a recent work on japanese buddhism

A Recent Work on Japanese BuddhismBuddhism in Japan, with an Outline of Its Origins in India by E. Dale SaundersReview by: Leon HurvitzJournal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 85, No. 3 (Jul. - Sep., 1965), pp. 384-403Published by: American Oriental SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/597822 .

Accessed: 12/06/2014 20:00

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

American Oriental Society is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Journal ofthe American Oriental Society.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 62.122.79.31 on Thu, 12 Jun 2014 20:00:55 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=aos

http://www.jstor.org/stable/597822?origin=JSTOR-pdf

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp


384 HURVITZ: A Recent Work on Japanese Buddhism

A RECENT WORK ON JAPANESE BUDDHISM

LEON HuRvITz UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON

THE FIRST THING THAT STRIKES the reader is the subtitle, With an Outline of its Origins in India,* and, in point of fact, these few words tell a great deal about the book itself and about the attitude which presumably premised it. There will be more to say on this subject later, but one must anticipate a bit. For Japan was not converted to Buddhism by the Indians but by the Chinese. It is, of course, no more than conjecture, but the likelihood is that the Japanese initially imagined Buddhism to be in fact Chinese, and that it was some little time before they became aware of its Indian origins. Even after becoming so aware, however, they continued to derive all of their Buddhist inspiration, and to take all of their Buddhist lessons, from Chinese, not from Indian, masters. All the more surprising, then, that the author of a handbook of Japanese Buddhism should make it appear, through a fault of omission, as if Buddhism had jumped from India to Japan. "The evolution of Buddhism in China, certainly pertinent to Japanese religious history, has been omitted, though I have made specific reference to the Chinese phase under the various Japanese sects whenever I felt that such information served to fill out the history of a sect in Japan" (p. 5). Yet let us-let the author himself, for that matter

imagine a title such as the following: Christi- anity in North America, with an outline of its origins in Judaea. Imagine, further, that this putative history is a work of just over 325 pages, of which no more than three pages (!) is devoted to a general account of the history of Christianity in Europe. Mutatis mutandis, that is what we are dealing with here. As said above, there will be further comment on this in the appropriate place.

Another thing that tells the reader more than would appear at first glance is the romanization of Indian, principally Sanskrit, words. Briefly stated, it is the standard romanization of Sanskrit di-

* Buddhism in Japan, with an Outline of its Origins in India. By E. Dale Saunders. Philadelphia. University of Pennsylvania Press, 1964.

vested of all diacritical marks except the macron. The palatal and retroflex sibilants are both rendered with sh, and the unvoiced members of the palatal series, both aspirated and unaspirated, are rendered indiscriminantely with ch. "With the exception of the macron, diacritical marks have been omitted in Sanskrit words whose translitera- tion, although not technically exact, has been changed to comply with English pronunciation" (p. 6). Changed to comply with English pronunciation? Does the Anglo-American horror of all diacritical marks explain their absence? If so, why the macron? The phenomenon of vowel length, though present in English, has nothing in common with vowel length in Sanskrit. Repeat, why the macron? The reason is not far to seek. The author's prime competence in Asian languages is in Japanese, and he is presumably all but ignorant of Sanskrit. He has therefore romanized Sanskrit as if it were Japanese. One is tempted to speak of "the Hepburn romanization of Sanskrit." The Hepburn system, by any standard, is a wretched one, but it has virtually universal currency as far as Japanese is concerned. One has no choice but to put up with it. The Hepburn romanization of Sanskrit has no recognition anywhere, and there is simply no justification for it. At that, the author has failed to mark long vowels in 10 cases, has unwarrantedly lengthened short vowels in 10 more, and is guilty of 6 other mistranscrip- tions-and these observations are confined to Sanskrit words alone. On top of this, in what purports to be Sanskrit, he gives two Pdli words, without ever a caveat to the reader that they are not Sanskrit (a fact of which he is almost certainly unaware). A complete list of purely formal errors will appear toward the end of this review. What shall appear immediately below will be comments on individual points, made in the order of the latter's appearance. The Arabic numeral preceding each comment is the number of the respective page.

5. "My aim has been to provide an historical



HURVITZ: A Recent Work on Japanese Buddhism 385

framework, based on the noteworthy points of Buddhist doctrine, which the reader may use as a point of departure for further reading." Further reading of what? From the nontechnical nature of the work, it is clear that the author intended it for non-specialists, hence for persons who can read no Asian language. There is little enough of value in the European languages, where specifically Japanese Buddhism is concerned. Instead of adding another title to a catalogue of largely inadequate works, to which the reader is then referred, it would have been desirable to publish a work of solid scholarship, whose scope would of necessity have had to be modest. The cause of bibliography is not materially advanced by the work under review.

17. The whole paragraph entitled "THE DHARMA" is so misleading that one is all but certain that the author does not really understand the issues involved. The first error is that of mis- construing the basic meaning of dharma to be "law," which is, in fact, a derived meaning. Dharma originally meant something firm and enduring; it is derived from the root dhr, meaning "to hold (to)," and is in fact cognate with Latin firmus. Dharma had a wide range of meanings even before the origin of Buddhism, but a sense common to all of them was that of something permanent and abiding. It would, for example, make perfect sense to say that the dharma of fire is to burn, that of water to flow, that of a king to rule, that of a subject to obey, etc., etc. To this, the Abhidharma added another meaning, which is peculiar to Buddhist usage, viz., that of an element of existence. "Added" does not mean "substi- tuted," however. The word dharma retained its classical meanings in Buddhist contexts, to which the meaning just mentioned was appended. One of these classical meanings was of course that of "cosmic order,' rightly alluded to by the author. It is, however, quite misleading to say, "If the Brahmanic law is the cosmic order, the Buddhist True Law is above the cosmic order." No Buddhist thinker would have conceded the validity of the Brahmanical view of the nature of the universe. The Buddhists were perfectly content to let those outside their own order have what beliefs

they pleased and live what life they chose, but the author's statement is a far cry from that.

Harder yet to swallow is the following:"... Buddhist speculation has as its goal the suppression of existence, or rather the suppression of the succession of existences, rather than the establishment of a single, absolute existence." Except that the content of the insight was quite different, the desideratum aimed at by both Brahmanical and Buddhist yoga was the same: an end to reincarnation. If it is valid to speak of "the suppression of existence" in the case of the one, so is it in the other. If Brahmanical mukti is an "absolute existence," so in the same sense is Buddhist nirvania. Here again, the likelihood is that the author himself does not understand what is involved.

