SCRIPTURE

The word scripture (from the Latin scribere, "to write or to compose") is typically used to refer to written texts, usually the written, foundational texts of a religious tradition. But few religions had written texts in their earliest historical period. Instead, those fundamental texts were committed to writing only after they had been transmitted orally, often for several hundreds of years. Buddhism fits this pattern of development. According to the tradition, immediately after the death of the Buddha, Mah?k??yapa, one of the Buddha's senior disciples, convened a council of five hundred arhats. At that time, those monks who had heard the Buddha speak were said to have recited all of the Buddha's discourses from memory, and specific monks were then charged with the responsibility of transmitting specific discourses verbatim to their students. According to traditional historical accounts, this is the way in which Buddhist scripture was preserved in the earliest period. Whether this narrative represents historical fact or whether it is an attempt on the part of the tradition to legitimize the authenticity of its scriptures by tracing them back to the original source in an unbroken lineage is, of course, uncertain. However, it would appear that in India monks did orally transmit texts attributed to the Buddha from master to disciple in distinct lineages over several hundreds of years. This continued to be the case even after these oral texts were finally committed to writing and compiled into, for example, the P?li Buddhist canon sometime in the first century b.c.e. The fourth century c.e. scholar monk Vasubandhu speaks of such oral lineages of transmission (and of their corruption) in his important text, the Vy?khy?yukti (Science of Exegesis).

What are the Buddhist scriptures? The simple answer is that scriptures are texts that have the status of being considered buddhavacana (word of the Buddha). S?tras are paradigmatic examples of scriptures. A s?tra (literally "thread," "measuring line," or "standard," from the Sanskrit root s?tr, "to string together," "to compose") in its most general sense is a discourse of a buddha. However, the category of scripture is actually much broader than that of s?tra. Thus, while all s?tras are scripture, not all scriptures are s?tras (see below). Scriptures are often distinguished from ??stras, which are works, usually of a more synthetic and commentarial nature, that are based on, in the sense of being second-order expositions of, scriptural material. Not all scriptures are considered to be the word of the historical Buddha ??kyamuni, since there are some scriptures that are said to be spoken by other buddhas. Moreover, not everything that is spoken by a buddha is considered to be scripture. For example, the Tibetan tradition generally considers the works attributed to Maitreya, the future Buddha, to be ??stras, and not s?tras. What is more, it is often the case that a work that is not a scripture may have a more exalted status, playing a more pivotal role in a particular Buddhist tradition than do actual scriptures. Take once again the works of Maitreya, or those of N?g?rjuna (ca. second century c.e.), which, despite their status as ??stras, are immensely important for much of the later Indian, Chinese, and Tibetan traditions. All of this is to say that there is a certain arbitrariness concerning what is and what is not a Buddhist scripture, and that in the end a "scripture" may be no more and no less than what a specific Buddhist community considers to fall within the purview of that category.

Scriptures and canons

By comparison to the Torah, Bible, and Qur'an, the set of texts that comprise the Buddhist scriptural canon is mammoth. The P?li canon, for example, consists of over forty large volumes, and the scriptural portions of the Chinese and Tibetan canons are over twice that size. Given the heterogeneous nature of Buddhism, moreover, different Buddhist schools have different collections of texts that they consider to be the Buddha's word. For example, the Therav?da tradition of Southeast Asia generally considers only those works contained in the P?li canon (tipi?aka) to be the Buddha's word. The tipi?aka, or "three baskets," consists of the sutta (Sanskrit, s?tra), the vinaya, and the abhidhamma (Sanskrit, abhidharma). The sutta basket, although the most thematically heterogeneous collection in so far as it deals with a wide range of subjects, is nonetheless relatively coherent in terms of style. A sutta or s?tra is a discourse or sermon usually on a specific topic delivered by the Buddha at a particular time, in a particular location, and to a specific audience. All of these—time, place, and audience—are identified in the preamble of a s?tra. S?tras also tend to begin characteristically with the opening line, "Thus have I heard," signaling once again the oral/aural nature of the original transmission of scripture. The vinaya basket is more thematically coherent in so far as it is a collection of texts dealing with the monastic discipline of monks and nuns. It contains texts that discuss the life of the Buddha and the history of the order, texts that list monastic vows, narrative accounts of how the various vows were set forth by the Buddha, ritual formulas (for example, for ordination), and so forth. The abhidharma basket, by contrast, is more philosophical, often elaborating lists of technical terms (for example, the psychophysical constituents of the self and the world), their definitions and their grouping. Since it is a more derivative, manipulated, one might almost say artificial genre, there arose the question even in ancient times of whether or not abhidharma texts should be considered the actual word of the Buddha, with different schools taking different positions on the issue.

