvaka Komārabhacca, who seemed concerned about the un- sanitariness of the Buddha’s ‘rag robe’.20 Śākyamuni is however not the only one who is said to have worn the pāṃsukūlacīvara. His predecessors too, and in particular Mahākāśyapa, are said to have worn paṃsukūla robes. Despite this, the pāṃsukūlacīvara is further only cited in Buddhist literature in list of both Buddhist and acclaimed non-Buddhist ascetic practices. All of these lists include practices that affect bodily needs such as eating, drinking and sleeping and include a practice known as pāṃsukūlika, i.e. the making and wearing of robes patched from rags found in public places. Put at its mildest, ‘asceticism’ is not particularly supported by the bulk of Buddhist literature and so what we know about the pāṃsukūlacīvara, other than that the Buddhas of the past, some eminent monks and Buddhist Saints would have worn it, is rather limited to the broader discussion of ‘asceticism’. As a matter of fact, not until fieldwork observations of social anthropologists as Tambiah (1976, 1982, 1984), Carrithers (1979, 1983) and Bizot (1981)––to name but a few––urged Buddhologist to question the place and significance of pāṃsukūlika monks––as they are called––in a his- toric Buddhist context, the pāṃsukūlacīvara and its wearers were basically considered to be part of a tradition that had either been extremely marginal or ceased to exist over the course of time. This view has been widely opposed by modern Buddhologists––most prominently among which are Ray (1994), Schopen (2003, 2005), Freiberger (2006) and Witkowski (2013)––who have widely illustrated the contrary and once more corroborat- ed the often-found dichotomy between Buddhist text and practice (cf. infra). What has not followed this discussion, unfortunately, is a study of the peculiar identi- ty of the monks making and wearing pāṃsukūlacīvara both historically and today. The existence of a pāṃsukūlika tradition in South- and Southeast-Asia may have urged Buddhologists to revise its place in Buddhist history, it has––with the exception of Ray (1994) perhaps––neither encouraged Buddhologists to focus on anything else but it crit- icism in Buddhist literature, nor has encouraged anthropologists to inquire into its ex- istence and prominence in other parts of the Buddhist world. As Strong already noted:
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 20 See: Findly 2003, pp. 116-117; Wijayaratna 1990, p. 34; Witkowski 2013, p. 19
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Too often, the ascetic practices in general and the pāṃśukūlika practices in par- ticular have been studied from the perspective of the town-dwelling monks, who tolerated but did not follow them, rather than from the perspective of the forest- dwelling monks, who advocated and maintained them.21
We do find, however, enough textual data to assume, as both Schopen and Witkowski has illustrated, that a great bigger deal of Buddhist monastics donned the pāṃsukūlacīva- ra than Buddhist literature would let us to believe. More than that, I myself––at the time even unaware of anthropological research on the topic in modern-age South- and Southeast Asia––was stimulated to write this thesis, having met four monks, about two years ago, in Wutaishan (China), who wore ‘rag robes’. It is in the fundamental belief of this thesis that further interdisciplinary research on the topic in both a historical and contemporary context, may only be fruitful to a broader understanding of not only the pāṃsukūlacīvara, but also the scholarly debates that are involved in it. As already Marc Bloch (1886 – 1944) remarked:
Misunderstanding of the present is the inevitable consequence of ignorance of the past. But a man may wear himself out just as fruitlessly in seeking to understand the past, if he is totally ignorant of the present.22
This thesis aims to be a springboard for a full anthropology of the pāṃsukūlacīvara. As a trans-traditional, both historic and modern-age ‘identity’ marker, the pāṃsukūlacīvara asks to be studied in its entirety. Without making any compromises, this thesis aims to do so by focussing on a number of different aspects of the pāṃsukūlacīvara. Drawing from Theravāda and Mahāyāna primary sources, and combining anthropological and textual research on the topic, this thesis highlights where our understanding of the pāṃsukūlacīvara in its entirety still misses depth. For the first part of this thesis, I have decided to focus on aspects of the pāṃsukūlacīvara on which textual material remains either vague or scarce. I have pro- vided a concrete interview schedule with questions in both English and Chinese, which may serve as a text-historical backup for further anthropological research on the topic in Chinese Buddhism, which remains unavailable in English, German or French academ- ic venues. In chapter 1 of this thesis, I will focus on commonly used terminology used for the pāṃsukūlacīvara in Chinese literature and speech. Moreover I will discuss the question whether it is, after all, appropriate to speak of the pāṃsukūlacīvara with regards to the monks I witnessed in Wutaishan. In chapter 2, I will discuss practical details, found in Buddhist literature, to make the pāṃsukūlacīvara. This will give us more insight into a number of practical aspects, such as: Which kind of textiles are said to be permit- ted and where might one obtain them? What does the pāṃsukūlacīvara consists of in
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 21 Strong 1994, p. 72. 22 Bloch 1954/1941-49, p. 43.