19. To translate Bodhisattva as "the 'person to be awakened' " renders no service to anyone. The word is a highly questionable one. In the first place, bodhi itself is not proper Sanskrit, though its ubiquity in Buddhist contexts got it virtual admission through the back door, as it were. Granted bodhi, however, it is still impossible, without forcing the issue, to construe bodhisattva to mean "awakened being", to say nothing of "person to be awakened." The Pali form is bodhisatta, a prakritic phenomenon which clearly baffled the sanskritizers. They did with it what they could, and bodhisattva is the fruit of their unhappy labors. "Person to be awakened"?

25. Muni certainly does not mean "wise man." Its literal meaning is "silent one," hence it refers to a man who leads a contemplative life.

34. "According to one tradition, this and later councils established the three parts, or baskets (Tripitaka), of the Pali canon: The Satranta [sic] written in Sindhi, the Pdramitd in Sanskrit, and the Mantra (and Tantra) in Sanskrit and others." The author tipped his hand here. He clearly does not know that Pali is a language, and at that a language different from Sanskrit. No portion of the Pali canon is written in Sindhi or Sanskrit, for one thing. For another, the Tripitaka consists of (1) Vinaya, (2) Sztra, and (3) Abhidharma, a fact mentioned just below the one just quoted. For a third, the council of Rajagrha did not canonize any Mahayana works.




PNli Theravada corresponds to Skt. Sthaviravdda, not Sthaviravadin, and means "the enunciated (doctrine) of the elders," not "those who follow the elders."

35. After listing the Nikayas, the book states, "Altogether these categories are known as the references or agama." It is true that the words

nikaya and cgama ("tradition" rather than "reference," by the way) refer to similar bodies of texts, but the former in the Theravdda, the latter in the Sarvdstivdda. Also, majjhimanikayya, not madhyanikaya.

41-2. The author devotes more than a page to the Saddharmapuz?4ar'ka, but contrives somehow to bypass completely the two doctrinal features that distinguish it, unless, of course, that is the meaning of the following opaque sentence bestrid- ing the two pages: "It opposes the Great Means to the Lesser Means: the absolute Truth to the transcendance of the Tathdgata." The Lotus, as has just been stated, makes two points: (1) Once the Mahdydna had become established, it became a commonly accepted view throughout the Ma- hayana world that there were three courses to Buddhist salvation, viz., (a) that of the sravaka, whose goal was to be an arhant, (b) that of the pratyekabuddha, a title which, properly speaking, belongs rather to him who has achieved the goal than to the practitioner aiming at it, and (c) that of the bodhisattva, whose aim is to be a Buddha. The first two achieve enlightenment for themselves alone, the difference being that the former does so by listening to the preachments of a Buddha, the latter by his own exertions in a Buddha-less age. The third, when he has achieved his own measure of enlightenment, preaches its content to others. In the Lotus, the Buddha tells his listeners that the first two courses do not in fact exist; that the unique goal of the religious life, therefore, is Buddhahood. (2) The Buddha also tells his listeners that the commonly accepted notions of the Buddha, e.g., his career as a young prince, as an ascetic, etc., have no ultimate validity, and that the true nature of the Buddha is not to be delimited in time or space. This is, of course, an enunciation of the dharmakaya doctrine. A page is surely enough space for both. Our

author did not state them, however, because he clearly is unaware of them.

56. The schools differ, of course, on the number of asamskrtas. In a work devoted to any of the Buddhist systems of the Far East, however, the only relevant system is that of the Sarvdstivdda, which has not one asamskrta but three, viz., (a) pratisamkhyanirodha, i.e., nirvana, (b) aprati- samkhyanirodha, i.e., an end to samsara due to absence of sufficient causal background, and (c) akasa, i.e., space. From their treatment here, one would never surmise the sectarian disputes that surrounded the issue. In any case, where the Far East is concerned, the number is not one but three.

Vijiana is not "practical knowledge" but "cognition." Again, as far as the number of dharmas (the word is not used here at all, where it is very relevant) is concerned, the only early system relevant for the Far East is the Sarvdstivdda, which gives the figure at 75, not 89.

62-3. The account of the pratftyasamnutpdda given here is not very satisfactory. In the first place, the theory represents different layers, which originated at different points in the history of the development of Buddhist ideas (and one of which, at the very least, is pre-Buddhist), and which were finally grafted together to look like an integral system. Frauwallner (Geschichte der indischen Philosophie, Salzburg, 1953, vol. 1, pp. 210-213) proposes a very reasonable hypothesis, that the older doctrine traced the whole process back to thirst ("Desire," i.e., tr~ya), while a later recension of the theory traced it back to ignorance ("Blind- ness," i.e., avidya), and that in the final recension the two were simply slapped together. Nothing else seems to account so satisfactorily for the apparent repetitions and inconsistencies in the theory, of whose very presence our author seems unaware. Also, vjiinana, which on p. 56 he rendered with "practical knowledge," he here (p. 62) renders with "Subconscious Mind or Psyche," apparently unaware that for the Indian Bud- dhists the one word represented only one concept, the faculty of cognition. "From it arises the con- ception of Name-Form (nama [sic]-ripa), which corresponds to the evolution of young children."




Namarnpa is a term far antedating Buddhism, the presence of which in this chain is, in a sense, anachronistic. It refers to an identifiable entity, one which has an identity recognizable in form and specifiable by name. It is a primitive notion, whose presence in this context can be attributed only to an anachronistic oversight. More could be said on this subject, but this is not the place.

66-7. While it might be too much to state flatly that the author's treatment of nirvana is mistaken, it is certainly misleading. The early schools appear to have debated endlessly on whether it does or does not exist, is or is not an entity, etc., but certain minimal considerations appear to have been common to all of them. The central idea seems to have been that the apparent individual human personality was no more than apparent, and that, when the illusion was seen through, it would cease to be effective. This does not mean that the personality would vanish, for it had never existed to begin with. The illusion of an individual personality would vanish, however, and, upon the death of the present body (i.e., when the present chain had run its course), the phenomenological result would be the cessation of reincarnation. This is all that can safely be said this side of doctrinal disputes, but it must be said, and more or less in these terms. The author of the present work certainly does not do this, and there is considerable grounds for doubt as to whether he really understands what is involved.

70. Hinaydna does not mean "Smaller Vehicle." Hina means "deficient," and ycna probably originally meant "course." It is not to be denied that yana may also mean "vehicle," and that Buddhists everywhere have traditionally understood it in that sense. The fact remains that hina does not mean "small," and that the author is translating not Skt. hinayana but Jap. sh-j3.1

72. The paragraph entitled "VOID" is such a welter of half-truth and misstatement that it is difficult to know what to do with it. "The doctrine

I References to the character glossary at the back will normally be found under romanized forms listed in alphabetical order. In the few cases where a romanization does not appear in the text, a superscript letter x follows the word under which the characters are listed.

of the Void is a method of rejecting all attach- ment." Fine. "It maintains that things have no Self, that they are 'empty'." Very well, but what does this mean? It is unlikely that the author understands it himself, as will be presently seen. Even if he does, however, what can the uniniti- ated reader make of this latter statement? We proceed. "The state of shiinyatd, or Void, is one in which all polarity, all subject-object differentia- tion has ceased to exist." Now this is simply not accurate. Siinyatd, first of all, is not a "state." It is a universally applicable truth, the content of which is that no form of thought-construction (e.g., "This is A, it is not B. A is this, it is not that.") can possibly be valid. An apparently earlier recension of this theory was that a thing which exists thanks only to something else cannot be said truly to exist at all. This bears specifically on the dharma theory.

