Buddhist Stories Research Articles

Ancient Indian Stories in the Oirat Collection “The Tale of the Nectar Teaching

Questions about the similarity of the plots of Oirat written monuments with ancient Indian ones still remain insufficiently studied. Most of the Oirat works have not yet been introduced into scientific circulation or translated into Russian and other European languages. The article examines the origin of the plots of 17th and 18th century Oirat religious and didactic collection. “Aršān nomiyin tuuǰi” (“The Tale of the Nectar Teaching”), dating back to the literary monuments of Ancient India. The collection consists of sixty-four short Buddhist stories. It is framed by a diagram of the Tibetan Buddhist treatise “Lamrim,” presented in thesis form. The main provisions of the treatise are revealed in the collection with the help of artistic examples from various Indian and Tibetian sources. The collection is distinguished by a strict functional purpose; it introduces the laity to the course of Buddhist teachings and instructs them on the path of virtue. It was used by Buddhist monks as a guide in his preaching practice until the beginning of the 20th century. The article examines the structure and content of Oirat and ancient Indian stories in their narrative presentation, identifying similarities and local differences. As a result of the study, it was established that genetically similar plots help to better understand the content of short stories in the Oirat collection, which have lost their essential structural components due to various reasons. The stories of “The Tale of the Nectar Teaching” differ from the source texts by the extreme conciseness of their plots: they lack any descriptions or comparisons, the main focus is exclusively on heroes’ actions, the action unfolds abruptly and dynamically. We noted a significant similarity between the plots of “The Tale of the Nectar Teaching” and ancient Indian works both at the plot-compositional and at content levels. This fact indicates their genetic relationship. The identification of the local differences in the Oirat collection demonstrates the genesis of the plots of ancient Indian monuments and their fate outside India.

浅谈《爱欲》中表现出的佛教观

Shen Congwen focuses on the idea that literature creation is rooted in human nature, expressing the root of Buddhist ideology while speaking about healthy and beautiful vitality about ‘overflowing vitality,’ ‘healthy human nature,’ and natural ‘life’ of human beings. In other words, Shen Congwen pursues human nature and beauty in human nature by describing the nature’s scene of omen in literature, creating literary values. Human nature is the starting point and cornerstone of the utopia that Shen Congwen tried to build, where creation begins. He also reflects Buddhist ideology and accommodates Buddhist stories by building his life philosophy based on the theory of human nature. Shen Congwen asserts life philosophy as the foundation for the theory of human nature by accepting Buddhism in a philosophical way, connoting the Buddhist spirit purusing freedom of mind in his literary world. In his novel 〈Moonlight Scenery〉, ‘holiness’ of life, thoughts about life and death issues, love, and beauty are affected by Buddhist ideology. The exploration of Buddhist ideology that appears in his works reveal how Shen Congwen perceives life. When he attempts to understand the essence of the human world, Buddhism allows him to gaze at holiness of life based on metaphysical speculation. Shen Congwen explores life through the comparison between the world of human nature and pathological world. He is an unusual author who tries to express human nature from the ethical aspect while inciting healthy human nature. His abstract love and alienation of beauty and secular reality allow him to reach thoughts about the most fundamental things in Buddhism, such as life and death, emptiness, eternity, and secular and sacred domains. In addition, due to the influence of Buddhist ideology, Shen Congwen perceives life philosophy that breaks away from all kinds of anguish and pursues the state of mental freedom. Such theory about the Buddhist mind and nature suggests human nature, which is the essence of life seen through Shen’s unique perspective.