! 20! ! terms of the tricīvara? How should these robes be made (sewn)? Which tools might be used to do so? Should these robes be dyed or not? Is there a specific time to do make them? And last but not least: Why does one make them? Further, in chapter 3, I will fo- cus on the maintenance of the pāṃsukūlacīvara. Should the robes, or at least the rag, be washed before use? Should one mend them and could mended gahapaticīvara become pāṃsukūlacīvara? And also, is there a tradition of passing on pāṃsukūlacīvara from teach- er to pupil as proof of spiritual lineage? It is impossible to uncover the entire intertextual discourse that goes behind the pāṃsukūlacīvara. But from the bulk of available Buddhist literature (both canonical and extra-canonical sources) three symbolic connotations stand out. First of all, there is ‘as- ceticism’; secondly, there is what I would like to call ‘authenticity’; and thirdly, there is ‘death’. For the second part of this thesis, then, I have focused on these three connota- tions. It will be up to the reader to judge which insights this yields, but it is in my firm belief that this approach will help us understand the pāṃsukūlika tradition more from within. In the fourth chapter to this thesis I will namely focus in more depth on asceti- cism, to which the pāṃsukūlacīvara is ultimately linked. What other ascetic practices does the pāṃsukūlacīvara connote? For whom were these practices designed? What pur- poses did these ‘ascetic’ practices serve within Buddhist soteriology? And what do some rhetorical myths about the pāṃsukūlacīvara tell us if we read them differently? Next, in chapter 5 to this thesis, I will dwell for a short while on alleged historical fig- ures to have engaged in asceticism, or at least donned the pāṃsukūlacīvara? I will ex- plore how these accounts may have served or serve as another motive to wear the pāṃsukūlacīvara than the merits to gain from its undertaking as an ascetic practice. What does the idea that the Buddhas of the past, and at first also Śākyamuni, wore the pāṃsukūlacīvara, tell us other than that it is considered the most ‘authentic’ of all Bud- dhist robes? And what does this imply with regards to Buddhist doctrine? In chapter 6 then, I will focus shortly on the pāṃsukūlacīvara’s associations to ‘death’. Rather than a single type of pāṃsukūlacīvara, the śmāśānika robe, or rag robe made of shrouds found on burial mounds, seems to be specific for a tradition of monks //// be- tween the deceased and the living? How does their ‘cross-dressing with the death’–– whether or not just symbolically––as Gregory Schopen has termed it, lends the pāṃsukūlacīvara a special connotations (or even reputation) that gives him a different complexion: one that is not only ‘gruesome’ perhaps, but also extremely powerful? Last but not least, I will, in chapter 7, deal with the question whether both historical- ly and/or today a sudden identity switch is possible? Unlike tattoos or headdresses, clothes may namely fairly easily be changed. This raises the question whether the pāṃsukūlacīvara, and especially the śmāśānika robe, are and always have been repre- sentative for a fixed or rather flexible identity?
