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This is a webcast by Richard Salomon, Professor of Asian Languages & Literature at the University of Washington. In this webcast he documents and discusses some of (or perhaps all of) the oldest Buddhist manuscripts that currently exist. The fragments in particular that he deals with are the famous Gandhari manuscripts, written on birch-bark scrolls over 2,000 years ago in what is now northern Pakistan and eastern Afghanistan. The comparison to the Dead Sea Scrolls has often been made, however, in my opinion, this is not a valid comparison because despite these being the oldest surviving manuscripts, they are still, according to tradition dating of Gautama Buddha, nearly 500 years post-mahaparinirvana. As Salomon discusses, the Buddha-vacana (word of the Buddha) was canonized and written down, finally, after several centuries of oral transmission, in the 1st Century B.C.E. at the earliest. Each of the canons currently available to us are extraordinarily voluminous, each number between 50-100 tomes, which is, to say the least, considerably larger than any religious corpus known in Western traditions. Even then, of the Pali, Tibetan, and Gandhari “canons” (if we may even dare to call them such) are only marginally similar in their content.
Salomon’s knowledge of the ancient Gandhari scrolls is immense, as he is the leading scholar on the “Early Buddhist Manuscripts Project” and has guided many now-respected scholars through the Ph.D dissertations on the subject. Interestingly enough, to study the Gandhari manuscripts knowledge of Buddhist literature is just as important as knowledge of ancient Buddhist epigraphy, archaeology, and paleaography. To me, this implies that to “get at” the earliest forms of Buddhism we can, we must not wholly rely on any single one source of material but rather consider a wide range of source materials in order to “reconstruct” to the best of our ability. Not doing this, I believe, is a major pitfall that many previous as well as contemporary Buddhologists fall into unsuspectingly. Gregory Schopen, a friend and colleague of Salomon, has demonstrated time and again that the study of Buddhist epigraphy combined with Buddhist literature can give us, as researchers and students, new insights in topics that were previously considered “conquered” or “well flushed out.” Anyone know of a Schopen webcast/podcast/mp3?
Link: http://depts.washington.edu/uwch/katz/20052006/richard_salomon.html
Warning: You must have Real Player installed in order to view the webcast. However, I suggest installing Real Alternative so you do not get the corporate bugs and annoyances of the real Real Player.
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I think it would also be wise to consider the role and contribution of the Sangha and their tradition of preserving the teachings of the Buddha Gautama.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sangha
Comment by Pete October 2, 2007 @ 2:35 amSalomon discusses and is very aware of the transmission of Buddha-vacana orally within the sangha prior to the written manuscripts. It’s also important to note that an oral tradition can be transmitted freely from person to person, monk to monk, and monk to layperson. This implies that an oral tradition is accessible to the everyday common Buddhist who does not read or write. However, as soon as the Buddha-vacana becomes written and redacted, it is solely the possession of the elite monastic monks who can, in fact, read and write. By and large the common population of laypersons are excluded from reading (because they are illiterate in the early centuries C.E.)and thus must rely on monks to learn the Buddha Dharma. I argue that as soon as the sangha wrote down scripture they became more powerful than even ever before. No longer could the layperson have more knowledge than them, and no longer could the layperson interpret freely.
Comment by mdm11 October 2, 2007 @ 4:12 amAgreed! The Christian bible falls into the same category.
I may be wrong, but I thought there were still Sangha in the world who continued the verbal tradition.
Comment by Pete October 2, 2007 @ 7:40 pm=)
Comment by mdm11 October 2, 2007 @ 9:13 pmI believe (but I could be wrong?) monastic institutions in all Buddhist countries do, still (?) focus on oral transmission — however, because extensive text versions do exist (albeit in huge volumes and endless tomes), I would not gamble that, say, a Theravadin monk has the entire Pali canon committed to memory. Most of the monks I have come in contact with, at least the Burmese ones, do not have extensive knowledge of _all_ of the suttas but rather specific knowledge on what relates to their specialization. But to be fair, I haven’t ever actually seen a monk study a text, rather, only recite passages for ritual purposes. For monastic ordination, my experience with a Burmese Abbot leads me to believe that common (everyday?) recitation of some literature becomes internalized. I feel that sometimes we give way too much precedence to monks simply because they are “holy.” They’re people like everyone else and can be very lazy or caught up in profane matters like the rest of us!
By the way, to anyone else that reads this, sometime soon I will be posting a detailed summary (point by point ish) of this terrific and important webcast.
Comment by mdm11 October 2, 2007 @ 9:14 pm[...] Buddha-vacana lost and found Tuesday October 09th 2007, 5:08 am Filed under: Uncategorized I recently posted a link to an excellent webcast/podcast by Professor Richard Salomon from the University of Washington regarding searching for the [...]
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