The earlier schools maintained that the dharmas alone exist, that anything else (and the focus of this statement, it must not be forgotten, was the apparently existing human personality, the "I," the "self" so dear to Brahmanical thought) has only nominal existence. Mahayana comes on at this point, saying that, if the dharmas appear only in conjunction with one another (a cardinal Hinaydna view), then they too have no real existence, hence are as devoid of a "self" as the apparent human personality. The total absence of predicability, mentioned in the preceding paragraph, is what is meant by sunyata, and to call it Void is to give it an unfortunate coloration. The most mistaken of all mistaken views, according to the Mddhyamikas, is the resort to any kind of assertion about sknyata. "State," "positive concept," and the like are not applicable, and so vitiate the few accurate statements in this paragraph as to drown them out.

72-4. Systematic adherence to the principle of sfznyata was what the followers of Ndgqrjuna meant by the "Middle Path." (Madhyamika, by the way, does not mean the "Middle Path," but rather "medianist," the name by which Ndgar- juna's followers referred to themselves, then later the name by which all schools of Indian thought




referred to them.) It was "middle" between affirmation and negation, a "path" in the sense of a course, i.e., a system of thought consistently adhered to by those who subscribed to the theory. It is not a "characterless state," for it is no state at all. "Thus the Middle Path is essentially void" is a somewhat misstated proposition, and for the reasons just given. The same can be said for the sentence that ends that paragraph: ". . . just as Void is not a form of nonexistence, the Middle Path is not a form of nihilism but a method of underlining the fundamental unreality of phe- nomenal appearances, although it accepts, or rather does not deny, the reality of illusion itself." What the author seems to be trying to say (provided one may assume that he understands the issues correctly) is the following: Sfinyatt is neither positive nor negative. The s.u-nyavadin consciously abstains from all assertions of any kind, since he knows that not only the assertions themselves but also the thought-constructions that underlie them cannot correspond to Reality. What, then, is Reality? It is whatever it is, and objective reality is not a matter of particularly great concern to any of the Buddhist schools. The same Reality seen through one pair of eyes is the world of samsdra, through another the world of nirvdna. The indispensable precondition of Buddhist salvation is to change not the world but one's way of looking at it. This is well stated in The Central Philosophy of Buddhism, a study of the MJdhyamika system, by T. R. V. Murti (London, 1955), p. 141:

The Absolute is not one reality set against another, the empirical. The Absolute looked at through thought-forms (vikalpa) is phenomenon (saqisara or samvrta, literally covered). The latter, freed of the superimposed thought-forms (nirvikalpa, ni~pra- pafica), is the Absolute. The difference is epistemic (subjective), and not ontological. Nagdrjuna therefore declares that there is not the least difference between the world and the absolutely real.

(Incidentally, how did the author miss this particular book, which has been out for a decade?)

"The foregoing theories led to the formation of one of the principal schools of Mahdydna, that of the Vijfidnavidin, 'those who follow the way of thought.'" First of all, vijnianavadin does not

mean "those who follow the way of thought," but rather "the enunciator (of the theory that) cognition (alone exists)." In the second place, the statement itself, while roughly valid, is too vague. The VijfAnavada is indeed not an innovation out of the whole cloth, but rather the result of a shift in emphasis. As has just been stated, Buddhism was never overly concerned with objective reality. To this must be added the ob- servation that in transic meditation, which is as old as Buddhism itself, the difference between the cognizer and the cognized is obliterated. From these two premises it is but a short step to the conclusion that neither the cognizer nor the cognized is real, and that there is nothing but cognition itself. Whether or not this is what the author meant cannot be decided with certainty; at any rate, it is not what he said. The issue is stated with great succinctness and clarity in Conze, Buddhist Thought in India, three phases of Buddhist philosophy (London, 1962-also missing from the bibliography), pp. 251-257.

It is with this in mind that one must consider the issue of "suchness" (tathat&), to which a short paragraph is devoted on p. 74. The beginning of the paragraph has a certain qualified validity. Note the last two sentences, however: "Inaction in action, action in inaction, immobility in motion, motion in immobility, calm in wave, wave in calm, suchness is none of these individually, neither one nor the other of them. It is all of them, it is the Middle Path, and as such, the true state of all things." What is this, if not abracadabra?

77. Om maaipadme hfum certainly does not mean, "Ah! The jewel is in the lotus!" Om and hum, to begin with, are mystical utterances having no strictly semantic referends, hence should not be translated at all but left in the original. Next, maitipadme is, like many mantric words, a feminine singular vocative, used in invocation. The meaning is thus, "Ow, (thou goddess of the) jewelled lotus, h-um!" Whether or not the sym- bolism of the jewelled lotus is sexual, maaipadme can in good Sanskrit grammar be construed in no other way. The reference need not necessarily be to a goddess, but it must be to one or other supernal female.




85. When our author speaks of Kumdrajiva's organization of a "bureau of translation in which some few Central Asians cooperated with Chinese monks, the former expounding Indian Buddhist texts and the latter rendering them into good classical Chinese," it is evident that he is ignorant of the Chinese Buddhist scriptures, or of good classical Chinese, or of both. The ordinary literate Chinese could not-and cannot-read these translations without some preparation in Buddhist doctrine. Apart from that, the style of the translations would never pass muster as "good classical Chinese."

87. It is certainly not true to aver that Esoteric Buddhism is a form "distinctly native" to China. The author himself cites a number of secondary works bearing on Indian esoteric Buddhism.

92. The Nippon shoki's account of the alleged importation of Buddhism from Korea to Japan in 552 should certainly be taken with a large grain of salt. Because of the social and religious prejudices of the (almost certainly Chinese ghost) writers of that document, they wished it to appear as if the Three Jewels had been imported at one and the same time by the simple act of trans- mission from the hand of one king into the hand of another. This is simply not the way in which religions spread, and there will never be any knowing how Buddhism really entered Japan.

93. The word "priest," used frequently throughout this book, has no relevancy to Bud- dhism. A priest is a mediator between the deity (non-existent in Buddhism) and the laity in a sacrificial ceremony (also absent from Buddhism). In Buddhism there are no "priests." The word has gained unfortunate currency thanks (?) to some Japanese writers attempting to write in English-a language in which they are not at home-about the Buddhist institutions of their own country. The word is "monk," except for Japan since Meiji, where Buddhist monasticism is dead.