! 21! !
Methodological considerations
In presenting the histories, development, belief systems, and ritual patterns of specific religious groups, scholarship has often privileged the official level of relig- iosity to the detriment and total neglect of alternative, dissonant, and resurgent voices.23
In relative terms, the interdisciplinary field of Buddhist Studies is a rather recent field of scholarship. All too often however, it has continued to build at large on assumptions made about Buddhism by much earlier orientalists, who––despite their incredible ef- forts––privileged canonical and early ‘scriptures’ over extra-canonical, vernacular or more recent texts. As a matter of fact latter were simply beyond their interests. And even in those startling cases where the texts they privileged brought to light some ‘al- ternative, dissonant, or resurgent voices’, they generally neglected them, negated them without any substantial basis or simply sought to rhyme them with the consistent as- sumptions they had deduced that far. A wonderful example, in this respect and with special regards to this thesis, is the Pāli-English dictionary of the Pāli Text Society (PTS) that was founded by Thomas Wil- liam Rhys Davids (1843 – 1922). Long before anthropologists began to lend an ear to the ‘unprivileged level’ of Buddhist religiosity, early Buddhology would unconscientiously pull out the weeds it considered ‘harmful’ to the understanding of Buddhist history in the illusion of wie es eigentlich gewesen. So, when expounding for instance a series of as- cetic practices, collectively know as the dhutaṅgas (alt. dhūtaguṇas), the dictionary ar- gues that, although a ‘paracanonical’ text known as the Milindapañha “devotes a whole book (chap. VI) to the glorification of these 13 dhutaṅgas”, “there is no evidence that they were ever widely adopted” since these practices are simply “not enjoyed in the Vinaya”.24 The all-dominating authority attributed here to the Pāli Vinaya over a ‘para- canonical’ text––i.e. a text that is neither apocryphal, nor canonical––is striking, all the more since the individual practices it includes, among which the making and wearing of the pāṃsukūlacīvara, regularly do occur in Vinaya texts. Vinaya literature is a mountainous ‘basket’ (Skt. & P. piṭaka) of canonical Buddhist lit- erature regulating the lives of, mainly, fully ordained bhikṣus and bhikṣuṇīs. We are for-
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 23 Adogame et. al, p. 9. 24 Davids & Stede 1921-25, p. 383 (also cited in: Schopen 1997, p. 187). - The Milindapañha (literally: ‘Questions of Milinda’) is a dialogical Pāli text recording the conversation between the Kashmiri Buddhist monk Nāgasena and the Greek-Bactrian king Menander (Milinda), who raises questions about Buddhism. The text was presum- ably composed in northern India in Sanskrit or Prakrit originally, around the beginning of the Common Era. See: PDOB, p. 542.
! 22! ! tunate to possess the Vinaya of the Theravāda tradition, preserved in Pāli, and five oth- er Vinaya traditions of early Buddhist schools––into which the Buddhist community or Saṃgha (Skt., P. saṅgha) split––preserved in Chinese translations mainly.25 For one part, Vinaya literature enumerates disciplinary rules and penalties imposed on the violation of these rules. This part is known as pāṭimokkha (P., Skt. prātimokṣa). For the other two parts (P. vibhaṅga & kandhaka), it elaborates which specific occasions and incidents brought the Buddha to formulate each of these myriads of rules and, respectively, a number of separate sections on various topics.26 Given the scarcity of other historical sources and discussing, like no other genre within Buddhist literature, practical details on the lives of the monastic community (Skt. saṃgha, P. saṅgha), Vinaya literature truly serves as one of the major sources for the study of early Buddhist history. The key- question is however: How do we read the Vinaya; how do we, to paraphrase Harunaga Isaacson’s witticism, ‘distinguish the probable from the possible’ in these texts? Growing anthropological research on Buddhism from the 1970’s brought to light a di- chotomy between Buddhist text and practice that was hard to deny. As the social an- thropologist Martin Southwold, in 1983, remarked for instance:
