Tracing Buddhist Responses to the Crisis of Cosmography

University of Calgary PRISM: University of Calgary's Digital Repository Graduate Studies The Vault: Electronic Theses and Dissertations 2020-08-17 Tracing Buddhist Responses to the Crisis of Cosmography Ereshefsky, Joshua Ian Ereshefsky, J. I. (2020). Tracing Buddhist Responses to the Crisis of Cosmography (Unpublished master's thesis). University of Calgary, Calgary, AB. http://hdl.handle.net/1880/112477 master thesis University of Calgary graduate students retain copyright ownership and moral rights for their thesis. You may use this material in any way that is permitted by the Copyright Act or through licensing that has been assigned to the document. For uses that are not allowable under copyright legislation or licensing, you are required to seek permission. Downloaded from PRISM: https://prism.ucalgary.ca UNIVERSITY OF CALGARY Tracing Buddhist Responses to the Crisis of Cosmography by Joshua Ian Ereshefsky A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS GRADUATE PROGRAM IN RELIGIOUS STUDIES CALGARY, ALBERTA AUGUST, 2020 © Joshua Ian Ereshefsky 2020 i ABSTRACT Buddhists, across different schools and regions, traditionally posited a similar world model—one that is flat and centered by giant Mount Meru. This world model is chiefly featured in Vasubandhu’s fourth century CE text, the Abhidharmakośabhāṣyam. In 1552, Christian missionary Francis Xavier introduced European spherical-world cosmography to Japan, precipitating what this thesis terms the Buddhist ‘Crisis of Cosmography’. Buddhists responded to a challenge of their cosmography nonuniformly. This thesis identifies and traces three different Buddhist responses to the Crisis of Cosmography. The three types of respondents explored in this thesis are 1) the Rejecter (who rejects emergent European science and seeks to uphold the traditional Buddhist world model), 2) the Accepter (who conversely accepts European science and seeks to discard the traditional Buddhist world model), and 3) the Upayer (who cites the traditional Buddhist world model as a pedagogical upāya). To explore these respondents, this thesis primarily examines Japanese and Tibetan sources. ii PREFACE This thesis is an original, unpublished and independent work by the author, Joshua Ian Ereshefsky. iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS First and foremost, I wish to thank my supervisor, the Numata Chair in Buddhist Studies, Dr. Wendi Adamek for her invaluable direction and support of my project. I wish to thank the University of Calgary Department of Classics and Religion. Their support and resources greatly enriched my master’s studies. I also wish to thank my Sanskrit teachers who made the complex enjoyable— Dr. Christopher Framarin at the University of Calgary and Joseph Larose at Kathmandu’s Rangjung Yeshe Institute. Lastly, I wish to thank my family for their unceasing encouragement and for fielding my obtuse grammatical questions. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION UNCOVERING COSMOGRAPHY……………………………………………….1 THE BUDDHIST WORLD MODEL……………………………………………...2 HISTORICAL CONSIDERTIONS………………………………………………...4 THE CRISIS OF COSMOGRAPHY………………………………………………5 THESIS STRUCTURE…………………………………………………………….8 1. BUILDING A WORLD: BUDDHIST COSMOGRAPHY IN THE KOŚA A MYSTERIOUS MOUNTAIN……………………………………………...……11 VASUBANDHU AND THE KOŚA………………………………………….……13 STRUCTURE OF THE WORLD ………………………………………...………15 BELOW AND ABOVE……………………………………………………………18 PROBLEMATIC COSMOGRAPHY? ……………………………………………21 MORE THAN JUST A MAP………………………………………………...……22 2. THE REJECTER A GREAT DEBATE………………………………………………………………24 WHERE’S THE MOUNTAIN? ………………………………………………......26 ARRIVAL OF NEW THOUGHT…………………………………………………30 COMPETING COSMOGRAPHIES ……………………………………...……...33 CHRONOLOGY OF FUMON ENTSŪ……………………………………...…...35 ENTSŪ’S PARADIGM SHIFT………………………………………………...…37 BUKKOKU REKISHŌHEN………………………………………………...……39 ENTSŪ’S GEOGRAPHY……………………………………………………...…41 FLAT OR ROUND? …………………………………………………………..…43 MOVEMENT OF THE SUN……………………………...………………...……45 ENTSŪ’S LEGACY…………………………………………………………....…48 3. THE ACCEPTER AND THE UPAYER A MOUNTAIN OF A CROWN………………………………………...…………52 FROM JAPAN TO TIBET……………………………………………...……...…53 DALAI LAMA: THE ACCEPTER…………………………………...………...…55 GENDUN CHOPEL: THE UPAYER……………………………...……………..60 CONCLUSION………………………………………………………...………….……67 FIGURES……………………………………………………..……………………...…73 BIBLIOGRAPHY………………………………………………………...……….……81 v LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1………………………………………………………………..Elemental structure Figure 2……………………………………………………………………..Birds-eye view Figure 3…………………………………………………………………Hot and cold hells Figure 4……………………………………………….Meru and abodes of earth-dwelling deities Figure 5……………………………………….…………..Copernican Model, 1543 (left), Tychonic Model, 1647, (right) Figure 6……………………………………….