The Presentation of the Vinaya within Forms of Western Scholarship
Issue: Vol 28 No. 1 (2015)
Journal: Journal for the Academic Study of Religion
Subject Areas: Religious Studies Buddhist Studies Islamic Studies Biblical Studies
Abstract:
This article examines the presentation of the Pali Vinaya within a particular form of Western scholarship. The objective is to show how this presentation of ‘Vinaya as law’ promulgated the understanding that the Vinaya was an applicable code for all monastics, that the Buddha was a judge or legislator, and that rules embodied in this ‘code’ set out a compulsory form of identifiable behaviour.
My argument is that to understand Buddhism and the Vinaya, we need to comprehend ideas of European law through which the Vinaya was interpreted. Accordingly, it is demonstrated how the Vinaya was presented as a rational and self-sufficient code that required obedience and conformity of behaviour. This form of presentation is called ‘Buddhist Legal Rationalism’. I regard the work of Oldenberg, and Thomas and Caroline Rhys Davids (1843–1922 and 1857–1942, respectively) as emblematic of this European form of presenting the Vinaya. I also include Sri Lankan and Indian scholars such as Dutt and Dhirasekera, because their analyses of the Vinaya were made within the Western framework of law.
The Vinaya was misrepresented by being viewed through this Eurocentric lens as a code or form of regulation, but recent commentators have made a correction to this approach. I suggest it is now more appropriate to see the Vinaya as a ‘training scheme’ or like a form of medication to be prescribed for each monastic as needed. The codification of what are best called suggestions, in their present form, reflects a contingency that the rules were made for that one occasion and not necessarily for all other occasions: the rules are only a record of a choice made on a particular occasion.
Author: Malcolm Voyce
References :
Bhiksuni-Vinaya: including Bhiksuni-Prakiranaka and a summary of the Bhiksu-prakirnaka of the Arya-mahasamghika Lokottaravadin (2005) (ed.) and annotated with introduction two indexes and four addenda by Roth, Gustav, Patna: Jayaswal Research Institute.
Burlingham, Eugene (1921) Buddhist Legends, Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Nāgārjuna, Buddhist Advice for Living and Liberation: Nāgārjuna’s Precious Garland (1998) Hopkins, Jeffrey tr. Ithaca, New York: Snow Lion Publications.
Ptimokkha (1981) trans. Rhys Davids, Thomas and Oldenberg, Hermann Vinaya Texts Sacred Books Books of the East, Vol. 13, Oxford :Clarendon Press, 1-69.
Ptimokkha (2001) (ed.) Pruitt, William and trans. Norman, Kenneth, Oxford: Pli Text Society.
Śāntideva (1997) The Bodhicaryāvatāra, The Way of the Bodhisattva, Boston: Shambala,
Shan-Chien-P’i-P’o-Sha, A Chinese Version by of the Samantapāsādikā of Saghabhadra, (1970) trans. by Bapat, Purushottam and Hirakawa, Akira, Poona: Bhanda Oriental Research Institute.
Thanissaro, Bhikkhu (2007) Buddhist Monastic Code, Valley Centre C.A: Metta Forest Monastery.
Vinayapiaka: (ed.) by Hermann, Oldenberg (1879-188) London:, Oxford: Williams and Norgate.
Vinaya Piaka trans. The Book of the Discipline Horner, Isaline (1949-1966) London: Pli Text Society London, Luzac.
Vinaya Texts, trans. Rhys Davids, Thomas and Oldenberg, (2006) Hermann Part 1-3, Delhi: Motilal Banarsidas.
Visuddhimagga trans. The Path of Purification by aamoli, Bhikkhu (1976) Berkeley: Shambhala.
Secondary Literature
Almond, Philip (1988) The British Discovery of Buddhism, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Balagangadhara, S.N. (1994) The Heathen in his Blindness: Asia, the West, and the Dynamic of Religion, Leiden: E.J. Brill.