We think that Buddhism must be essentially and criterially the teaching of its al- leged founder, because that is how we think of Christianity; and we think that Buddhist scriptures must be the key to Buddhism, because that is how we think, under the influence of Protestantism, of the place of the Christian scriptures in our own religion. […] The fundamental error in the study of Buddhism has been to approach it from the side of belief, doctrine, rather than of practice.27
As one among many anthropologists, Southwold noted that his fieldwork observa- tions in Sri Lankan Buddhism did not tally with popular theories made about Buddhism by his academic forefathers. The issue at stake was twofold. First and foremost, it would seem that for all too long, Buddhist literature––and Vinaya literature in particular––had “been taken as descriptions of the way monks and nuns actually behaved.”28 Yet, being far from prescriptive, normative texts, the Vinaya literature does, as a matter of fact, not infrequently provide “evidence of precisely the opposite”, as Jan Nattier has put it.29 One of the things Buddhist literature continuously harps on, for instance, is that the Buddhist doctrinal system sets forth the Middle Way (Skt. madhyamāpratipad, P.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 25 The Mūlasarvāstivādavinaya has been preserved in Chinese, Tibetan and partly Sanskrit, the others (Mahīśāsa- ka-, Dharmaguptaka-, Sarvāstivāda- and the Mahāsāṃghikavinaya) exclusively in Chinese. See: Deeg 1999, p. 184. 26 PDOB, p. 975. 27 Southwold 1983, p. 6, cited in: King 1999, p. 70. 28 Nattier 2003, p. 63. 29 Id. – Nattier (ibid, p. 67) expounds how for instance common “statements of the type “One should not believe X” or “One should not do Y”” have “with surprisingly frequency” been taken as prescriptive depictions of the life of Buddhist monastics, whereas it actually is clear that “there must have been some reason for the author to argue against them”.
! 23! ! majjhimāpaṭipadā) to liberation between the ‘extremes’ of “indulging in sensual pleas- ures” on the one hand and “of practicing severe asceticism” on the other hand.30 But why, indeed, would Buddhist author-editors continue to depict ‘Buddhism’ as such, if it were not as “a rhetorical tool” against such, apparently occurring extremes, as Oliver Freiberger among others has argued?31 Secondly, Buddhist literature would seem to represent only a particular part of Bud- dhist monasticism, carrying the self-acclaimed “burden of the book” (ganthadhura) and practicing “a (more) active laity-oriented lifestyle” in contrast to those carrying the “burden of meditative insight” (vipassanādhura) and living a more secluded life in the forest.32 Although Buddhist literature is not reticent about the latter, a too prescriptive reading of Buddhist literature led early scholars to believe that both vocations were not just mutually exclusive, but historically successive in time. One particular scholar that nourished this idea to become an established ‘fact’ among Buddhist scholars was the German sociologist Max Weber (1864 – 1920). Following The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1905), Weber turned to Asian religions and pursued his “connection between religion and economic rationalization”.33 In The Reli- gion of India: The Sociology of Hinduism and Buddhism (1919), Weber namely claimed that:
Buddhism presents itself as a product of the time of urban development, of urban kingship and the city nobles.34
Drawing from Oldenberg’s and Mr. and Mrs. Rhys Davids’s works and translations of Pāli texts, Weber observed a fundamental change in the development of the Buddhist religion: the soteriological (salvation-oriented) practices and beliefs transmitted from a ‘charismatic figure’ (the Buddha) to early groups of wandering disciples, became rou- tinized and
Buddhist renunciants began to develop modes of organization, operation, and teaching that were unprecedented in Buddhism up to that point.35
Prior to this transition, Weber argued, the Buddhist religion had been characterised by ‘wandering mendicants’ practicing what he called ‘other-worldly’ asceticism (ausser- weltliche Askese), seeking only individual salvation and lacking “a parish organization of the laity”.36 Hence, this transition was to be seen as a rational, economic urge that came from outside the Saṃgha and could guarantee (read: explain) the success and continua-
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 30 Freiberger 2006, p. 235 – see in particular the Dharmacakrapravartanasūtra. 31 Ibid., p. 250. 32 Bretfeld 2015, p. 335 & Tambiah 1984, p. 2. 33 Morrison 2006, p. 281. 34 Weber 1958, p. 204. 35 Ray 1994, p. 24. 36 Weber 1958, p. 233.