….Gotenjikuzu (map of five Indias), 1364. Late Edo period re-creation from National Museum of Japanese History, Gallery Collection, Tokyo. Figure 7…………………………………………..…...Nansenbushū bankoku shōka no zu (map of the world inside Jambudvīpa Island), Hōtan, 1710. From Nubuo & Unno, “The Buddhist World Map in Japan and Its contact with European Maps.” Imago Mundi 16 (1962), 63. Figure 8………………………………………….Conceptualization of Entsū’s world map Figure 9………………………………………...........Argument for spherical model (left), Entsū’s argument for flat model (right) Figure 10……………………….…………….……………………Vertical sun path (left), Entsū’s horizontal sun path (right) Figure 11………………. Sun hitting top of mountain before bottom (on spherical earth) Figure 12…………………………………………........Birds-eye view of Entsū’s sun path Figure 13……………............Entsū’s vertical sun paths demonstrating changing sunlight hours Figure 14….................................................Entsū’s horizontal sun paths over Jambudvīpa demonstrating seasonal darkness Figure 15………………………………………..Shumisengi (map/model of Meru world). Replica made by Toshiba founder, Hisashige Tanaka, 1850. From Seiko Museum, Traditional Japanese Clocks (Wodokei) Collection, Tokyo. 1 INTRODUCTION UNCOVERING COSMOGRAPHY I visited the mammoth Buddhist ruins of Borobudur for the first time in 2014. A shuttle picked me up at 3:30 AM from my hotel in Yogyakarta, Central Java, Indonesia. The hour and a half drive to Borobudur passed through lush farmland fringed by steep volcanoes. During the drive I thought how curious that the world’s largest Buddhist structure is nestled in the farmland of the world’s most populous Muslim country. Today, ninety percent of Indonesians are Muslim and less than one percent are Buddhist.1 However, during the middle of the first millennium CE, Central Java was ruled by the Buddhist Shailendra dynasty (the builders of Borobudur). But by the second millennium, Buddhism had all but disappeared from Central Java.2 A combination of assimilation by Hinduism and the arrival of Islam to Java literally buried Borobudur. In 1814, Dutch colonial surveyor Hermann Cornelius led the restoration of Borobudur. A team of two hundred labourers burned vegetation and cleared soil.3 They unearthed a gigantic multi- tiered structure made from volcanic rock and lined with more than two thousand five hundred reliefs panels and five hundred Buddha statues. In 2014, I arrived at Borobudur at sunrise and circumambulated each of its narrow stone tiers. I observed the intricate relief panels depicting episodes from the Lalitavistara 1 “Sensus Penduduk 2010,” Badan Pusat Statistik, 2010, https://sp2010.bps.go.id/index.php/site/tabel?tid=321&wid=0. 2 While Java is largely void of Buddhist and Hindu practice today, South Asian linguistic influence remains. For example, ‘Java’ traces to the Sanskrit ‘Yavadvipa’ (Island of Barley) featured in the Rāmāyana. Additionally, the Javanese language uses Pallava script developed in Southern India. 3 John Miksic, Borobudur: Golden Tales of the Buddhas (Tokyo: Tokyo Tuttle Publishing, 1990), 19. 2 Sūtra (an account of Siddārtha Gautama’s path to Buddhahood) and Jātaka tales (accounts of his past lives). While I noted the reliefs, I remained unaware of Borobudur’s greater symbolic project. Four years later, during a subsequent visit to Borobudur, I learned that the structure is in fact a grand representation of the Buddhist cosmographic model.4 This thesis studies the conceptual evolution of the Buddhist cosmographic model. More specifically, it studies how Buddhists responded to a challenge of their cosmographic model by European science. I term the European scientific challenge to Buddhist cosmography the ‘Crisis of Cosmography’. In this thesis, we will identify and trace three different Buddhist responses to the Crisis of Cosmography. Before framing our three Buddhist respondents, we must first contextualize the topic of Buddhist cosmography, beginning with the Buddhist world model. THE BUDDHIST WORLD MODEL What is cosmography? Simply put, cosmography is the study of the physical and spatial. Cosmographic sub-fields include geology, geography, and astronomy. By contrast, cosmology, a closely related term, concerns the origin and evolution of the 4 A number of scholars describe Borobudur as a physical re-creation of Buddhist cosmography. For example, John Miksic writes that Borobudur was crafted to mirror Mount Meru. See John Miksic, Borobudur: Golden Tales of the Buddhas (Tokyo: Tokyo Tuttle Publishing, 1990), 49- 50. Paul Mus argues that Borobudur’s design implements the cosmographic scheme from Vasubandhu’s Abhidharmakośabhāṣyam. See Paul Mus, Barabuḍur: Sketch of a History of Buddhism Based on Archaeological Criticism of the Texts, trans. Alexander Macdonald (New Delhi: Indira

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