Filial Piety in Fluidity: The Tension between the Textual and Visual Traditions of Śyāma Jātaka in Early Medieval China

The Śyāma jātaka is renowned for its portrayal of a devoted son who cared for his blind parents. The story has been translated into various textual versions and depicted in reliefs and murals, gaining wide circulation in the Buddhist world. Previous scholarship on the story’s transmission in China has primarily focused on its representation of filial piety and its resonance with the Chinese context. However, a careful examination of surviving visual depictions of jātaka stories brings to light historical and regional disparities that have often been overlooked in relation to the reception of Śyāma jātaka’s didactic teachings in early medieval China. While the story has flourished in North China (including the Central Plain and the Hexi Corridor) from the late fifth century onwards, it was intriguingly absent from the region during the first half of the sixth century. This absence of the Śyāma jātaka stands in contrast to the popularity of other jātakas such as Sudāna and Mahasattva, which were widely circulated in China. In this article, I explore the uneven adaptation of the Śyāma jātaka within Chinese visual culture by placing the story’s textual and visual traditions within the broader historical milieu of depicting Buddhist stories and filial paragons in the sixth century. My study demonstrates that the story’s theme in multiple dimensions was simplified to filial piety during the textual translation process of the story in third- and fourth-century China. Moreover, it reveals that the story’s visual legacy faced challenges and negotiations when integrating into the local teaching of filial piety. This reluctance can be attributed to two historical factors: the revival of pre-existing visual traditions depicting Chinese filial sons, and the growing preference for other jātakas that embodied teachings on generosity in early sixth-century North China. Furthermore, this study sheds light on the tension between textual and visual traditions when incorporating Buddhist teachings into a new social context. While various rhetoric strategies were developed in text translation to integrate Buddhist teachings into existing Chinese thought, the visual tradition posed separate questions regarding its necessity, the didactic intentions of patrons, and the visual logic understood by viewers.

Modern Sanskrit poetry and Other than Sanskrit words

There has been trade in India since the Rig Vedic period. It is mentioned in the situation that the watery horses, powerful chariots and woolen clothes of the Indus region were famous all over the world. The Atharvaveda has only one Sukta in the name of Vanijya Sukta - Descriptions of sea visits are also found in Jataka stories and Buddhist stories. Business reasons are used to visit the traders of one country to another country. He (traders) had to teach the dialect of that country for their thoughts and purchasing and purchasing goods. The Harappans were identified as very good marine sailors. The Dakyard found in Lothal, Gujarat is very concrete evidence of the maritime trade being done during that time. The people of the Harappan civilization established contacts with the countries of Oman, Bahrain, and West Asia. Since the Harappan period, cloth has been continuously one of the major items of Indian trade. According to Hagel- “India is known as the land of ambitions in history. Their (traders) this reconciliation result was that each other's languages got so much that they started being used in colloquial just like Hindi-Sanskrit and gradually made their grip to literary disciplines.

‘Bilampau’: A Heritage – Long Forgotten

Unlike some other forms in Nepali Painting, an earlier form known as ‘Bilampau’ remains unknown, relatively. This sense of apathy is regardless of the fact that this genre also boasts many unique features that deserves further academic explorations and need attract deeper discussions. To highlight its importance and explain the diversities, a few select representative examples are chosen to argue. As an earliest example, two painted wood-covers of sacred manuscripts dated 12th century are proffered, how early efforts were made to make a visual story in early medieval times. This is followed by a famous visual story based on Buddhist beliefs for telling Buddhist stories: and now, how it has been reduced to an annual display or as a mere ritual. A visual story of Lord Krishna remains yet one more example. It is created and based on Hindu epic Mahabharata. But the most unique and startling example cited herein has a very unique character. It is created as a visual travel guide or a suggestive map to a prospective pilgrim or a traveler. At present, this exquisite work is in the collection of a museum abroad.

Literary Variation of Indian Buddhist Stories in Chinese (Zhi-guai) Novels

Abstract: In "Literary Variation of Indian Buddhist Stories in Chinese (Zhiguai) Novels," Wei Guo discusses Buddhist Sutra scriptures which have been a reservoir of inspiration for Zhiguai novels since their first introduction in Chinese literature. Buddhist texts were less relevant for the "documentary" tradition of Chinese literature owing to their rough structure, vague context, and lack of a sense of history and reality, since they were originally intended as texts of didacticism. Hence, in order to integrate these exotic literary materials with local aesthetic concepts, Chinese writers explored creative adaptations including the addition of adding detail, linguistic embellishments, and the endowment of each story with specific narrative scenes in terms of character, place, and time. Guo argues that Indian Buddhist stories have been remolded in Zhiguai novels and transformed from imaginary religious literature into figurative and documentary literature whereby the convergence of the source texts with the target texts shows the processes of formation of world literature(s). Keywords: Buddhist Sutra; Sinicization; Zhiguai Novel; Mystery and Supernatural in Classical Chinese Literatur