! 24! ! tion of the religion, which––as the Pāli Vinaya aims to leave no doubt about––was in the hands of an increasing number of lay followers and donors.37 Weber’s “presumptions about the social location of the ascetic practitioner”––the other-worldly religious figure––set the tone for further scholarship.38 Backed-up by a de- scriptive reading of the Pāli Vinaya, he had provided an explanation for the ‘two-tiered model of Buddhism’ of forest-dwelling mendicants (P. araññavāsis) on the one hand, and fully settled, organised town-dwelling monastics (P. gāmavāsis) on the other hand. He had put them in a linear, chronological sequence of ‘advanced institutionalisation’, thereby reducing or banning self-centred asceticism, and Buddhist mendicants with- drawing from this world, to a pre- or proto-historical stage in the development of the Buddhist religion. Seemingly forgetting that Max Weber’s “famous characterization of early Buddhism as an other-worldly religion” is in fact based on the “portrait of Buddhism and Buddhist history that was created by nineteenth-century European Indologists” 39, many schol- ars––even those profoundly aware of the normative character of Vinaya texts––have continued to either explicitly or tacitly repeat these ideas and to build onto Weber’s model as a circulus in probando.40 Perhaps the most pressing problem is that this kind of circular reasoning––drawing from early scriptures to design a general theory, which is then tested on the basis of the exact same scriptures––has closed and continues to close the eyes of many Buddhist scholars to look for counterarguments of this ostensible, one-way and absolute ‘developmental transition’. Over the last few years however, enough scholarly research has indicated that the beginning of a coenobitical Buddhist order did certainly not mark the end of a wander- ing Buddhist ‘mendicants’, nor did it put a stop to the acclaimed highly-individualistic ascetic practices that they are, still often, exclusively associated with. Ever since the 1960’s, an increasing number of scholars from various disciplines has made great con- tributions to our understanding of the ‘two-tiered model’ and have shed more light on the either neglected or contested place and social position of Buddhist ascetics.41 This thesis positions itself within this ‘paradigm shift’ in Buddhist scholarship and aims to contribute to a broader and better understanding of the place and position of ‘asceticism’ and ‘forest monks’ in ‘Buddh-ism’ by taking, as Nicholas Witkowski has done, the pāṃsukūlacīvara as the most distinctive marker of their identity as a case study. As mentioned before, it is in the fundamental belief of this thesis that, to do so,
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 37 For a more detailed summery of Weber’s explanatory model, see: Ray 1994, pp. 24-28 (also cited in Witkow- ski 2013, pp. 12-15); as well as Scott 2009, pp. 19ff. 38 Witkowski 2013, p. 12. 39 Scott 2009, p. 11. 40 Witkowski 2013, pp. 14-15 has listed a number of these scholars. 41 See o.a.: Tambiah (1976, 1982, 1984), Carrithers (1979, 1983), Ray (1994), Schopen (2003, 2005), Freiberger (2006) and Witkowski (2013).