Barron, Anne (1990) Legal Discourse and the Colonization of the Self in the Modern State, in Carty, Anthony, Post-Modern Law: Enlightenment, Revolution and the Death of Man, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 107-125.
Bechert, Heinz (2001) ‘Sangahbheda and Nikybheda’, The International Journal of Buddhist Studies, 2, 9-14.
Benda-Beckmann, Franz von (2002) ‘Who’s Afraid of Legal Pluralism’, Journal of Legal Pluralism and Unofficial Law, 47, 37-82.
Benveniste, Émile (1969) Le vocabulaire des institutions indo-européennes, vol. 2, Pouvoir, droit, religion, Paris: Minuit.
Berkowitz, Roger (2005) The Gift of Science: Leibniz and the Modern Legal Tradition, Harvard University Press.
Bhabha, Homi (1985) ‘Signs Taken for Wonders: Questions of Ambivalence and Authority under a Tree outside Delhi, May 1817’, Critical Inquiry, 12, 144-165.
Bhagvat, Durga (1939) Early Buddhist Jurisprudence, Poona: Oriental Book Agency.
Bloch, Esther, Keppens, Marianne and Hegde, Rajaram (2010) Rethinking Religion in India: The Colonial Construction of Hinduism, London: Routledge.
Bohannan, Paul (1969) Ethnology and Comparison in Legal Anthropology in Nader, Laura (ed) Law in Culture and Society, Nader, Laura Chicago: Aldine, 401-438.
Chanana, Raj (1958) ‘The Vinaya Pitaka and Ancient Indian Jurisprudence’, Journal of the Bihar Research Society, 44, 22-36.
Cocks, Ray (1988) Sir Henry Maine: A Study of Victorian Jurisprudence, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Collett, Alice (2006) ‘Buddhism and Gender: Reframing and Refocusing the Debate’, Journal of the Feminist Studies in Religion, 22, 2, 55-84.
Collett, Alice (2009) ‘Historio-Critical Hermeneutics and the Study of Women in Early Buddhism’, Numen, 56, 91-117.
Cousins, Lance; Kunst, Arnold and Norman, Kenneth (1974) (ed.) Buddhist Studies in Honour of I. B. Horner, Dordrecht:Reidel.
Crosby, Kate (2000) ‘Uddis and cikh: Buddhaghosa on the Inclusion of the Sikkhapda in the Pabbajja Ceremony’, Journal of Indian Philosophy, 28, 461-477.
Davis, Donald (2007) ‘Maxims and Precedent in Classical Hindu Law’, Indologica Taurinensia 33, 33-55.
Derrett, J.D.M (Duncan) (1968) Religion and the State in India , London: Faber and Faber.
Dhirasekera, Jotiya (1981) Buddhist Monastic Discipline, A Study of its Origins and Development in Relation to the Sutta and Vinaya Pitaka, Colombo: Gunasena.
Dubuisson, Daniel (2004) The Western Construction of Religion: Myths, Knowledge’s and Ideology, Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press.
Dutt, Sukumar (1960) Early Buddhist Monarchism, London: Kegan Paul.
Dutt, Sukumar (1962) Buddhist Monks and Monasteries of India London: George Allen.
Eberhard, Christoph (2005) ‘Beyond Legal Pluralism- A Dynamic and Intercultural Approach to Law in India’, Indian Socio-Legal Journal, 31, 131-148.
Evans-Pritchard, Edward (1940) The Neur, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Faure, Bernard (1993) Chan Insights and Oversights: An Epistemological Critique of the Chan Tradition, Princeton: University of Princeton.
Faure, Bernard (2004) Double Exposure, Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Fielding-Hall, Harold (1898) The Soul of a People London: Richard Bentley and Sons.
Finley, Moses (1978) The World of Odysseus, New York: Viking Press.
Finnegan, Damchö Diana (2009) For the Sake of Women Too: Ethics and Gender in the Mulasarvstivda Vinaya, University of Wisconsin: Madison.
Fiorenza, Elizabeth (1984) Bread Not Stone, Beacon Press: Boston.
