The learned monk as a comic figure: on reading a Buddhist Vinaya as Indian literature

Abstract

The difficulties involved in identifying, appreciating, and understanding the intentional humor of "other" people far removed in time and culture are well known, and are-not surprisingly-encountered in reading Buddhist vinaya or monastic texts written in relatively early India. This is particularly so, perhaps, because the expectation may well be that such texts were not intended to be funny, and the assertion that some were would seem to require some demonstration. But if it is conceded, or fully acknowledged, that Buddhist monastic literature written in India was first of all Indian literature, then Indian literature and literary or aesthetic theory may provide the tools for at least one such demonstration-Indian literature, after all, encompasses several genres (the "farce" and the "satire") which were certainly intended to be humorous, and Indian aesthetics explicitly recognizes the "comedic." Using these resources might at least allow us to see how some vinaya passages, which appear to make fun of certain kinds of learned monks, might have been read by their Indian audience.