! 25! ! understanding of the present may only contribute to our understanding of the past and vice versa. As Raimon Panikkar (1918 – 2010), predating the critique of Edward Said’s Orientalism (1978), already metaphorically argued:
no botanist can claim to know a seed until he knows the plant that grows up from that seed.42
‘Hands-on’ experts will have to judge what valuable insights this yields, but for all too long Buddhist scholarship has simply ignored the plant in favour of the seed. Hence, drawing from available texts on the topic, with the above-mentioned remarks in mind, I have aimed to provide a concrete interview schedule for the study of modern-day pāṃsukūlika monks. Designing such a schedule requires as many methodological consid- erations as does conducting the interview itself. It goes without saying perhaps that I have opted for qualitative-data research, which distinguishes itself from quantitative data by number of features and outcomes. As a rule, qualitative-data research tends to provide more depth and detail about a certain case. As a ‘division of labour’, Silverman has argued, “it falls to qualitative researchers to give ‘insight’ into people’s subjective states” as opposed to the objective structures stud- ied in quantitative research.43 Because of a rather small number of cases studied, as well as its open character and depth, making widespread claims and systematic comparisons is however difficult. One method of qualitative data gathering that may “provide con- text to other data” and offer “a more complete picture” of a certain phenomenon, is the in-depth interview.44 This can be very time consuming however (conducting the inter- view, transcribing it afterwards and analysing the results) and the quality of the re- search depends at large on the researcher’s skills. Much easier and far less time consum- ing is to gather a number of texts (i.e. data on hand) and to analyse them. It seems be- yond dispute to me however that in-depth research interviews, inquiring about the no- tions and understandings of our subjects in question themselves, could provide at least equally important data to the study of both historical and modern phenomenon of pāṃsukūlika, and along with it the more general study of diversity and identity. Such would be the surplus value of further investigation on the topic, to which this thesis aims to pave the way. It should be clear that this does not imply that other qualitative methods such as textual and visual data analysis (of e.g. internet forums and visual im- agery in modern-age Buddhism) would not be a welcome addition. Prior to designing the interview schedule, there are a number of questions to be asked, which I will here, at last, briefly elucidate. To start with, there are four types of in-depth interviews: structured, semi-structured, unstructured and multimodal inter- views. The type of research interview that I will maintain throughout this thesis is !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 42 Panikkar 1999, p. 64. 43 Silverman 2004, p. 292. 44 Boyce & Neale 2006, p. 3.
! 26! ! known as the semi-structured interview. Contrary to unstructured interviews, which “do not reflect any preconceived theories”, the questions in this thesis interview sched- ule are based on existing research on the topic.45 Still, unlike fully structured interviews the questions of this type of questionary remain relatively open. This allows both the interviewer and the interviewee “to diverge in order to pursue an idea or response in more detail.” Moreover, as Gill et al. state:
The flexibility of this approach, particularly compared to structured interviews, also allows the discovery or elaboration of information that is important to the participants but may not have previously been thought of as pertinent by the re- search team.46
In other words, the questions of a semi-structured interview are primarily designed to guide the interview, to make it easier for the interviewee to participate and “to yield as much information about the study phenomenon as possible”.47 In the 1940s focus groups emerged as a sibling of in-depth interviews and a popular tool for qualitative research. It proved to be very successful to the social sciences and soon came into vogue after World War II. Ever since, its popularity has ebbed and flowed and developed a love-hate relationship with different sciences.48 A focus group can be defined as:
a group discussion on a particular topic organised for research purposes […] [which may] generate information on collective views, and the meaning that lie behind those views.49
Focus groups can therefore provide interesting information that may not be obtained from individual interviews, where interaction on certain beliefs and notions with other respondents is absent. The other side of the coin however, is that respondents in focus groups may not want to talk about certain aspects of the studied phenomenon in a group environment––as might be true for the study of the pāṃsukūlacīvara, for whatever reasons. Moreover, individual interviews might be preferred to focus groups if one wants to distinguish “individual (as opposed to group) opinions” about a certain phe- nomenon, as Boyce & Neale have argued.50 It is for these reasons that I prefer interviews to focus groups in this early stage of research on the topic. It needs not to be said how- ever that the data collected from these individual interviews may pave the way to fur- ther semi-structured interviews on the topic.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 45 Gill et. al. 2008, p. 291. 46 Ibid. 47 Ibid. 48 Stewart & Shamdasani 2015, p. 1. 49 Gill et al. 2008, p. 291. 50 Boyce & Neale 2006, p. 3.
