Journal of the Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies
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VOLUME 10 (MAY 2016) ISSN: 2047-1076 Journal of the Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies The Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies A Recognised Independent http://www.ocbs.org Centre of the University of Oxford JOURNAL OF THE OXFORD CENTRE FOR BUDDHIST STUDIES volume 10 May 2016 Journal of the Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies Volume 10 May 2016 ISSN: 2047-1076 Published by the Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies www.ocbs.org Wolfson College, Linton Road, Oxford, OX2 6UD, United Kingdom Authors retain copyright of their articles. Editorial board Prof. Richard Gombrich (General Editor): [email protected] Prof. John Holder: [email protected] Dr Tse-fu Kuan: [email protected] Dr Alex Wynne: [email protected] All submissions should be sent to: [email protected] Production team Operations and Development Manager: Steven Egan Production Manager: Dr Tomoyuki Kono Development Consultant: Dr Paola Tinti Journal production by ww.ivancious.com Annual subscription rates Students: £20 Individuals: £30 Institutions: £45 Universities: £55 Countries from the following list receive 50% discount on all the above prices: Bangladesh, Burma, Laos, India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Indonesia, Pakistan, all African Countries For more information on subscriptions, please go to www.ocbs.org Contents Contents 4 List of Contributors 6 Editorial. Richard Gombrich 8 Levitation in Early Buddhist Discourse Bhikkhu Anālayo 11 A comparison of the Chinese and Pāli versions of the Śāriputra Saṃyukta, a collection of early Buddhist discourses on the Venerable Śāriputra Choong Mun-Keat 27 Beings, Non-Beings, and Buddhas: Contrasting Notions of tathāgatagarbha in the Anūnatvāpūrṇatvanirdeśaparivarta and *Mahābherī Sūtra C.V. Jones 53 How Was Liberating Insight Related to the Development of the Four Jhānas in Early Buddhism? A New Perspective through an Interdisciplinary Approach Grzegorz Polak 85 A Note on Śramaṇa in Vedic Texts Brett Shults 113 Dge-slong-ma dpal-mo, the Princess, the Mahasiddha, the Nun and the Lineage Holder: as Presented in the thob yig of Za-ya Paṇḍita Blo-bzang 'phrin-las (1642-1715) Sangseraima Ujeed 128 Book Reviews Giovanni Verardi, Hardships & Downfall of Buddhism in India. Reviewed by Geoffrey Bamford 167 C. Pierce Salguero, Translating Buddhist Medicine in Medieval China. Series: Encounters with Asia. Reviewed by Frederick Shih-Chung Chen 190 Michel Mohr, Buddhism, Unitarianism, and the Meiji Competition for Universality. Reviewed by Louella Matsunaga 196 Halvor Eifring, Meditation and Culture: the Interplay of Practice and Context. Reviewed by Sarah Shaw 203 List of Contributors Bhikkhu Anālayo specializes in early Buddhist studies. He teaches at the Center for Buddhist Studies, University of Hamburg, and at the Sri Lanka International Buddhist Academy, Kandy, and carries out research at Dharma Drum Buddhist College, Taiwan. Geoffrey Bamford is a Trustee of the OCBS. He gained a first class degree in Sanskrit and Pali from Oxford University in 1970, then did four years’ postgraduate work, both in Oxford and in Sri Lanka (on a Commonwealth Scholarship). From 1974 he had a business career: he ran an independent consultancy specialising in cross-cultural communication issues. Geoff founded the Society for the Wider Understanding of Buddhism (So-Wide) and has worked closely with the OCBS. [email protected] Frederick Shih-Chung Chen (D.Phil. Oxon) is the Sheng Yan Post- doc Research Fellow in Chinese Buddhist Philosophy in the Department of Philosophy at the National Chengchi University, Taipei. His main academic interests are the history and archaeology of early and medieval Chinese Buddhism. [email protected] Choong Mun-keat studied Buddhism in Malaysia, Taiwan and Sri Lanka, before obtaining his BA (1990) in Buddhist Studies (Komazawa, Tokyo), MA in Studies in Religion (1994) and PhD (1999) in Buddhist Studies (Queensland). Currently he is a Lecturer in Studies in Religion at the University of New England, Australia. [email protected] Christopher V. Jones (DPhil Oxon) is an Associated Member of the Faculty of Theology and Religion at Oxford University. His main academic interests are in Indian Mahāyāna literature, especially that relating to tathāgatagarbha doctrine, and the interaction between Buddhism and other religious traditions in classical India. [email protected] 6 Louella Matsunaga is senior lecturer in the anthropology of Japan at Oxford Brookes University. Her research has included work on the spread of both established Japanese religions and Japanese new religious movements outside Japan, with particular reference to Western Europe. She is now working on the globalisation of Jodo Shinshu, comparing some of the transformations in Shin Buddhism in Europe, the United States and