"In 579, Silla as well sent tribute accompanied by an image." How could Silla send tribute to Japan, a country which was her cultural inferior and on which, at any rate, she undoubtedly looked down? The Chinese ghost writer was accustomed to the annals of his native land, where anything

sent to the Chinese Court was construed as "tribute." A Chinese writing annals for Japan would naturally use the same terms, since, mutatis mutandis, his frame of reference was the same. A Japanese annalist would simply copy him. Well and good, given their prejudices, but what justification can there be for a twentieth-century Ameri- can who parrots them?

94. "Shotoku was a scholar, learned in Chinese classics...." No serious historian of early Japan believes this. The virtual consensus of such persons is that he had Chinese ghost writers, who were never given credit.

96. To speak of the "Constitution of Seventeen Articles" is foolishly anachronistic. Kemp3 does indeed mean "basic law" or "legal model," but the document in question is a moral homily, not a "constitution." The latter phenomenon was not to make its appearance anywhere on earth until centuries afterward. When the Meiji politicians drew up their constitution, they entitled it kemp3 also, but what's in a name?

97. The "Three Treasures" is not quite right for samb5, which, after all, renders Skt. triratna, "three jewels." The second character has both meanings, to be sure, but the latter is surely the one called for, in view of the original which it renders. The "Three Treasures" are probably to be traced to the same Japanese who gave us the "Buddhist priests."

"A Buddhist scholar in his own right, Shotoku is known to have lectured with insight... ." For "known," read "alleged." Cf. the comment re p. 94.

103. "The Buddha Roshana (Locana)." Where the author derived this identification is impossible to say, since here, as in most of the book, he does not cite his source of information. Roshana (more commonly read Rushana) is usually an abbreviated form of Birushana, i.e., Vairocana Buddha. Vairocana is, to be sure, a vjrddhi derivative of virocana, and, by omitting the prefix, one arrives at rocana, a word of virtually the same meaning, viz., "illuminating." It is undeniable that there is a Locand (but note the long final vowel), clearly a feminine name, borne by the s'akti of Aksobhya, who, like Vairocana, is a dhyanibuddha. Since the author cites Benoytosh Bhattacharyya's An In-




troduction to Buddhist Esoterism in his bibliography, he would have done well to look into it besides, since the pertinent information, as well as further citations, is given on p. 130 f.

105. To speak of the "six Nara sects" is to miss by quite a margin the meaning of sh0, and to create a false impression besides. The period in question antedates by quite a bit the spread of Buddhism among the Japanese populace. The groups with which we are dealing here were tiny groups at the Imperial capital, conning doctrinal works whose meaning they probably did not fully understand themselves, and to which they declared their respective allegiance because of the teacher-pupil line in which they had been trained. Under these circumstances, there can be no talk of "sects" in the usual sense of the word. Besides, shi does not mean "sect" at all. It means an object of principal veneration, at first, apparently, an ancestral tomb, then anything, including an idea or a principle, to which one attached prime importance. Finally, in Buddhism, it came to mean a group of persons united by a common belief in what was essential to the Faith-a "school," perhaps, but not a "sect," at least not until Buddhism became a mass religion in Japan. The "Three Treasures/Buddhist priests" people are undoubtedly to blame for this as well.

105-6. The short paragraph which purports to explain Abhidharmakosa is something of a hash. The rock-bottom meaning of abhidharma is not a matter of common agreement. If one may venture an opinion, it may mean the "super(imposed) dharma", i.e., the corpus of doctrinal formulations having to do with the elements of existence, the word dharma being used in two senses at one and the same time. "Analyses" is not bad, but the author then goes on to say, in effect, that "law" (dharma) refers to what can be held (dhr), i.e., to material things, a proposition that makes no sense at all.

108. It is difficult to say where the author de- rives the proposition that the Kusha school posited three kinds of atoms. The Abhidharmakosa, the school's cardinal text, lists no fewer than twelve sizes, in which seven of any one size con- stitute one of the size immediately larger. (Cf. Louis de La Vall&e Poussin, L'Abhidharmakos'a de

Vasubandhu, Troisieme Chapitre, p. 178). Since, as usual, the author does not give his source of information, there is no coming to grips with his allegations.

109-11. The passage dealing with MATTER is a hopeless hash of truth, half-truth, and outright nonsense. "The Kusha school divides matter into subjective and objective groups. ." It is safe to say that no school of Buddhism attaches very much importance to that distinction. It is, in fact, difficult to know just what is meant, since the reality or unreality of the world, apart from its impact on the senses, is almost irrelevant to the Buddhists.

109. "The created elements are: the 'seed elements' (earth:hardness; water:humidity; fire: warmth; air:motion) and the elements of form (first category, eleven dharmas), that is, the sense organs and their objects plus an 'unmanifested form element' (cetana)-meaning 'mind' (second category, one dharma)... ." The author seems to be saying that the "seed elements" are to be calculated in addition to the seventy-five dharmas. But cf. L'Inde Classique, p. 659. Since, however, he has taken the trouble to cite the Abbe Lamotte's Histoire du bouddhisme indien in his bibliography, our author might also have taken the trouble to examine pp. 658-664 of that same work. If he had, he would have seen that the four "seed elements" are counted as dharmas in the Theravada system, whose total is 82, and which, in any case, has nothing to do directly with the Kusha school. The role of these same "seed elements" in the Sarvastivdda school, which has everything to do with the Kusha, will be explained below. Our author further seems to be saying that the first category of dharmas, eleven in number, consists of the five sense-organs and their respective objects plus an eleventh, the "unmanifested form element." This is fine as far as it goes. How- ever, in the same breath he identifies this last- named element with "mind," which is itself a dharma constituting a separate category. By this arithmetic, his total comes to 74 rather than the traditional 75, unless, of course, the " 'unmanifested form element (cetana)-meaning 'mind' " counts twice, once among the eleven dharmas of rilpa and once as a dharma in its own right. This



HuRvITz: A Recent Work on Japanese Buddhism 391

whole issue is so misstated that one is almost at a loss as to what to do with it. Perhaps the best thing to do is to begin from the beginning.

The Sarvdstivdda posits 75 dharmas, three "unconstituted" (asamskrta), 72 "constituted" (samskrta). The latter are then, for convenience's sake, grouped into four smaller groups, viz., (a) matter (rftpa), 11 dharmas, (b) thought (citta), 1 dharma, (c) mental and emotional entities associ- ated with thought (caitta), 46 dharmas, and (d) entities dissociated (viprayukta) from both matter and thought, 14 dharmas. As to the English equivalent "mind" rather than "thought," that, of course, is a matter of less than crucial importance. However, in the space of a few lines the author has made two grievous mistakes.

