JIABS Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies Volume 30 Number 1–2 2007 (2009) The Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies (ISSN 0193-600XX) is the organ of the International Association of Buddhist Studies, Inc. As a peer-reviewed journal, it welcomes scholarly contributions pertaining to all facets of Buddhist EDITORIAL BOARD Studies. JIABS is published twice yearly. KELLNER Birgit Manuscripts should preferably be sub- KRASSER Helmut mitted as e-mail attachments to: [email protected] as one single fi le, Joint Editors complete with footnotes and references, in two diff erent formats: in PDF-format, BUSWELL Robert and in Rich-Text-Format (RTF) or Open- Document-Format (created e.g. by Open CHEN Jinhua Offi ce). COLLINS Steven Address books for review to: COX Collet JIABS Editors, Institut für Kultur- und GÓMEZ Luis O. 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Print: Ferdinand Berger & Söhne GesmbH, A-3580 Horn JIABS Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies Volume 30 Number 1–2 2007 (2009) Obituaries Georges-Jean PINAULT In memoriam, Colette Caillat (15 Jan. 1921 – 15 Jan. 2007) . 3 Hubert DURT In memoriam, Nino Forte (6 Aug. 1940 – 22 July 2006) . 13 Erika FORTE Antonino Forte – List of publications . 17 Articles Tao JIN The formulation of introductory topics and the writing of exegesis in Chinese Buddhism . 33 Ryan Bongseok JOO The ritual of arhat invitation during the Song Dynasty: Why did Mahāyānists venerate the arhat? . 81 Chen-Kuo LIN Object of cognition in Dignāga’s Ālambanaparīkṣāvṛtti: On the controversial passages in Paramārtha’s and Xuanzang’s translations . 117 Eviatar SHULMAN Creative ignorance: Nāgārjuna on the ontological signifi - cance of consciousness . 139 Sam VA N SCHAIK and Lewis DONEY The prayer, the priest and the Tsenpo: An early Buddhist narrative from Dunhuang . 175 2 CONTENTS Joseph WALSER The origin of the term ‘Mahāyāna’ (The Great Vehicle) and its relationship to the Āgamas . 219 Buddhist Studies in North America Contributions to a panel at the XVth Congress of the International Association of Buddhist Studies, Atlanta, 23–28 June 2008 Guest editor: Charles S. Prebish Charles S. PREBISH North American Buddhist Studies: A current survey of the fi eld . 253 José Ignacio CABEZÓN The changing fi eld of Buddhist Studies in North America . 283 Oliver FREIBERGER The disciplines of Buddhist Studies – Notes on religious commitment as boundary-marker. 299 Luis O. GÓMEZ Studying Buddhism as if it were not one more among the religions . 319 • Notes on contributors. 345 NORTH AMERICAN BUDDHIST STUDIES: A CURRENT SURVEY OF THE FIELD CHARLES S. PREBISH Introduction In 1959 and 1960, Edward Conze wrote three segmented articles, published in the Middle Way, entitled “Recent Progress in Buddhist Studies.” These were collected and eventually published in his vol- ume Thirty Years of Buddhist Studies: Selected Essays by Edward Conze. By that time two geographic “schools” of Buddhology had been identifi ed: the so-called Anglo-German and Franco-Belgian schools. To these, Conze added a third: the Leningrad school. Each school was essentially defi ned not only by location, but also by emphasis. Conze was not the only scholar to research the nature of the Buddhist Studies discipline. Jan de Jong published two ar- ticles, in the 1974 and 1984 issues of the Eastern Buddhist, which were eventually collected into his book A Brief History of Buddhist Studies in Europe and America. While off ering much interesting data, a consideration of Buddhist Studies in America was virtu- ally absent from the volume, despite its title. More recently North American scholars have begun to investigate the discipline of Bud- dhist Studies. In 1983, Charles Prebish published “Buddhist Stud- ies American Style: A Shot in the Dark” in that year’s Religious Studies Review. More than a decade later, in 1994, he published “The Academic Study of Buddhism in the United States: A Cur- rent Analysis” in Religion. That same year Malcolm David Eckel published “The Ghost at the Table: On the Study of Buddhism and the Study of Religion” in the Journal of the American Academy of Religion. The following year, the Journal of the International As- sociation of Buddhist Studies devoted an entire issue to the topic Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies Volume 30 • Number 1–2 • 2007 (2009) pp. 253–282 254 CHARLES S. PREBISH of Buddhist Studies as an academic discipline, including insightful articles by David Seyfort Ruegg, José Cabezón, and Luis Gómez. Coupled with the success of the Buddhism Section of the Ameri- can