Fletcher, George (2001) ‘In Honour of Ius et Lex: Some Notes in Thinking about the Law’, Legal Magazine, 1-30.
Foucault, Michel (1970) The Order of Things: An Archeology of the Human Sciences, London: Tavistock.
Foucault, Michel (1981) The Order of Discourse in Young, Robert ed. Untying the Text, London: Routledge, 48-78.
Freeman, Michael (1973) ‘Standards of Adjudication, Judicial Law-Making and Prospective Overruling’, Current Legal Problems, 166-207.
Freeman, Michael (2001) Lloyd’s Introduction to Jurisprudence, London: Sweet and Maxwell.
Frenga, Vincent (2006) Citizen and Self in Ancient Greece, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Garzone, Giuloana (1999) ‘Legal Translation and Functionalist Approaches: A Contradiction in Terms’, Textus, 12, 391-408.
Fuller, Lon (1968) Anatomy of Law, London: Penguin.
Glenn, Patrick (2004) Legal Traditions of the World, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Glotz, Gustave (1930) The Greek City and its Inhabitants, New York: Knopf.
Gluckman, Max (1969) Concepts in the Comparative Study of Tribal Law in Nader, Laura (ed.) Law in Culture and Society, Nader, Laura Chicago: Aldine, 349-373.
Gombrich, Richard (2006) Theravda Buddhism: A Social History From Ancient Benares to Modern Colombo, London: Routledge.
Gombrich, Richard (2009) What the Buddha Thought, London: Equinox.
Goodale, Mark (1998) ‘Leopold Pospišil: A Critical Reappraisal’, Journal of Legal Pluralism, 40, 123-149.
Gowans, Christopher (2010) ‘Medical Analogies in Buddhist and Hellenistic Thought: Tranquility and Anger’, Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement, 66, 11-33.
Grero, Ananda (1996) An Analysis of the Theravda Vinaya in Light of Modern Legal Philosophy, Colombo: Karunaratne and Sons.
Grero, Ananda (1997) ‘The Philosophy of the Theravada Vinaya’, in Recent Researches in Buddhist Studies in Honour of Professor Karunadasa (ed.) Dhammaoti, Kuala, Tilakaratne, Asanga, Abhayawansa, Kapila, Hong Kong: Chi Ying Foundation, 243-255.
Gross, Rita (1993) Buddhism After Patriarchy: A Feminist Historical, Analysis and Reconstruction of Buddhism, New York: State University of New York Press.
Guan Xing, (2010) ‘The Questions of Lesser and Minor Rules’, Journal of International Buddhist Studies, 2, 67-72.
Hallisey, Charles (1995) ‘Roads Not taken in the Study of Buddhism’, in Curators of the Buddha (ed.) Lopez, Donald, 31-61.
Hammer Dean (2002) The Iliad as Politics: The Performance of Political Thought, Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.
Hara, Minoru (2007) ‘A Note on the Vinaya’ in Festschrift in Honour of the 80th Birthday of K.R. Norman (ed.) von Hinber, Oskar, Gethin, Rupert and Allon, Mark, Bristol: Pali Text Society, 285-311.
Harris, Elizabeth (2006) Theravada Buddhism and the British Encounter: Religious, Missionary and Colonial Experience in Nineenth Century Sri Lanka, London: Routledge.
Harris, Ian (2010) ‘Rethinking Cambodian Political Discourse on Territory: Genealogy of the Buddhist Ritual Boundary (sima)’, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 41, 2, 215-239.
Harris, Marvin (1976) ‘History and Significance of the Emic/Etic Distinction’, Annual Review of Anthropology, 5, 329–350.
Hart, Herbert (1958) ‘Positivism and the Separation of Law from Morals’, Harvard Law Review, 71, 5, 93-629.
Harvey, Van, Austin (1964) A Handbook of Theological Terms, New York: Macmillan Publishing Co.