Japan since the late nineteenth century, in the context of shifting global discourses of Buddhism. [email protected] Dr. Grzegorz Polak is an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Philosophy and Sociology, at Maria Curie-Skłodowska University (UMCS) in Lublin. His main academic interest is early Buddhism with particular emphasis on the evolution of its meditative ideas. [email protected] Sarah Shaw studied Greek and English at Manchester University and did her doctorate there on English Literature. She researches, writes about and teaches Southern Buddhism. She is a member of the faculty of Oriental Studies and Wolfson College and an honorary fellow of the Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies, Oxford University. [email protected] Brett Shults is an independent researcher. He lives in Hong Kong. He has published in JOCBS vols. 4, 6 and 7. [email protected] Sangseraima Ujeed, third year DPhil in Oriental Studies student in the Department of Tibetan and Himalayan Studies at the Oriental Institute, University of Oxford. Current DPhil research project concerns the history and development of 17th century Dge-lugs-pa Buddhism in Central Asia. Main areas of research include Buddhist Studies, Religious Studies, Tibetan and Mongolian religious and historiographical literary studies. [email protected] 7 Editorial Richard Gombrich I shall soon be 79, and I have to face the fact that my energy and stamina are decreasing. It is only sensible to plan my withdrawal from leadership of the OCBS. This would be a great deal easier if I had met with more success in raising funds. After 12 years of official existence (14 years if one adds in the unofficial beginnings) the OCBS still has no endowment and we never seem to have more – sometimes less – than enough in the kitty to keep us going for a further year. Restricting my range of ideas and ambitions, I am now giving priority to trying to save Pali, and with it the serious study of early Buddhism. Of course there are many people (mostly monks) in the Theravada countries who know Pali, in some sense, but hardly any of them communicate in a European language or understand what I mean by “serious study”; I have documented in previous editorials their absence from the scene of international scholarship. In the rest of the world, Pali cannot be said to be flourishing. Even in Britain – even in Oxford! -- there is no longer any university post dedicated to Pali; nor can we see any hope of finding the money to establish one. Dissatisfied with the available primers, I have gradually compiled my own, giving the copyright to the OCBS. I have used it in the intensive introductory courses I have given, on average over once a year, since 2005. I claim that my course, short though it is, enables its students to read prose texts in the Pali canon; and the results appear to justify this claim. Six months ago, at the urging and with the massive help of Ilona Budapesti, an IT expert, I began trying to reach a wider audience by teaching the course live on line, and have so far delivered 3 courses. I think I am getting the hang of it. After a lifetime of teaching pupils present in the flesh, it is disconcerting to have so little scope for personal contact. The same goes for the contact between the pupils which is essential to my teaching method. The pupils have different expectations, and some enrol without understanding that to succeed in the course requires undivided attention: to carry on a job, even part-time, during the days of the course is not going to work. On the other hand, on line courses allow me to teach more people at once, and especially if I can call on the help of competent Teaching Assistants. However, even if I were to do nothing more for the rest of my life but teach Pali – and there are in fact some other ways in which I would like to spend the time remaining to me – that would not achieve my true goal, which is to establish knowledge of Pali, and with it a rational critical approach to the texts, as widely as possible. I need to train more teachers – who can in their turn train further teachers, and so on down the generations. My intensive introductory course is a solid foundation, but it is too short to be enough to make a teacher; the same goes for the critical approach with which I accompany and enliven the teaching of the language, and also have tried to exemplify in my publications. It is not, I believe, that one should -- or could -- create a further course on much the same lines as the first. It is just that on the first course people have not had time to read nearly enough. They need more experience. What can we do to provide that experience? We have started a Pali Reading Club, again over the Internet; see our website. Alexander Wynne is leading it, but he will need back up if it is to endure. I have always offered to provide an “advanced” reading course in Oxford if any group of three or more could agree on a time and an agenda.