Academy of Religion, the rapid growth of the number of Bud- dhist Studies scholars on the North American continent, and the large number of venues for Buddhist Studies publication in North America, it was becoming clear that a “North American School of Buddhist Studies” was developing which rivaled, and perhaps even surpassed, the earlier schools noted above. This rapid growth and development has literally begged for analysis and evaluation. This paper, and the three that follow it are the products of a panel entitled “The Academic Discipline of Buddhist Studies in North America presented at the XVth Congress of the International Asso- ciation of Buddhist Studies,” held at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia (USA) from June 23–28, 2008. In the Winter 1991 issue of the Journal of the American Acad- emy of Religion, former editor Ray L. Hart was aff orded 112 pages to present the results of a survey entitled “Religious and Theologi- cal Studies in American Higher Education: A Pilot Study.”1 Thirty- fi ve pages of his “report” were devoted to a presentation of the statistical evidence gleaned from a questionnaire distributed to 678 faculty members at 11 types of institutions; the rest of the space was devoted to Hart’s interpretive narrative. Interestingly, he de- votes an entire section of that narrative to a consideration of the key questions: “What is the relation between the study of religion and theology and the practice of religion?” and “What should the relation be?” Perhaps as expected, he could fi nd only one statement on which all faculty everywhere agree: “One who practices religion 1 See Ray L. Hart, “Religious and Theological Studies in American Higher Education: A Pilot Study,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 59, 4 (Winter 1991), 715–827. NORTH AMERICAN BUDDHIST STUDIES 255 needs to study it.”2 This of course begs the larger question, and Hart tries to clarify the three obvious positions he elicited:3 1. The fi rst view is that the study of religion and the practice of religion are two integral “terms;” each has its “site” and the two are not internally related. 2. The second view is that “the relation is completely open.” 3. The third view will by now be obvious: the study of religion presupposes practice, and is undertaken to prepare for and enhance practice. Hart’s useful fi ndings have already been widely utilized in the dis- cipline, clearly refl ecting the perceived importance of self-defi ni- tion and self-recognition within the broad profession of Religious Studies. Curiously, Hart’s fi ndings were nearly chronologically coinci- dent with a fi ve-year administrative review of the Buddhism Sec- tion of the American Academy of Religion, arguably the largest academic arena for Buddhologists in North America (if not the entire world). AAR’s external evaluator for that review, Professor Malcolm David Eckel of Boston University, noted in his December 1991 report: The most important achievement of the Buddhism Group and Sec- tion at the AAR in the last 10 years has been to create a safe and reliable forum for Buddhist scholars who represent a wide variety of approaches, disciplines, and geographical orientations to exchange views and build bonds of cooperation and understanding that create an active and imaginative scholarly community.4 2 Hart, “Religious and Theological Studies in American Higher Edu- cation,” 779. 3 Ibid., 780–81. 4 Malcolm David Eckel, “Review and Evaluation of the Buddhism Section of the American Academy of Religion,” 1991, 2. 256 CHARLES S. PREBISH In a later article,5 Eckel revealed that in the fi ve years between 1986 and 1991, the attendance at the Buddhism Section’s annual busi- ness meeting grew from 60 to 140, and the mailing list expanded from 106 to 600! With interest piqued by the data included in Hart’s report and the suppositions inherent in Eckel’s, in October 1992, I set out to gather materials from the North American community of Bud- dhologists that would aff ord this community data similar to Hart’s upon which to conduct a second level of self-refl ection. It was clear from the outset that the 600-member mailing list mentioned above contained, in addition to so-called Buddhologists, a large number of scholars of other Asian religions, many non-specialist compara- tivists, and a profusion of “others.” After careful sorting and syn- thesis, a list of 125 scholars whose primary teaching and research work fell within the discipline of Buddhist Studies was compiled, and these individuals were sent requests soliciting both data and narrative statements about the discipline.