Although there were questions even from very early times about which texts should and should not be considered the buddha's word (and hence scripture), the issue truly came to the fore with the rise of the Mah?y?na, or Great Vehicle. The Mah?y?na emerged (or, according to the tradition, reemerged) in the first centuries of the common era in India. It maintained that the Buddha had actually taught a much wider set of doctrines and practices than those preserved in the earlier scriptures, but that these texts had been hidden until the world was ripe for their revelation. Mah?y?nists thus made a case for an expanded scriptural corpus that included a wider range of texts. Although it is not clear whether this new corpus of texts ever achieved a canonical completeness or finality as a separate and distinct collection that had the same level of authority as the earlier canon, there is evidence that some Mah?y?nists did have a notion of the so-called Vaipulya (Extensive Works) as a kind of Mah?y?na canon, possibly subsumed within the s?tra basket.

Following this same pattern, several centuries later the tantra (also known as the Mantray?na or Vajray?na) emerged as a movement within Indian Buddhism (more specifically, as a submovement within the Mah?y?na), claiming scriptural status for its own set of texts, this time called not s?tras but tantras. Like the former, the tantras were considered to be the word of the historical Buddha, or else the word of one or another of a variety of deities that, like the buddha, were fully enlightened beings. And here too one sometimes finds use of the "hidden text" trope to explain why these scriptures had not existed in the world heretofore. But tantrics also at times resorted to other strategies to explain why their scriptural texts had never existed in this world, strategies that were not unknown to the earlier Mah?y?na. For example, in some instances, rather than having been hidden, the texts were claimed to have been revealed anew to accomplished yogis or siddhas in visions or in otherworldly journeys to heavenly realms. In this way one finds in some tantras a theme that is common to other religious traditions, namely, the notion of a heavenly library, access to which is granted only to spiritually advanced individuals.

As mentioned above, the corpus of texts that came to have the status of "scripture" varied from one Buddhist tradition to another. Hence, the P?li, the Tibetan, and the Chinese canons, to take three examples, are quite different, even if there is some overlap between the three. For example, the Chinese canon has a section called ?gama, which contains many of the s?tras also found in the P?li canon (even if the Chinese texts are translations of different—Sanskrit, and not P?li—versions of these texts). Likewise, the Tibetan canon contains a great deal of vinaya material that is thematically similar to material found in the vinaya sections of both the Chinese and the P?li canons, even if the texts are not exactly the same. But of course both the Chinese and the Tibetan canons include Mah?y?na s?tras that are absent from the P?li canon, and the Tibetan canon, in addition, includes many tantras that are not found in any other collection of Buddhist scriptural material. Therav?da Buddhists, who follow the P?li canon, consider much of what is found in the Chinese and Tibetan scriptural collections to be apocryphal, that is, inauthentic because it is not the Buddha's word. And likewise, Chinese Mah?y?na Buddhists will consider much of the scriptural material found in the tantric portions of the Tibetan Buddhist canon to be apocryphal. And even among Tibetans there were controversies over whether certain texts were authentic, such as certain tantras of the Rnying ma (Nyingma) school, and the so-called treasure texts (gter ma) that were said to have been hidden and later found in a variety of sites in Tibet. This is important to point out, lest it be thought that there is consensus among different Buddhists concerning what constitutes scripture. Despite the fact that there are some contemporary collections of translated texts that bear this name, there is in reality no such thing as a single "Buddhist Bible."

The uses of scripture

That being said, there is a great deal of similarity in the ways that different Buddhist traditions use scripture. First, scriptures are memorized. Sometimes they are memorized for no other reason than that memorizing the Buddha's word is considered a virtuous activity that brings much merit. In Thailand, for example, those (albeit few) monks who have managed to memorize the entire P?li canon have an exalted status in the society, even being recognized with an official title by the government. Sometimes scriptures are committed to memory so as to be used liturgically, as is the case with the Heart S?tra in the East Asian Tibetan traditions. In each of these cases it is possible that the person who is memorizing the text will not understand the meaning of the scripture, and this tells us that scriptures cannot be reduced to their content or meaning, since they are put to many uses that have nothing to do with their meaning. For example, scriptures are often displayed on altars, where they serve as a representation of the second of the three jewels, the jewel of the dharma, and where, in that capacity, they serve as an object of worship and devotion. In large monasteries in Tibet, for example, it is common for ambulatories to exist below shelved scriptures, permitting the devout to receive the merit and blessing of the dharma by walking underneath (in a squatting position that indicates subservience to and respect for) the physical texts located above them. In addition, in some Buddhist traditions scriptures are often taken in procession into the fields before sowing or harvesting as a way of blessing the earth and assuring a good crop. Sometimes portions of scripture will be tattooed onto the body, sometimes they are worn in the form of amulets and talismans, and sometimes they are burnt and ingested, all of this as a way of protecting the bearer or consumer of the text from evil or harm. All of these might be called "magical" or "popular" uses of scripture, wherein the physicality of the text (its sound and its material quality) are the principal focus of the various practices. It would be mistaken to consider these practices to belong exclusively to the laity, since monks and nuns also engage in them.