Gandhara Art’s Influence on Buddhist Art in Xinjiang, China

The Gandhara region of India was the origin of Buddhist art, and, due to its unique geographical location, it was a place where European and Asian civilizations mingled. The original Gandhara Buddhist art style was largely influenced by the style of Classical Greek sculpture. With the gradual development, its sculpture art and Buddhist stories entered a prosperous period and began to spread eastward, exerting a profound impact on the development of Buddhist art in the early stage of western Regions and later in Xinjiang.

From Buddhist Story to Heroic Epic: A Comparative Study of the Epic of Geser and the Mulian Story

This paper compares narrative modification in the Mongolian heroic epic The Epic of Geser with that of the Buddhist Mulian story. The Mulian story, in which the protagonist saves his mother from the underworld gained widespread popularity in its time. Mulian Bianwen from the Tang dynasty, presents the scenes from the story in a very dramatic manner. The Mongolian Geser epic uses this motif but adapts the story to fit the characteristics of a heroic epic for nomadic people. Heroic epics must contain motifs that depict the image of their protagonist to present a collection of exemplary characters. To create a complete heroic epic, the story of Geser absorbed a religious story from another culture that was very popular at the time. In the present study, five scenes common to The Epic of Geser and the Mulian story are analysed to investigate how the original Buddhist story became a part of the heroic epic. This analysis considers the ways in which identical story motifs can be used for the different purposes according to the nature of the literary work.

Эпосы Дай под влиянием дуалистических религий

Эта статья является результатом исследования, поддержанного Фондом проектов молодых ученых Китайской академии социальных наук за 2017–2019 гг. В исследовании использованы полевые материалы и данные, полученные при на анализе эпического текста. Полевые работы проводились в основном в двух основных населенных пунктах Дай – в Дэхун и Сишуанбаньна. В ходе интервью с сельскими жителями, наблюдения церемоний для получения эффективной информации и народных сказок выяснилось, что схожие нарративы распространяются в разных регионах Дай, и содержание этих повествований отражает различное отношение к буддизму и примитивным религиям. За три года обучения автор переписал, перевел и аннотировал два эпических произведения: один из них – «Пэншанлуо», устная версия «Батамага Пэншанлуо» в исполнении двух певцов Дай на церемонии; а другой – «Чуангшиджи», изданный на языке дехонгдай. Есть некоторые различия между двумя эпосами по объему, содержанию, структуре, способу повествования и передачи.Дайцы утверждают, что у них есть сотни эпосов, и большинство из них связаны с буддизмом Тхеравады. Обычно они исполняют эти эпосы в неких религиозных мероприятиях: либо эпические певцы исполняют устно, либо глава верующих буддизма переписывает текст. Автор провел исследование, находясь внутри среды бытования эпоса. Благодаря полевым исследованиям и подробному текстологическому анализу, эта статья освещает вопросы формирования, развития и наследования эпоса Дай в контексте дуалистической веры.Статья имеет определенную структуру изложения. Во-первых, рассматривается дуалистическая религия этнической группы Дай: буддизм Тхеравады, пришедший из Таиланда, Лаоса или Бирмы, оказал большое влияние на литературу Дай; в то же время люди Дай придерживаются примитивной религии, глубоко укоренившейся в местной культуре. Затем эпосы детально анализируются, сопоставляются характеры повествования и структуры нескольких эпосов, включая эпические произведения «Батамага Пэншанлуо», «Чуангшиджи» и уникальные эпосы Алуанга. И наконец, исследуется взаимосвязь религиозной традиции и эпоса Дай.Проведенный анализ установил, что предки Дай переводили буддийские рассказы в стиховую форму письмом Дай, исходя из своего ритма. Между тем, они включили местные повествования и скомпилировали их в рукописи, имитирующие сутры, которые называются на китайском языке «Бэйе Цзин» (рукописи из пальмовых листьев), на языке Дай – «Лик» или «Тхам». Это разновидности сутр в стиле Дай, которые содержат эпосы Дай и являются символом дайской культуры. Помимо буддийских повествований, в этих сутрах также записано множество мифов, народных сказок, легенд и других знаний. Таким образом, эпосы Дай характеризуются двойственностью: с одной стороны, они содержат местные повествования, отражающие поклонение предкам и верования в анимизм этнической группы Дай; с другой стороны, они несут буддийские истории и отражают буддийскую мысль. Поскольку эпосы Дай имеют неразрывную связь с буддизмом Тхеравады, в дальнейшем автор намерен продолжить изучение эпосов Дай и проводить их сравнительные исследования с эпосами Юго-Восточной Азии и Индии.