1) The last of the rdpadharmas is avifiaptirapa, more or less correctly rendered "unmanifested form element". Just what is it, however? La Vallee-Poussin does what can be done with this rather opaque concept ibid., Chapitre Premier, p. 20, n. 1: "On peut traduire: 'non-information'. C'est un acte qui ne fait rien savoir a autrui, en cela semblable A l'acte mental; mais qui est matibre (ruzpa), en cela semblable a l'acte corporel et vocal." (This all-important work is likewise missing from Mr. Saunders' bibliography.) A much more satisfactory explanation is given in the above-quoted section of Lamotte's Histoire du bouddhisme indien, specifically on p. 662:

L'acte est volition (certan5), c'est-a-dire acte pure- ment mental. De cette volition peut decouler un acte corporel (geste) ou un acte vocal (parole), qui manifeste exterieurement et materiellement cette volition: ce sont les vijriapti, informations. En mame temps, de la volition ainsi manifestee, decoule un acte invisible, mais materiel et fait de grands elements, qui continue A exister et A s accroitre et constitue en fait un etat de responsabilite morale: c'est l'avijinapti.

Par exemple le meurtre peut resider dans la volonte de tuer, manifestee exterieurement par une vijniapti corporelle, le geste de tuer. Mais il est realise egalement dans le cas d'un homme qui ordonne un assassinat sans accomplir lui-meme le geste homicide: au moment oA meurt l'assassin6, une avijnapti de meurtre nait dans le fauteur du crime, meme si A ce moment il est distrait ou sans pensee; et cette avijiiapti invisible, mais reelle, le rend de fait coupable de meurtre.

Aviiniaptirilpa is not "mind," however. This leads to

2) the second category of the samskrtadharnas, that of "thought," i.e., citta. It is not cetana, "volition," which is another name for samskara, the fourth of the five skandhas. Cf. La Vall6e- Poussin, op. cit., pp. 28 f.

Now, what of the "seed elements"? Tangibles (sprastavyadharma), the tenth of the eleven rilpadharmas, are subdivided into eleven categories, but remain a single dharma. The eleven are 1) tangible objects, 2-5) the four "seed elements," 6) gentleness, 7) roughness, 8) heaviness, 9) light- ness, 10) cold, and 11) hunger and thirst. By not listing them explicity as a subdivision of one of the dharmas, but by giving, instead, the appearance of ranking the a alongside of the 75, the author misleads the reader quite seriously (and almost certainly misunderstands this himself).

110. "This (theory of karman and of hetuvipaka) is known as the theory of self-creation, that is, the forming of self by self, for self will always be reproduced as long as the causes of it are being produced.. . (then, quoting Conze) 'a method in which the "I" and "Mine" are completely omitted, and in which all the agents invoked are impersonal dharmas... (111) one of the fifty-four items included among the skandha of volitional reac- tions. . . is called a wrong belief in self.' " (Em- phasis in the original.) First our author talks of the reproduction of self by self, then proceeds to loss the remark by expounding the total absence of a self. One is tempted to ask whether Saunders has ever read Saunders.

111. Jojitsu no more means "completion of truth" than it translates "Sdtyasiddhi." To begin in reverse order, satyasiddhi would have no long vowels even if it were a valid restoration. The word is probably owed to some early twentieth- century Japanese with a shoddy knowledge of Sanskrit. Skt. satya, where positively attested, is rendered by ti, never by shih, which latter renders tattva, "reality." Since the text is available only in Chinese, there can be no certainty in the matter, but the overwhelming likelihood is tattvasiddhi, "establishment of reality," in the sense of the ascertainment of what is and is not real and the support of the respective contentions with proof. Cf. Erich Frauwallner, Die Philosophie des Buddhismus (Berlin, 1958), p. 119.




112. "Relatively little is known about this [Tattvasiddhil school in India. Perhaps it was never an influential school there, although Harivarman's doctrine was undeniably influential." I deny it, and I defy Mr. Saunders to prove it. In the face of the total silence of the Indian sources on Harivarman and his treatise, no conclusion is possible. Once more, Mr. Saunders misses the point, in what concerns the introduction of this text into China. Kumdrajiva's intention, after his arrival in China, seems to have been the translation of s'stra texts, i.e., expositions of the doctrinal position of the Mddhyamika school. The Madhyamika, however, is premised on a thorough knowledge of the Sarvastivada Abhid- harma, at which it is constantly tilting. Virtually no Chinese had this kind of knowledge, hence there was no way for the Chinese to understand the objects of the Mddhyamikas' tireless attacks. With this in mind, Yao Hsien, a blood relation of the sovereign, asked Kumdrajiva to translate an Indian text which would put Mddhyamika ideas into context for Chinese readers. For Kumdrajlva, a Sarvastivada work was out of the question, all the more because he was himself a convert to the Madhyamika from that very school. He chose the Tattvasiddhi, probably because it represented a Sautrantika tendency, which denied the validity of the Abhidharma. Harivarman was perfectly aware of the Mddhyamika position, for Chapter 152 attacks it. Yet, because the Ch'eng shih lun had been introduced by Kumdrajiva, the Chinese Buddhists, who were still only dimly aware of Indian doctrinal disputes, assumed it was "Great Vehicle" (whatever that might have meant to them). T'ang Yung-t'ung, on pp. 719-730 of his monumental history of early Chinese Buddhism, demonstrates that in the fifth century, at least, Mddhyamika specialists tended to be Tattvasiddhi specialists as well.

113. "The Jojitsu Void is an abstracted one, ... not to be confused with the transcendental Void posited by the Sanron school... ." "Void" is just as inadequate as ever for s'nyata. Apart from that, while the author seems to understand the difference between the two notions of sunyatd (which the Chinese call hsi k'ung kuan and t'i k'ung kuan respectively), again his choice of

words is misleading. In Chapter 153, Harivarman says that s'unyata signifies not merely pudgala- nairatmya (chung sheng k'ung) but also dharma- nairatmya (fa k'ung), arrived at elsewhere by analyzing existence into its component parts and stating that the collective designations are mere designations. This is quite different from the Mddhyamika tenet of the inaccessibility of Truth to thought-construction, with the corollary that the very same reality is bhava or skunya, depending on how one looks at it.

115. Ekan was indeed a Korean, and the version of his name given in parentheses should be not Hui-kuan, which is Mandarin Chinese, but Hyegwan.