Hecker, Hellmuth (1977) Allgemeine Rechtsgrundsatze in der Buddhistischen Ordenverfassung (Vinaya) in Verfassung Und Recht in bersee, Kruger, Herbert, (ed.) Hamburg: Martiaus Nijhoff.
Hinber, Oskar von (1995) ‘Buddhist Law According to the Theravda-Vinaya: A Survey of Theory and Practice’, International Association of Buddhist Studies, 18, 1, 7-45.
Hinüber, Oskar von (1996) A Handbook of Pali Literature. Berlin: Gruyter.
Holt, John (1981) Discipline and the Canonical Buddhism of the Vinaya Pitaka, Delhi: Motilal Banarasidass.
Hultzsch, Eugen (1925) Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum: Inscriptions of Asoka, Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Husken, Ute (2000) ‘Rules, Buddhist (Vinaya): Historical’, Encyclopedia of Monasticism (ed.) Johnston, William Vol. 2, Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn, 1088-1090.
Huxley, Andrew (1990). ‘How Buddhist is Theravāda Buddhist Law? A Survey of Legal Literature in Pāli-land’, The Buddhist Forum, 1, 41-85.
Huxley, Andrew (1996a) ‘The Vinaya Legal System or Performance- Enhancing Drug?’,The Buddhist Forum (ed.) Skorupski, Tadeusz London: School of Oriental and African Studies, 4, 141-164.
Huxley, Andrew (1996b) 'Shylock's Bad Karma: The Buddhist Approach to Law.' Law and Critique, 7, 245-256.
Huxley, Andrew (1999) ‘Buddhist Case Law on Theft: The Vinītavatthu on the Second Pārājika’, Journal of Buddhist Ethics, 6, 313-330.
Huxley, Andrew (2002a) 'Buddhist Law' in Kritzer, Herbert (ed.) Legal Systems of the World: A Political, Social and Cultural Encyclopedia Santa Barbara: ABC Clio (USA), 205-8.
Huxley, Andrew (2002b) Buddhist Law as a Religious System in Religion, Law and Tradition (ed.) Huxley, Andrew, London: Routledgecurzon, 127-147.
Huxley, Andrew (2006) ‘Buddhist Law, Asian Law, Eurasian Law’, Journal of Comparative Law, 1, 1, 158-170.
Huxley, Andrew (2010) ‘Hpo Hlaing on Buddhist Law’ Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 73, 2, 269–283.
Piaget, Jean (1970) Structuralism, New York: Harper & Row.
Justinian, Digest (1904) trans. C.H. Monro Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Katz, Nathan (1983) ‘Tibetan Hermeneutics and the Yna Controversy’ in Contributions on Tibetan and Buddhist Religion and Philosophy (ed.) Steinkellner, Ernst and Tauscher, Helmet Proceedings of the Csoma De Koros Symposium at Velm-Vienna, 13-19 September, 107-130.
Kejariwal, Om (1998) The Asiatic Society of Bengal and the discovery of India's past, 1784-1838, New York: Oxford University Press.
Keown, Damien (2003) A Dictionary of Buddhism, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Kieffer-Pülz, Petra (1992) Die Sm,Vorschriften zur Regelung der buddhistischen Gemeindegrenzen in älteren buddhistischen Texten, Berlin:Dietrich Reimer.
King, Richard (1999) Orientalism and Religion: Postcolonial Theory, India and the ‘Mystic’ East, London: Routledge.
Klein, Anne (1992) Mental Concentration and the Unconditioned: A Buddhist Case for the Unmediated Experience, in Paths to Liberation: the Mrga and its Transformations in Buddhist Thought, (ed.) Buswell, Robert and Gimello, Robert, Conference Proceedings, Honolulu:University of Hawaii Press, 269-308.
Legrand, Pierre (1994) ‘Strange Power of Words: Codification Situated’, Tulane European & Civil Law Forum 9, 1-33.
Legrand, Pierre (1999) Fragments on Law-as- Culture, Deventer: T.E.J. Tjeenk Willink.