Sustainable Development of World Cultural Heritage Tourism——Take Yungang Grottoes as an Example

World cultural heritage is popular with tourists because of its unique resources. As one of the four largest Grottoes in China, Yungang Grottoes were listed in the world heritage list by the UNESCO World Heritage Committee in 2001.Yungang Grottoes have a long history and delicate carving. The themes are mainly Buddhist statues and Buddhist stories, which integrate the Chinese and Western carving arts and have special cultural and artistic charm. However, with the continuous expansion of popularity and the increasing number of tourists, Yungang Grottoes bear more and more pressure. How to alleviate this pressure and improve the tourists’ experience has become the biggest “bottleneck” for its further sustainable development. Only by combining the protection and utilization of cultural heritage, inheritance and innovation, and by actively mobilizing the unity of the government, schools, media, citizens and tourists, can the important radiation and strong attraction of world cultural heritage be better exerted, and the sustainable development of world cultural heritage tourism culture be better promoted. Studying the sustainable development of the world cultural tourism heritage represented by Yungang Grottoes has a positive promotion and promotion effect on the healthy and stable development of China’s current tourism market.

佛經故事의 中國故事化 과정상의 특징 및 의의 : 佛經淵源類故事를 중심으로

This paper aimed to examine characteristics according to patterns of the stories that originated in the Buddhist scriptures and discuss that meanings. I distinguish and define between ‘Buddhist Stories(佛教故事)’, ‘the storie that originated in the Buddhist scriptures(佛經淵源類故事)’ and ‘the storie that evolved in he Buddhist scriptures(佛經演變類故事)’. I investigated the relationship Between the Buddhist scriptures and the stories that originated in the Buddhist scriptures. However the stories that originated in the Buddhist scriptures, in comparison with the stories that evolved in the Buddhist scriptures, has fewer stories. But it founded that the some of the stories contents has a direct impact from the Buddhist scriptures. Through this, I explained influence on the formation of the Buddhist stories.

For the Love of Dogs: Finding Compassion in a Time of Famine in Pali Buddhist Stories

This paper focuses on stories from the 13th century Rasavāhinī in which feeding a starving dog is described as an act of great merit, equal even to the care of a monk or the Buddha. It begins with a reevaluation of passages from Buddhist texts that have been taken by scholars as evidence of pan- Buddhist concern for taking care of animals. It argues that they have been over-read and that the Rasavāhinī stories are distinctive. The setting in which these acts occur, a catastrophic famine, helps us to understand the transformation of the despised dog into an object of compassion. In such dire circumstances, when humans themselves behave like animals, compassion for a starving dog is both a new recognition of a fundamental shared kinship between human and animal and a gesture of recovering lost humanity.