116. "Dvddashadvarashastra," i.e., Dvadasad- varasastra, as a restoration of the original of Shih erh men lun is questionable enough, but "Shatashastra," i.e., Satas'astra, as a restoration for Po lun is positively grotesque. Both can be ascribed to our nameless Japanese "Sanskritist." When our author says that the former "attempts to correct the errors of the Mahaydnists," there is no telling what he means, since the said work is a sort of introduction to the Madhyamaka. To speak of the Ta chih tu lun as a work of Ndgdrjuna translated by Kumarajiva makes no sense, nor does the act of endowing the said work with a Sanskrit name which it never had. Next, it is anything but a "firm exposition of the monistic view," since the Mddhyamika view is not "monistic." Finally, Kumdrajiva, who died in 413 at the very latest, cannot possibly have been a teacher to Fa-lang (507-581), still less to Chi-tsang (549- 623).

116-7. "SANRON AND MIDDLE PATH" is so badly stated that only one conclusion is possible: the author read about this in some secondary work(s) and, without really understanding what he had read, attempted to set it down with some semblance of coherence. At the risk of boring the reader, let it be stated again: The Truth is beyond the reach of any and all thought. No thought construction, much less any verbalization, such as (1) yes, (2) no, (3) both yes and no (not "either yes or no, depending on circumstances"), (4) neither yes nor no (and circumstances have nothing to do with it), can




possibly be true. That is to say, the Truth is devoid of predicability, and the Middle Path is the scrupulous and consistent abstention from any form of predication, whether in word or in thought. This abstention means the denial of all views and the acceptance of none. This little paragraph of thirty-four lines contains everything from a glim- mer of these ideas to outright gibberish. The same applies to the second paragraph under the heading TWOFOLD TRUTH (118).

The first member of the Eightfold Negation is not "life" but "birth." Both are rendered with thex same Chinese word, but the original reads utpdda, which cannot possibly mean "life."

119. What is meant by "only ideation" cannot be said with certainty. ViJiaptimatra means "designation alone." E.g., one may say, "This is a tree," but it is mere designation. Yuishiki translates not that but vijn-anamdtra, which means "cognition alone," referring to the view that cognition is the only thing that exists, both the cognizer and the cognized object being illusory.

121. When Mr. Saunders says that the school in question is "considered to be largely Mahdyd- nistic," that is surely the understatement of the millennium. Of the construction this tendency places upon suanyatd, the author says: "For the Hoss6 school, it is transcendental and mystical; and, as such, it stands in opposition to the eliminatory Void which characterized the Middle Path of the Sanron school." (124) Not so long ago (113), the same Mr. Saunders called the Sanron view "transcendental," as opposed to the "abstracted" Void of the JAjitsu school. Repeat, has Saunders read Saunders?

128-132. This section, attempting to describe the doctrines of the Kegon school, is simply un- intelligible.

135. When Mr. Saunders says that Nara Bud- dhism, "though externally Mahdydna, had been concerned basically with Hinaydna doctrines," what does he mean?

Mapp6 certainly does not mean the "end of the Law," even if the second character had the meaning of "law" in this context, which it clearly does not. It means the "final Dharma," i.e., the Bud- dhist religion in its era of final and total decline, heralding the end of a kalpa. "Law of the end,"

if you will, but "end of the Law" is not possible, if only in terms of Japanese (or, for that matter, of Chinese) word formation.

138. The reading "Chih-k'ai" is widespread but mistaken. This individual's birth date is much more likely to have been 538 than 531. "The Lotus text had been studied as early as the beginning of the sixth century A.D., and intensified research on it was begun in China after Kumdra- jiva's translation in 406." The sentence speaks for itself. The chapter on Devadatta was added to Kumdrajiva's version by two Indian missionary- translators, not by Fa-hsien, whose dates, incidentally, are not known, and whose age at death is alternately given as 82 and 86 (i.e., 81 and 85, respectively). Mr. Saunders would have him 103 years old at death (317-420)! Finally, what is the difference between the Nirvanasatra and the Parinirvanasiitra?

139. The verse quoted from the Madhyamaka, even as an English translation of a Chinese translation, is not quite accurate, but let us not dwell on that. Indian Mqdhyamika posited two truths, not three, and the addition of a third truth is a Chinese innovation. Of course, the moment two apparent opposites are alleged not to be in opposition, a third, reconciling them, is implied. What Chih-i seems to have meant is as follows: Nagar- juna preached thex inaccessibility of Truth to thought-construction, his thesis. Yet thex data of common experience persist (antithesis), and, if properly viewed, are notx in conflict with Nagar- juna's proposition (synthesis). The reconciliation becomes the new thesis, the antithesis is as before, and the synthesis is the same. The dialectic process goes on ad infinitum. Isshin sangan means that one and the same mind sees reality in these three lights, which are in perfect harmony with one another. "...'one heart, three meditations,' sig- nifying a threefold meditation on the one essence, a perfect fusion of the three truths through meditation" misses it completely.

142-3. "The Third Period is that of Develop- ment, that is, the time when Hinaydna evolved into Mahdydna...." "Development" presumably is an English rendition of vaipulya, which, in turn, is a vrddhi-derivative of vipula. If it is legitimate to render the said adjective with




"developed," then the noun means "developed- ness," i.e., the state or quality of being developed, unrestricted, broad in scope, etc. "Development" misrepresents it grossly. Again, since Mr. Saunders does not cite his sources, there is no knowing where he got this. The next proposition is equally questionable. Chih-i did not picture the Third Period as one of evolution at all, but rather (as Mr. Saunders goes on to say himself) as one of the flat presentation of Mahdydna ideas, accompanied by an impatient dismissal of HInayana ideas as being shortsighted and restricted.

143-4. The presentation of the Eight Doctrines has one glaring fault: it does not say-and the author seem quite unaware of the fact-that the eight are to be divided into two groups of four each, the former group referring to the Buddha's supposed methods of preaching his sermons, the latter to their content. From this fault proceeds the major error, that of seeing them as a single group of eight, each of which is premised on its immediate predecessor. At that, the presentation of numbers 3 and 4 of the eight doctrines is something of a hash. In Chih-i's terms, the first two had been both explicit and determinate (hsien lu ting chiao). In contrast to these, the third and fourth were both "indeterminate," the third being "secret" (pi mi pu ting chiao), the fourth "explicit" (hsien lu pu ting chiao). For convenience's sake, and for it alone, Chih-i abbreviated these to pi mi chiao and pu ting chiao, respectively. "To the fourth, the Indeterminate Doctrine, all listen together; it is exoteric, nonmystical." All do indeed listen together, each listener being fully aware of the others' presence. However, each, while listening to the same predications, is, or may be, deriving a different message from them. In other words, the lesson being learned is not necessarilyx the same. Apart from this, the whole presentation of the Eight Doctrines has minor errors and half-truths too numerous to specify.

146. What warrant does Mr. Saunders have for saying that "Tendai esotericism originated in China"? As far as is known to this reviewer, Saich6's pilgrimage to China brought him into contact with both T'ien-t'ai and Chen-yen, and, after his return to Japan, he fused them. If Mr. Saunders knows otherwise, perhaps he will depart

from his usual custom to the extent of citing his source.