! 27! !
Further, a number of scholars have argued that it might be better “to start with ques- tions that participants can answer easily” before inquiring about more difficult or sensi- tive topics.51 As Gill (et al.) stated:
[t]his can help put the respondents at ease, built up confidence and rapport and often generates rich data that subsequently develops the interview further.52
Obviously, this is particularly relevant to designing the interview schedule. It should be mentioned however that the interview schedule I will present here has taken this comment only partially into account, for the sake of a clear arrangement of subdivided themes. Besides, questions should be neutral, understandable and presented in the local language.53 Questions that may “unduly influence responses” should by all means be avoided;54 as should assumptions based on initial statements, past experiences, or the users appearance (cf. supra).55 Stewart has warned for some notable consequences of unreflectively using the open-question format, which is generally accepted as the ‘gold standard’ of qualitative research.56 But in the context of this paper, this format seems the most proper as it “does not limit answers to the narrow range of choices presented by the closed question.”57 Closed questions, such as “Would you call this type of dress X?” might yield undesirable responses, for respondents may feel for example undeserv- edly embarrassed for their ignorance of a name or tradition that the interviewer seems familiar with and they are not. However, secondary questions can be neutral, i.e. “open in form and structured in content terms”, but inviting the respondent “to talk about specific elements”.58 It is not only wise, but also important to have a somewhat clear profile in mind of what stakeholders will be selected for the research interview. I would like to suggest interviewing not exclusively those monks who are, on the basis of their appearance, taken for monks engaging in the practice of pāṃsukūlika, for three reasons. First of all, the process of selecting ‘probable’ pāṃsukūlika monks, presupposes by definition exactly the type of knowledge that is subject to this research. One might argue that in-depth research is by nature hard to generalize and that therefore this bias might not have a tremendous influence on the eventual outcome. Yet I would like to insist that if such potential pitfalls could be avoided, they should be avoided too. There is another reason why I would like to suggest it wise to interview non- pāṃsukūlacīvara wearing monks as well. Unlike tattoos or headdresses, robes can be fair- !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 51 Gill et al. 2008, p. 291. 52 Id. 53 Stewart & Shamdasani 2015, p. 201 & Boyce & Neale, p. 3. 54 Gill et al. 2008, p. 291. 55 Dervin & Dewdney 1986, p. 6. 56 See: Stewart & Shamdasani 2015, p. 283-95. 57 Dervin & Dewdney 1986, p. 4. 58 Id.
! 28! ! ly easily changed. It is striking how little attention has been drawn to this fact within identity studies, whereas it challenges the whole idea of a clear-cut identity, let alone the assumptions for making any selection on a visual basis. The idea is however not a mere hypothesis. When I met one of the rag wearers in Wutaishan again, later the same day, he did not appear in the same tattered attire he had been wearing a few hours be- fore. The smears on his head had as well vanished from sight, as had his dog. There might be several reasons for this sudden ‘identity switch’. A matter of further investiga- tion, this is moreover an exemplary sensitive question that the respondent might want to answer only in a private conversation and not in a focus group (cf. supra). Thirdly, there might be monks being familiar with the modern practice of pāṃsukūli- ka to only a very limited extent. For example it might be possible that they are unable to give correct details about the making of these robes, since they might not engage in the practice themselves. Yet when it comes to the identity of pāṃsukūlika monks, their no- tions are all the more valuable. To conclude, before conducting the interview, the interviewee must be informed about the purpose of the interview, why he has been chosen as a stakeholder and how long the interview might take. At the end he should be thanked for his time and cooper- ation and asked if there’s anything they would like to add.59
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 59 Boyce & Neale 2006, p. 12.
! 29! !