Buddhism after Mao: Negotiations, Continuities, and Reinventions ed. by Ji Zhe, Gareth Fisher and André Laliberté

Reviewed by: Buddhism after Mao: Negotiations, Continuities, and Reinventions ed. by Ji Zhe, Gareth Fisher and André Laliberté Alison Denton Jones (bio) Ji Zhe, Gareth Fisher, and André Laliberté, editors. Buddhism after Mao: Negotiations, Continuities, and Reinventions. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2019. v, 355 pp. Hardcover $84, isbn 978-08-24-87734-7. Paperback $28, isbn 978-08-24-88834-3. Buddhism After Mao steps into an important gap in our understanding of religion in Contemporary China and of Global Buddhism today. As the volume points out on the first page, China is not only home to “the largest community of people on the planet who identify Buddhism as an important source of meaning in their lives,” but Buddhists also make up the “largest religious group in China” (p. 1). Despite these significant positions in China’s and the world’s religious fields, there is less scholarship on Buddhism in contemporary China than on other religious traditions there, or on Buddhist communities in other parts of the world. The introduction and eleven empirical chapters in this volume move our understanding forward along several dimensions. These contributions will be of interest to both scholars of Chinese religion and Buddhist studies scholars working on other traditions and regions, as well as to comparative religionists examining contemporary global religions dynamics such as religion- state relations, secularization, religious charitable activities, religious strategies to balance tradition and innovation while bolstering legitimacy, pressures on religious sites from tourism and urban renewal, tensions between “folk” and official forms of religion, online ritual spaces, and more. Although each chapter takes up a specialized topic, they are mostly quite accessible to nonspecialist [End Page 327] readers. Thus, the book will be of use in undergraduate classes and for scholars or lay readers who are not Buddhist scholars or China specialists. The volume is divided into three sections: “Negotiating Legitimacy” focuses on interactions between Buddhism and the PRC state; “Revival and Continuity” examines how Buddhist institutions and elites work to rebuild and elaborate upon traditional Buddhist institutions; and “Reinventing the Dharma” offers case studies of several temples to illustrate some of the diverse ways that Chinese Buddhists create community, moral discourse, ritual practice, and religious spaces within the complex and rapidly changing political, socioeconomic, urbanizing, and technological environments in the PRC today. The following section sketches each chapter, and the review concludes with overall reflections on the themes and limitations of the volume. Chapter 1, by André Laliberté, provides the national political context for the volume, outlining the relatively favorable relationship that (Han Chinese) Buddhism has with the PRC state compared with other religious traditions, and identifies four policy domains where the state hopes that Buddhism may work toward state goals. The chapter then traces the changes in Buddhism-state relationships regarding these four domains over the most recent three regimes: those of Jiang Zemin, Hu Jintao, and Xi Jinping. Claire Vidal’s chapter on the administration of the Buddhist pilgrimage site Putuoshan moves the lens on the Buddhist-state relationship to the concrete, local level. It shows us how the state’s complicated apparatuses for administration and political control interact with the Buddhist community’s attempts to carve out autonomy on both practical and discursive dimensions. As other case studies of religious revival in Reform Era China have shown, Vidal’s examination of Putuoshan demonstrates that, despite the apparently rigid hierarchical power structure and total state control, there is room for savvy religious leaders to take initiative. In addition to this practical (if unofficial) autonomy for the Buddhist community, Vidal argues that it uses traditional Buddhist stories and schema to reimagine the state-dominated administrative and power relations within a Buddhist precedent and cultural vision. This chapter is the most dense in the volume and may not be accessible to nonspecialists. An even more microlevel case study of Buddhism-state relationships is presented in chapter 3, where Susan K. McCarthy examines the Ren’ai Charity Foundation to explore the areas of overlap and disconnect between Buddhist concepts and practices of charity, and the Chinese state’s goals of social welfare provision and promoting civic-mindedness. This chapter raises a number of thought-provoking issues for both China...