149. The Japanese reading for Hui-kuo is Eka, not Keika.

157. Zengy5 is the name not of one particular scripture, but of a whole genre of works devoted to contemplative practices.

158. To refer to the kana syllabary as "a simplified Japanese script by which to write the complicated Chinese characters" is so to misstate the issue as to lead the reader to wonder whether the author really knows what kana is. Kana, far from being a simplified form of Chinese characters, is a syllabary, wherein each character represents a Japanese syllable. While it is true that each kana graph is in origin a simplified Chinese character, it is used for its phonetic value alone, with complete disregard for the character from which it was derived. Further, kana did not replace the Chinese characters, but rather supplements them.

Jiz6 no more means "earth store" than Kokfiz6 means "void store." The likelihood is that both are mistranslations of Sanskrit originals, due to the double meaning of garbha, which, depending upon the circumstances, may signify either "embryo" or "womb." The originals probably meant "earth embryo" and "space (not 'void') embryo," respectively, i.e., the earth in embryo and space in embryo. The Chinese (and possibly their non- Chinese mentors as well) apparently understood garbha in its other sense, and rendered even that somewhat ineptly with tsang, "storehouse." Given these translations, the Chinese then interpretedx as x-a and x asxb, thus coming to almost the same thing as the Sanskrit originals.

179. Jfijishinron cannot mean "ten stages of the heart" because, again for reasons of Chinese word-formation, jfishin cannot possibly mean "stage of the heart." "Heart of stage," if you will, but not the other. For that matter, "heart" is not really accurate, in this case, forx, which is equivalent to "mind." Jf&shin signifies a mind which stops at a given point, whether (as in the case of the first nine) because it is not equipped to go on, or (as in the case of the tenth) because there is no further to go. The Ju&jftshinron was indeed written in Chinese, but to call that "an accomplishment of no little merit in itself" is




quite misleading. For it might well induce the reader to believe that it would have been less of an accomplishment to write it in Japanese. But there was no recognized way of writing Japanese at that early date, and the tiny handful of literate Japa- nese at the time were-to a man-literate in classical Chinese and in that alone. The presentation itself of the ten kinds of outlook has a rough validity, but is again somewhat misleading in tone. There will be no detailed treatment of this aspect of the question here, beyond saying that (1) the first stage corresponds to the three lowest forms of existence, viz., Hell-dwellers, pretas, and all animal life inferior to man; (2) the second corresponds to mankind; (3) the third to devas, i.e., the Indian gods (rendered by the Chinese with tien, a translation no doubt made at a time when the Chinese word still meant "god." Later it came to mean "heaven," and perhaps that is what Mr. Saunders means when he says that this stage "maintains hope for heaven, but remains ignorant of the nature of this latter."); (4) the fourth to s.rdvakas; (5) the fifth to pratyekabuddhas (rightly pointed out by the author); (6) the sixth to Yogdcarins; (7) the seventh to Mddhyamikas; (8) the eighth to T'ien-t'ai (again, rightly mentioned by the author); (9) the ninth to Hua-yen (ditto); (10) the tenth to Mantraydna (ditto). Whereas (6) and (7) posit the existence of three "vehicles" (buddha/bodhisattva, pratyekabuddha, arhant/.'ravaka), (8) and (9) posit only one (buddha/bodhisattva), while (1) speaks of a truth beyond all but Buddhas, hence not predi- cable in any terms whatever.

183. "Traces of descent from the original land" is rather an unfortunate rendition of honji suijaku. The idea seems to be that the Buddha, while remaining in his original place, i.e., while remaining a Buddha, "bestowsx his traces" (not "traces of descent") elsewhere, i.e., manifests himself in various inferior forms, notably those of gods. As a Mahaydna idea, it goes back to India itself, whence it made its way to China, thence to Japan. To refer to ryobu Shinto as a "peculiarly Japanese development" (184) is misleading on two grounds. Firstly, as has just been said, the notion itself goes back to India. Secondly, it stands to reason that a fusion of anything with Shinto must be "peculiarly

Japanese," if only because Shinto exists only in Japan. It is no less misleading to account for this phenomenon by referring to "the general Japanese attitude toward religious practice." For Buddhism itself, in a sense, paved the way for this development with its indifference to the simultaneous cultivation by Buddhist laymen of Buddhism and non-Buddhist religions. The attitude is Japa- nese, to be sure, but not peculiarly so.

188. To this reviewer's knowledge, Tao-an (312-385) was a devotee not of Amitabha but of Maitreya.

197. The alleged quotation from Shan-tao that "the true sect (shinshii) is hard to find" is elo- quent proof of the gross inaccuracy of rendering shil with "sect." As usual, Mr. Saunders does not give a textual reference (cannot, since he does not read Chinese), hence one can only surmise that the phrase stands for anx original. If so, the meaning is that the true principle, the essential message of the Buddha, is difficult (if not impossible) to comprehend.

200. Tonky( does not mean "abrupt enlightenment" (tongo). The former signifies the abrupt presentation by the Buddha of His ultimate Doctrine, without preparation and without tem- porizing devices (updya, hkben).

204. Hannyaharamitta shingyo5 refers not to the corpus of Prajfiaparamitd sitras, but only to one, the shortest of them.

207. Tao-an's object of worship was still Maitreya, not Amitabha. To speak of his disciple Hui-yilan (334-417) as "the real founder of the Amida sect in China" is positively grotesque. ShA no more means "sect" than it ever did. Be- sides, Buddhists of all stripes in both China and Japan were exercised to endow their respective schools with as early an origin and as glorious a master-disciple lineage as possible. It is a known historical fact that Hui-yuian was, among other things, an Amida devotee. In view of his relatively early dates (fl. 4th century) and his towering greatness in the early history of Buddhism in China, the Pure Land Salvationists in that country said that their tsung was founded by him. This formulation has two levels of meaning. On the primary level, it means that, as far as they were concerned, the particular aspect of Buddhist




doctrine to which they were most attached had first been formulated by him. On the secondary level, since their school as an organized movement was, in their view, but an external manifestation of this doctrinal truth, they could look to him as a "founder." The Japanese Pure Land Salvationists would merely have repeated what had first been said by their Chinese forerunners. Given their parti pris, given also the highly qualified sense in which they themselves understood the notion of "founder," there can be little quarrel with their formulation. What justification can there be, however, for a twentieth-century American who blandly says that ". . . Hui-yuan ... was the real founder of the Amida sect in China"?