1 Terminology
Forgoing a study that aims to understand the pāṃsukūlacīvara in its entirety as a ‘trans- traditional’ Buddhist type of dress, it seems wise to expound some commonly used ter- minology to refer to this particular type of dress. As I have already explained in the in- struction to this thesis, the term pāṃsukūlacīvara is a compound consisting of pāṃsukūla and cīvara. In Buddhist translations of canonical literature, the pāṃsukūlacīvara has been translated into Tibetan as phyag dar khrod kyi chos gos and into Chinese as fensao yi Undone from the addendums chos gos and yi, which both literally translate as ‘cloth- ing’ or ‘robes’, the terms phyag dar khrod and fensao stay close the literal translation of pāṃsukūla: phyag dar khrod almost literally translates as ‘dust-heap’ as well, whereas fensao translates as ‘discarded’ or ‘excrement-cleaning’. Unlike quite some nondescript translations of culture-bound phenomena, with which Chinese or Tibetan translators every now and then happened to be unfamiliar, these terms and a perusal of Tibetan and Chinese Buddhist literature indicate that––whether at least on the basis of texts or as a palpable object––it is fair to say that both Chinese and Tibetan Buddhist author- editors seemed familiar with this particular type of dress, known in Indian Buddhist sources as the pāṃsukūlacīvara. Besides the term pāṃsukūlacīvara, one often comes across the term pāṃsukūlika, which, as we will further see, designates both the monks making and wearing these robes and the (ascetic) practice of making and wearing these robes. So far Buddhologists have––apart from specific types of rag robes60––mainly focussed on these terms.61 Anthropological fieldwork in South and Southeast Asia has touched upon this robe either in relation to a tradition of forest monks, whom are still referred to as pāṃsukūlikas, or in relation to an eponymous chant in Buddhist funeral rites.62 I will further elucidate more specifically what is understood as by these terms. Yet a first thing I would like to draw the attention to in the study of the pāṃsukūlacīvara as a ‘trans-traditional’ type of Buddhist dress, is the fact that such an attempt would be wide of the mark if it did not first examine what other terms there might be to denote this type of dress, its wearers and ‘practice’ and even terms that denote types of pāṃsukūla !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 60 See: Schopen 2007. 61 In a recent paper on the practice of pāṃsukūlika in middle period Indian Buddhism through Chinese vinaya texts, Nicholas Witkowski (2013), for instance, also focussed on the translation of fensao. 62 See: Tambiah (1976, 1982, 1984), Carrithers (1979, 1983), Langer (2012) and Davis (2012).
! 30! ! robes as a subset (such as robes made from rags found on burial mounds, as I will fur- ther elucidate). Not only would anthropological research on the topic try in vain per- haps to gather data on something the interviewee is only familiar with under a different name, but also could knowledge of such terms allow for new textual findings, in for ex- ample extra-canonical, vernacular Buddhist texts and even modern-day Buddhist inter- net forums. In modern Chinese Buddhism, for instance, one also speaks of baina yi : a more colloquial designation that actually comes closer to the English translation of ‘tattered’ robes, to which I was pointed by dr. Kuan Guang.63 To gather more information on possible other commonly used Chinese terminology, as I will focus on here, it seems interesting to inquire a group of stakeholders about this in a dialectological fashion. This means that, in order to avoid putting any words into the interviewee’s mouth, the interviewee is presented an image of a rag-robe wearer, as I have provided in the appendix to this thesis. It goes without saying that all stakehold- ers should, in accordance with the principle of equal conditions, at all times be present- ed the exact same image. Further, it seems wise to consult a mixed group of stakehold- ers, including not only pāṃsukūlika monks but also lay followers, and other Buddhist monastics. Inquiring stakeholders specifically at a pilgrim site as Wutaishan may, more- over, yield a very high number of different answers as such places attract Buddhists from all parts of the world. Two questions present themselves in this respect:
Q1.1 HOW WOULD YOU (THE INTERVIEWEE) NAME THE ATTIRE SEEN IN THESE PICTURES?