Levy, Seldon (1999) ‘Conformity and Obedience’ in Kurta, Lester, (ed.) Encyclopedia of Violence, Peace and Conflict, Vol 1, San Diego: Academic Press, 427-440.
Llewellyn, Karl (1940) ‘The Normative, the Legal, and the Law-Jobs Theory: The Problem of Juristic Method’, Yale Law Journal, 49, 1355-1400.
Lopez, Donald (2008) Buddhism & Science, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Loy, David (2000) ‘How to Reform a Serial Killer: The Buddhist Approach to Restorative Justice’, Journal of Buddhist Ethics, 7, 145-168.
Mahinda, Wetara (1997) ‘Medical Practice of Buddhist Monks: a Historical Analysis of Attitudes and Problems’, Recent Researches in Buddhist Studies in Honour of Professor Karunadasa (ed.) Dhammaoti, Kuala, Tilakaratne, Asanga, Abhayawansa, Kapila, Hong Kong: Chi Ying Foundation, 454-465 .
Masuzawa, Tomoko (2005) The Invention of World Religions, Or how European Universalism was preserved in the Language of Pluralism, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
McCormack, Geoffrey (1996) The Spirit of Traditional Chinese Law, Athens: University of Georgia Press.
McMahan, David (2004) ‘Demythologization and the Core-versus-Accretions Model of Buddhism’, The Indian International Journal of Buddhist Studies, 10, 5, 63-99.
McMahan, David (2008) The Making of Buddhist Modernism, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
McVeigh, Shaun (2007) On the Jurisprudence of Jurisdiction, London: Cavendish.
Menski, Werner (2003) Hindu Law: Beyond Tradition and Modernity, New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Menski, Werner (2007) ‘On Vyahra’, Indologica Taurinensia , 33 123-147.
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice (1964) Signs, McCleary, Richard, trans. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.
Merryman, John Clark, (1985) The Civil Law Tradition: Europe, Latin America and East Asia, Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Moore, Sally Falk (1978) Law as Process, London: Routledge.
Muir, Edward (1997) Ritual in Early Modern Europe, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Murillo, Maria (2001) ‘The Evolution of Codification in the Civil Law Legal Systems: towards Decodification and Recodification’, Journal of Transnational Law & Policy, 11, 1, 1-20.
O’Farrell, Clare (2005) Michael Foucault, London: Sage.
Oldenberg, Hermann (1971) Buddha: His Life, His Doctrine, His Order, Delhi: Indological Book House.
Pennington, Brian (2005) Was Hinduism Invented?: Britons, Indians and the Colonial Construction of Religion, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Perrin, Norman (1969) What is Redaction Criticism? London: S.P.C.K Press.
Pospišil, Leonard (1974) Anthropology of Law:A Comparative Theory, New Haven:H.R.A.P. Press.
Prebish, Charles (1993) Historical Dictionary of Buddhism, Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press.
Ratnapala, Nandasena (1993) Crime and Punishment in the Buddhist Tradition, New Delhi:Mittal Publications.
Rhys Davids, Caroline (1912) Buddhism a Study of the Buddhist Norm, London: Williams and Norgate.
Rhys Davids, Caroline (1975) A Buddhist Manual of Psychological Ethics, London: Oriental Books.
Rhys Davids, Thomas (1878) ‘Buddhism’, Encyclopedia Britannica, New York: Scribner, 4, 438.
Rhys Davids, Thomas (1900) ‘Buddhism’, North American Review 171, 522-524.
Rhys Davids, Thomas (1908) ‘Law’ (Buddhist)’ in Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, ed. Hastings, James, New York: Scriber, Vol. 8, 827-8.
Rhys Davids, Thomas and Stede, William W. (1966) Pli Text Society’s Pli English Dictionary,London: Pali Text Society.
Saberwal, Satish (1998) Introduction: Why Do we need Rules and Laws ? in Rules, Laws, Constitutions ed. Saberwal, Satish and Sievers, Heiko, Delhi: Sage, 15-34.