Violence and Nonviolence in Shinran

This article examines the Pure Land Buddhist thinker Shinran (1173–1263), from whose teachings the Shin Buddhist tradition emerged. Shinran’s ideas provide an alternative model for considering moral judgments and issues related to violence. Since Shinran viewed violence as a mode of human action, the author asks how violence, whether inflicted or suffered, is to be understood by Shin Buddhists. This article further discusses how practitioners engaging the Pure Land path might deal with it, and the relevance of Shinran’s understanding here and now. This line of inquiry expands to consider how Shinran’s approach relates to norms used in modern discussions of violence. It scrutinizes the double structure of ethical awareness, discussing in particular how usual judgments of good and evil action can be contextualized and relativized. In the section dedicated to defusing the violence of ignorance, the author introduces Shinran’s nonviolent, nonconfrontational response, and analyzes how Shinran recasts the Buddhist stories of Ajātaśatru and Aṅgulimāla in relation to his understanding of the “five grave offenses”—specifically murder and near matricide—usually understood as excluding practitioners from the benefits of Amida Buddha’s Vows. The author shows that Shinran focuses on saving even the evil, not solely the worthy, thus rejecting the exclusion provision of the Eighteenth Vow.

“Letting go of the raft” – The art of spiritual leadership in contemporary organizations from a Buddhist perspective using skilful means

Organizations are diverse workplaces where various beliefs, values and perceptions are shared to varying extents. How can spiritual leadership induce altruistic love and intrinsic motivation among diverse members within the organization and without being regarded as really yet another covert, sophisticated form of corporate exploitation of human vulnerability reflective of the “dark side” of organizations and leadership? This paper explores an approach to spiritual leadership from a Buddhist perspective focusing on the power of skilful means to tackle such concerns. In organizational pursuits such as appearance, reputation, fame, power, recognition and even leader–follower relationships are associated mostly with objectives and expectations, known in Buddhism as “attachment”. In Buddhism, however, any kind of attachment may be a source of suffering that eventually leads to negative consequences. In reviewing the dark side of spiritual leadership practices and how Buddhism is commoditized for organizational purposes, we reaffirm on the importance of the notion of non-attachment in Buddhism. We unpack the application of the Buddhist metaphor of “the raft”, non-attachment and other Buddhist stories of skilful means in spiritual leadership and their contribution to leadership studies.

Ghostly Desires: Queer Sexuality and Vernacular Buddhism in Contemporary Thai Cinema by Arnika Fuhrmann

