Buddhist Medical Demonology in The Sūtra of the Seven Buddhas

Adam Krug

doi:10.3390/rel10040255

Abstract

This essay begins with a brief discussion of the marginalization of demonology in the study of both Indian Buddhist traditions and Āyurvedic medicine. Unlike the study of Buddhist traditions in other geographic regions, there has been relatively little scholarship on the dialogue between Indian Buddhist communities and the localized spirit deity cults with which they have interacted for more than two millennia. The modern study of Āyurverda, with few exceptions, demonstrates a similar trend in the marginalization of bhūtavidyā, or demonology, which has constituted a legitimate branch of Āyurvedic medicine from at least the time that the earliest Āyurvedic compendium, the Carakasaṃhitā, was composed. This essay argues that this lack of proper attention to Indian Buddhist and Āyurvedic medical demonology is symptomatic of a broader, persistent bias in the human sciences. The essay then examines a handful of stories from the Karmaśataka, a collection of Buddhist avadānas, to argue that certain Buddhist communities may have held their own biases against systems of medical demonology, albeit for entirely different reasons. The balance of this essay then concludes with an analysis of The Sūtra of the Seven Buddhas that presents this work as an example of Buddhist medical demonology.

Highlights

This essay begins with a brief discussion of the marginalization of demonology in the study of both Indian Buddhist traditions and Āyurvedic medicine
I have highlighted the deficit of scholarship in the field of Buddhist studies, among scholars of Indian Buddhist traditions, that pays serious attention to the impact of Buddhist traditions’ dialogical relationships with localized popular religious cults
I have pointed to the fact that, as a result of this deficit, very little serious attention has been given to the development of Indian Buddhist systems of demonology

Summary

Demonology in the Shadows of Buddhist Medicine

Paul Demiéville’s 1937 article on Buddhist medicine “Byō” for the Franco-Japanese encyclopedic dictionary of Buddhism Hōbōgirin was by all measures a landmark survey of the relationship between. Instead Buddhist demonology, which deals with the treatment of illnesses that are brought on by demonic possession, has remained at the fringes of what most scholars of Buddhist studies are comfortable referring to as medicine proper This is symptomatic of a broader problem, in the study of Indian Buddhist traditions, in which the field continues to ignore or marginalize evidence of Buddhists’ ongoing dialogue with, and assimilation of, localized popular spirit religions.ṅ. In the absence of strong, affirmative arguments for the important relationship between Buddhism and Indian popular religions, the fruits of this relationship found in the vast amount of Indian Buddhist literature containing the ritual theories and practices for managing a world overrun by demonic beings has remained understudied and underappreciated One corrective to this problematic methodology, as I have argued elsewhere, can be found in the adoption of a demonological paradigm in the study of South Asian religious traditions.. Just as the Buddha’s mantras are said to be superior to all worldly mantras, the trope of the Buddha as a “king of physicians” establishes the Buddhist saṅgha’s authority over all worldly medical sciences.

Demonology in the Shadows of Scholarship on Āyurveda

Emic Resistance to Buddhist Demonology in The Karmaśataka

Buddhist Demonology in The Sūtra of the Seven Buddhas46

Conclusions