Said, Edward (1978) Orientalism, New York: Pantheon.
Salmond, John (1902) Jurisprudence, London: Stevens and Haynes.
Sawyer, Deborah (2002) God, Gender and the Bible, London; Routledge.
Schauer, Frederick (2004) ‘The Generality of Law’, West Virginia Law Review, 107, 217-234.
Schmithausen, Lambert (1992) ‘An Attempt to Estimate the Distance in Time between Aśoka and the Buddha in Terms of Doctrinal History’, in Bechert, Heinz (ed.) The Dating of the Historical Buddha Gottingen: Dritte Folge, 110-147.
Schopen, Gregory (2003) ‘Vinaya’ Encyclopedia of Buddhism (ed.) Buswell, Robert, New York: Macmillan, 885-889.
Schopen, Gregory (2004) Ritual Rights and Bones of Contention: More on Monastic Funerals and Relics in the Mūlasarvstivda-Vinaya in Buddhist Monks and Business Matters 285-328.
Silk, Jonathon (1994) ‘The Victorian Creation of Buddhism’, Journal of Indian Philosophy, 22, 171-196.
Singh, Nagendra (1997) ‘The Laws of the Vinaya’, International Encyclopedia of Buddhism, New Delhi: Anmol Publications, 2794-2805.
Snodgrass, Judith (2003) Presenting Japanese Buddhism to the West, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
Snodgrass, Judith (2007) ‘Defining Modern Buddhism: Mr. and Mrs. Rhys Davids and the Pli Text Society’, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, 27, 1, 186-202.
Stein, Peter (1966) Regulae Iuris: From Juristic Rules to Legal Maxims, Edinburgh: University Press.
Sujato, Bhikkhu (2009) Bhikkhuni Vinaya Studies Santipada Publications on line note
Sweetman, Will (2003) ‘Hinduism and the History of Religion: Protestant Presuppositions in the Critique of the concept of Hinduism’, Method & Theory in the Study of Religion, 15, 329-353.
Trainor, Kevin (1997) Relics, Ritual, and Representation in Buddhism: Rematerializing the Sri Lankan Theravda Tradition, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Twining, William (2012) ‘Surface Law’ down loaded from home page at www.ucl.ac.uk.
Varga, Csaba (1991) Codification as a Socio-Historical Phenomenon, Budapest :Akaḿiai Kiadó.
Voyce, Malcolm (1982) The Legal Aspect of Early Buddhist Vinaya, Doctoral Thesis, SOAS, London: University of London.
Voyce, Malcolm (1985) ‘The King’s Purification of the Vinaya Pitaka: The Purification of the Sangha Under Asoka’, Zetischrift Fur Regions-Und Geisteschichte , 37, 38-57.
Voyce, Malcolm (1986) ‘Some Observations on the Relationship between the King and the Buddhist Order in Ancient India’, Journal of Legal Pluralism, 24, 136-138.
Voyce, Malcolm (2008) ‘The Vinaya and the Dharmasastra: Monastic Law and Legal Pluralism in Ancient India’, Journal of Legal Pluralism, 56, 33-65.
Weber, Max. (1978) Economy and Society, Berkeley: University of California Press.
Wickremeratne, Ananda (1964) The Genesis of an Orientalist: Thomas William Rhys Davids and Buddhism in Sri Lanka, Delhi: Motialal Banarsidas.
Winston, Kenneth (1986) ‘The Ideal Element in a Definition of Law’, Law and Philosophy, 5, 89-111.
Yuyama, Akira (1979) A Systematic Survey of Sanskrit Literature, Wiesbaden: Steiner.
Zake, S.J.L. (1962) Approaches to the Study of Legal Systems in Nonliterate Societies, Unpublished Doctoral Dissertation, Evanston: Northwestern University.
Zysk, Kenneth (1991) Asceticism and Healing in Ancient India: Medicine in the Buddhist Monastery New York: Oxford University Pre