Reviewed by: Ghostly Desires: Queer Sexuality and Vernacular Buddhism in Contemporary Thai Cinema by Arnika Fuhrmann Laura Isabel Serna and Mashinka Firunts Hakopian (bio) Ghostly Desires: Queer Sexuality and Vernacular Buddhism in Contemporary Thai Cinema by Arnika Fuhrmann. Duke University Press. 2016. $94.95 hardcover; $24.95 paperback; e-book available. 272 pages. In Ghostly Desires: Queer Sexuality and Vernacular Buddhism in Contemporary Thai Cinema, Arnika Fuhrmann materializes the apparitions summoned in Thai cinema after 1997, recoding spectral protagonists as figures of nonnormative desire who resist both doctrinal Buddhism and the state regulation of minoritized sexuality. Fuhrmann revisits sites of cinematic haunting and horror to assemble their specters under the rubric of “Buddhist melancholia,” a term denoting the Buddhist-coded tendency to eroticize loss in Thai cinema. Across Fuhrmann’s five dazzling case studies, apparitions surface as queer, feminist, and trans-identity avatars whose posthumous desires refuse prescriptive heterofamilial structures of longing. Spanning a heterogeneous array of works, each chapter of Ghostly Desires is devoted to a discrete genre of cinematic production. The heritage genre is examined through Nonzee Nimibutr’s Nang Nak (1999); Hong Kong–Thai coproduced horror through Danny and Oxide Pang’s The Eye (2002); independent cinema through Apichat-pong Weerasethakul’s Tropical Malady (Sat Pralat, 2004); video art through Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook’s corpus; and queer documentary through Thunska Pansitthivorakul’s This Area Is under Quarantine (2008). While these works are demarcated from one another by distinct generic boundaries, they each foreground counternormative longings [End Page 183] that either issue from or direct themselves at bodies exceeding the category of the human. In the process, they trouble recent nationalist policies seeking to articulate notions of citizenship through narrowly defined models of sexual personhood. As Fuhrmann compellingly argues, it is here that ghostly cinema’s critical possibilities lie: in the attempt to “redefine frameworks of resolution for cases of minoritarian injury, and reimagine trajectories of attachment.”1 A broad spectrum of disciplinary discourses is brought to bear on this subject matter, each deployed with virtuosic deftness. To chart the intersections of recent cinematic narratives with Buddhist ontologies, Fuhrmann turns to the newly instantiated national emphasis on “sufficiency” as an instance of Buddhist-coded economic policy.2 Theravadin soteriology also figures prominently within the text, a salvation doctrine that uses the image of the female body’s decomposition as a pedagogical aid to admonish against worldly attachment. Fuhrmann extends this examination to consider how female, queer, and kathoey (translated by Fuhrmann as transgender or trans-identity) subjects are accorded a karmically assigned “diminished personhood” in the contemporary Thai imaginary, echoing a vernacular Buddhism fused with liberal political formations in what Fuhrmann calls a Buddhist-liberal synthesis.3 A particularly incisive example of this phenomenon is furnished in the first chapter’s analysis of Nang Nak, whose ghostly protagonist continues to experience desire for her lover beyond the event of her own death. Although the legend of Nang Nak serves as source material for more than two dozen filmic adaptations, Fuhrmann identifies Nonzee Nimibutr’s 1999 adaptation as distinct in its dual focus on the themes of desire and Buddhist detachment. In Nimibutr’s version, Nak alternately appears as an emblem of Thai feminine ideality and a cadaver in the process of decay. Fuhrmann links this latter manifestation to the Buddhist story of Vāsavadattā, a courtesan whose “desire for pleasurable equity” was denied in a narrative that culminated with her bodily dismemberment.4 Advancing a feminist reading of Nang Nak, Fuhrmann considers Buddhist object lessons regarding the “repulsiveness” of feminine corporeality in a national context marked by the Ministry of the Interior’s programmatic surveillance of women’s bodies.5 As this example illustrates, Ghostly Desires is also crucially concerned with tracing the shifting landscape of social and cultural policy in Thailand following the financial crisis of 1997. As Fuhrmann describes it, in the post-1997 milieu of state disciplinary programs, “bodies became a last national good . . . and sexuality became an increasingly central component of citizenship.”6 Attending to recent practices of “cultural monitoring” undertaken by the Ministry of Culture, Fuhrmann shows how the state’s performance of discipline, prohibition, and regulation unofficially banned [End Page 184] queer desire...