In addition to these popular practices, however, there are also what might be called the more elite uses of scripture. Here it is the content or meaning of the text that is the focus, and this is the object of concern of religious virtuosi, usually, though increasingly not exclusively, male monastics. In India the process of appropriating scriptural material in this fashion was systematized in the doctrine of the "three ways of gaining knowledge": through hearing, thinking, and meditation. First, the scripture is heard. Since the earliest form of scripture was oral, the only access that monks had to scripture was through hearing it spoken or recited. This spoken text was then usually memorized, and thus internalized linguistically. Once this had been accomplished, the monk was expected to begin the process of critically scrutinizing the meaning of the words. This would involve questioning the text, allowing doubts to emerge, and resolving those doubts through reasoning. Finally, once a stable form of certainty had been reached by pondering the meaning of the text, it was expected that that meaning would become the focus of one's meditation, so that the doctrinal content of the scripture would be internalized in such a way that it had a permanent transformative impact on the person of the practitioner. This process that begins with language and proceeds through critical reflective practices culminating in transformative experience is paradigmatic of the Buddhist scholastic approach to the study of scripture. It became the quintessential mode of elite appropriation of scriptural texts in much of later Indian, Tibetan, and East Asian Buddhism, and it is in large part what gave rise to the vast commentarial tradition, that is, to scriptural exegesis.

Although most Buddhist scholastics tended to follow the pattern of scriptural study just mentioned, it must be pointed out that there were also differences. For example, Indian and especially Tibetan Buddhist institutions tended to develop broad curricula that encouraged the study of many different scriptural texts (or their at times quasi-canonical commentaries). By contrast, in East Asia one finds that, rather than seeking diversified scriptural curricula, specific schools tended to focus on a particular scriptural text or on a small group of texts. Hence we find a focus on the Lotus S?tra (Saddharmapu??arikas?tra) on the part of the Tiantai school of East Asia. In a similar fashion, the Chinese Huayan school developed an elaborate system of metaphysics and hermeneutics around the Huayan jing (Avata?saka-s?tra, Flower Garland S?tra). Pure Land schools likewise had their own canon-within-the-canon in the form of the Sukh?vat?vy?has?tra.

It would be mistaken to think that all Buddhist schools are univocally in favor of scriptural study, however. For example, those forms of Japanese Buddhism that derive from Nichiren (1222–1282) tended to downplay the study of the content of the Lotus S?tra, believing, rather, that the appropriate practice in the present "degenerate age" should be the recitation of the daimoku title of the s?tra (My?h?-renge-ky? in Japanese). An even more ambivalent attitude toward scriptural study is found among certain (though by no means all) branches of the Chan school, wherein the study of scripture (especially for the beginning practitioner) is seen as having the potential to mire the mind in language and in the dichotomies of thought. In these traditions, then, scriptural study is eschewed in favor of meditation, or else permitted only after the adept has a strong foundation in meditative practice. Interestingly, this inverts scholastic Buddhism's classical order of praxis by advocating a movement from experience to words.

See also:?gama/Nik?ya; Apocrypha; Canon; Catalogues of Scriptures; Commentarial Literature; Merit and Merit-Making; Printing Technologies; Relics and Relics Cults

Bibliography

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Buswell, Robert E., Jr., ed. Chinese Buddhist Apocrypha. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1990.

Cabezón, José Ignacio. Buddhism and Language: A Study of Indo-Tibetan Scholasticism. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994.

Coward, Harold. "Scripture in Buddhism." In Sacred Word and Sacred Text: Scripture in World Religions. New York: Maryknoll, 1988.

Eimer, Helmut, and Germano, David, eds. The Many Canons of Tibetan Buddhism. Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2002.

Lancaster, Lewis. "Buddhist Literature: Its Canons, Scribes, and Editors." In The Critical Study of Sacred Texts, ed. Wendy Doniger O'Flaherty. Berkeley, CA: Berkeley Religious Studies Series, 1979.

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Smith, Wilfred Cantwell. "The Buddhist Influence." In What Is Scripture? A Comparative Approach. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993.

JosÉ Ignacio CabezÓn