Early Buddhism and Incommensurability

Early Buddhism and Incommensurability Christopher I. Beckwith (bio) Charles Goodman (henceforth G)'s Response to the thoughtful paper by Adrian Kuzminski ("Early Buddhism Reconsidered") in this volume is actually devoted mainly to my book Greek Buddha (2015). Half a century ago, Thomas Kuhn famously coined the term incommensurability to refer to the inability or unwillingness of many scholars in a given field to understand substantially new ("revolutionary") work. He describes their reactions against it and their attempts to suppress or discredit it. The reason for their response is that new discoveries advance science by challenging and displacing old beliefs and practices. Kuhn accurately describes G's Response. When I wrote Greek Buddha, I assumed that the potential readership would be people interested in a major topic of intellectual history that has been neglected for a long time, people who are able and willing to think about an alternative to the problematic received views. In general, that has proved to be the case. Kuzminski, the author of an excellent book on later Pyrrhonism (especially Sextus Empiricus) and later Buddhism (especially Nāgārjuna), states in his paper that my book makes a significant contribution toward solving the problems it addresses. Unfortunately, by contrast, G takes selected bits out of their contexts in my book, puts them into new contexts of his own making, and then deconstructs his own creations. Thus at the very beginning of his Response, G gives a story that he has written himself, but attributes it to me, saying: "The second, more elaborate narrative summarizes the views stated or clearly implied by Christopher Beckwith in his book Greek Buddha." However, I do not say or imply anything like it, as may be revealed by even a cursory reading of the relevant sections of the book, including my explicit conclusion on that particular topic on page 121. G's basic argument throughout is that the truth about ancient Buddhism (i.e., actual "Early Buddhism") is already known from the portrayal of antiquity in texts of late Normative Buddhism, which are centuries younger [End Page 1009] than the dated sources for Early Buddhism and represent a radically different system. But unless Normative Buddhism, including its modern form, preserves the exact words of the Buddha, it has changed, like all religions. Normative Buddhism is first attested in around the first century C.E., half a millennium after the Buddha. Normative Buddhist texts portray something drastically different from the dated, contemporaneous Early Buddhist testimonies—the hard data on that form of Buddhism. Several long sections of Greek Buddha analyze, in great detail, the account of Early Buddhist sects in Megasthenes (fl. 305–304 b.c.e.) and the religious content of the early third century b.c.e. Major Inscriptions of Devānāṃpriya Priyadarśi. (In my book, I establish which inscriptions were not inscribed by the Mauryas but by a much later ruler of the Normative Buddhist period named Aśoka.) These sources show that Normative Buddhism—a radically changed belief system compared to attested Early Buddhism—developed under the Sakas and Kushans. G says not a word about my book's in-depth coverage of this. As far as I know, Greek Buddha is the first monograph devoted to carefully examining, studying, and thinking about the dated Early Buddhist inscriptions and manuscript data with the goal of discovering what Early Buddhism was really like. Throughout his Response, G's authorities are undated late Normative Buddhist texts. These texts are filled with marvels recounted in the traditional-modern Buddhist "frame tale" based on the late canonical literature of early Normative Buddhism (which is unattested until some 500 years after the Buddha), the magical fantasies that fill the hagiographical literature of medieval Buddhism (mostly a millennium or more later than the Buddha), and the modern "popular" misinterpretation of Buddhism that non-devotional Buddhologists have been fighting against for at least a century. Normative Buddhism certainly deserves study for its own sake. However, my book has nothing to do with the late Normative Buddhist stories about Early Buddhism except to note that it is not based on them and does not discuss them. The limited time and space available to me for...

Subverting patriarchal Buddhism in Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter…and Spring

A number of Kim Ki-duk’s films, particularly Bad Guy (2001), are infamous for the violence towards women characters. While feminist critics deplore Kim as a misogynist, alternative readings – some based on interviews with the director – suggest violence is the only way his silent characters, existing on the margins of society, can communicate. In this way, his body of work is not read as an endorsement of misogyny, but rather as a social critique of patriarchy. One film, however, that is considered unique and eludes these discussions is Spring, Sumer, Fall, Winter…and Spring (2003), a contemplative Buddhist story. I argue, in fact, the film is in dialogue with patriarchal Buddhist portrayals of women as temptresses and samsaric mothers. Further, since it appears the monks in the narrative are incapable of enlightenment, we should question if this is a result of their treatment of women.

<i>Narrating Karma and Rebirth: Buddhist and Jain Multi-life Stories</i>, by Naomi Appleton

Cambridge University Press, 2014. 244pp. Hb. £67.00; Pb. £23.99. ISBN-13: 9781107566142.

Translation Strategies and Thai Identities in the English Translated Versions of Thai Buddhist Books: The Case Study of Good Kids Stories with V. Vachiramedhi

Previous studies on translation of religious texts from Thai into English have focused on translation strategies at different levels: word level, sentence level, and discourse level. However, the notion of transferability of Thai identities from the source into target texts are inadequately analysed and little attention has been paid to the translation of Buddhist stories written for children. Consequently, the purposes of this study are to analyse and categorize Thai identities reflected from cultural terms, and to analyse translation strategies of these terms from Thai into English. Good kids stories with V. Vajiramedhi written by Kittiya Leekrongsakul and translated by Peter Montanyano in 2013 were selected in this work. The results of this study revealed various types of Thai identities: (1) Thai ways of life reflected from social status, activities, and gestures and habits (2) beliefs reflected from concepts. Additionally, translation strategies include literal translation, paraphrase, use of loan words, translation using more general words, and addition. These results have implications for translation teachers, and translators in terms of guidance for teaching or translating Thai cultural issues into English. In terms of intercultural communication, this study is essential for foreign readers to have a better understanding of Thai identities.