208. Rev. H. Dumoulin has, we believe, rather convincingly demonstrated that Bodhidharma is not an historical personage.

210-11. The name of a certain monk is given now as "Shen-hsiu,' now as "Shen-hsui." He is identified, in the former case, with the monk whom the Japanese know as Jinne. Clearly, Mr. Saunders has confused two persons here, viz., Shen-hsiu (?-706) and Shen-hui (700-774). The tradition is as follows: Hung-jen passed on his authority to two disciples, Shen-hsiu and Hui- neng, who proceeded to establish their own authority in north and south, respectively. Hui- neng's disciple, in turn, was Shen-hui, whose name, as read in Japanese, is Jinne. In addition to amalgamating Shen-hsiu and Shen-hui into a mythical "Shen-hsui" (oh Wade! oh Giles!), he endows Shen-hsiu, for that is clearly whom he means, with one hundred and one years of life (605-706). Apart from the unlikelihood of it, where can he have got it? The Sung kao seng chuan and the Ching te ch'uan teng lu are unanimous in giving his death date alone, viz., Shen-lung 2 (706), and no birth date.

234. "Nichiren follows the Tendai theory of the Five Periods. . . , accepting the three classes- Auditors (shravakas), or simple hearers, i.e., Hinaydna; pratyeka-Buddhas, or Buddhas who gain enlightenment for themselves, i.e., Mahd- yana; and Bodhisattvas. Actually, in the Lotus the Buddha declares himself to be the saving Buddha, hence the above three are really but three aspects of a single unity, that is, the historical

Buddha." It would be difficult to pack more mis- information into so short a space. By the numbers, then:

1) A pratyekabuddha is not a Mahaydna practitioner. He is one who gains enlightenment for himself alone in a Buddha-less age, thanks to his own exertions. In China this was traditionally taken to mean that he contemplates the Truth of Dependent Origination (pratityasamutpada, yian ch'i), one of the oldest of Buddhist doctrines, hence Hinaydna.

2) "Hinaydna...; Mahaydna...; and Bod- hisattvas" makes no sense, since MahAyAna is represented par excellence by the bodhisattva.

3) The second sentence quoted makes no sense at all, since it is not merely in the Lotus but throughout the Buddhist canon that the Buddha declares himself-and is declared by all his followers-to be the Savior. The latter part of the sentence, apart from this, is a non sequitur. Last, and most important of all,

4) far from declaring in the Lotus that the so- called Three Vehicles are but three aspects of the historical Buddha, SAkyamuni declares that the sravaka and pratyekabuddha do not in fact exist, and that the historical Buddha himself is but a manifestation of the eternal Buddha.

This reviewer is not competent to pass judgment on those portions of the book that deal specifically with Japanese Buddhism, least of all with the current religious fads. It does seem, however, that in a book dealing with Buddhism a phenomenon such as Tenriky6, which is not Buddhist in any sense, has no place. Nor, for that matter, does any of the others, with the exception of the three that are plainly offshoots of Nichiren.

Granted Mr. Saunders' system of romanization, and not including mere typographical errors, the following mistakes were noted:

Page The word given as should have been

11 kaiden kaidan 12 Kitshigharba Kshitigarbha

(K~itigarbha) 22 Maya MOyT 30 Gorakhupur Gorakhpur 32 dhdtu-garbha dhatugarbha 34 Sitranta SUtranta 35 madhyanikaya majjhimanikaya

Brahmajalasfitra Brahmajalasfura



HuRVITZ: A Recent Work on Japanese Buddhism 397

Page The word given as should have been

39 Avadanasataka Avadanashataka (Avadanagataka)

51 shraddha shraddhd (Araddha) 62 nama-ruipa nama-riipa 73 jneyashraya jneyashraya (jfieyagraya) 81 prakrit! prakriti (prakrti) 88 Ldmaism Lamaism 91 Minana Mimana

Syong-Myong Song-myong (S6ng-my6ng)

99 shdrira sharira (garira) 105 Vasubandu Vasubandhu 111 Satyasiddhi-shastra Satyasiddhi-shastra

(Satyasiddhi-gdstra)* 115 Hui-kuan Hyegwan 119 Yogacharin Yogacharin (Yogacarin)

Yogacharyabhilmishastra Yogacharabhiimishatra (Yogacacrabhflmi- ?astra) *

125 sima sima 139 Madhymamikashtistra Madhyamakashdstra

(Madhyamakagdstra) 147 K6fukuj i Kofukuj i 154 Prajfia Prajnia 161 Vajrashekarayoga-sfitra Vajrashekharayoga-siitra

(Vajrasekharayoga- sutra)

170 ushnisha ushnisha (usoiqa) 174 Valaha Varaha

Manjushri Manjushr! (Mafijugr!) 205 Keicho Keih6 208 Yung-nin Yung-ning 211 Shen-hsui Shen-hsiu 218 Mu-men-kuan Wu-men-kuan 223 Any6in Anny6in

Shobogenzo Shobogenzo5 232 Isu Izu 240 gosan gozan 259 kensei kenshk 279 Hung-wan-tzu-jui Hung-wan-tzu-hui 281 Okaka Okada (twice) 283 GAKKI GAKKAI 284 Tokuhara Tokuharu (?) 287 Lu-lan Yu-lan

* It is doubtful that either of these ever had the word 9dstra as part of their respective titles. Almost all Bud- dhist scriptures in Chinese translation have the word ching, lu, or lun as part of their respective titles, in order to identify them on sight as belonging to one of the three pitakas. The Japanese hacks tend to treat the Buddhist scriptures as if they had been written in Chinese, then translated into Sanskrit. Consequently, when the original does not survive, they tend to dub it- slttra,-- vinaya, or- dstra, as the case may be. Mr. Saunders, knowing no Sanskrit, is taken in.

Now what are the conclusions to be drawn fromall this?

The first conclusion is that Mr. Saunders should not have published this book. The phenomenon of Japanese Buddhism is an enormously complex one, since it is heir, among other things, to two sets of foreign influences, one directly, the other indirectly, namely, those of China and India, respectively. A person who undertakes voluntarily to do a serious study of Japanese Buddhism as- sumes eo ipso an obligation to acquaint himself thoroughly with Buddhism in those two countries as well. If there were a vast store of high-quality secondary literature on the said subject in the languages of Western Europe, the student of Japanese Buddhism could content himself with consulting it. This, however, is not the case. Where India is concerned, the only extensive Occidental literary corpus is that of the Pali Text Society, whose range is confined to Theravdda. The literature in English, French, and German combined is scant and scattered as far as the other Hinaydna schools are concerned, not to mention the Ma- hayana. But the case of India is far better than that of China. For the Sung Confucian re- vival closed the minds of most traditionally trained Chinese intellectuals to the whole Bud- dhist system of thought. Since the Occidental Sinologue is in the majority of cases the disciple of a Chinese master, this attitude "rubs off" on him too. The result, in the Occident, is an unhappy dichotomy: the Sinologue will not touch Bud- dhism, and the Buddhologue will not learn Chinese. The result is that the specialist in Japa- nese Buddhism must read the literature of Chinese and Indian Buddhism in Chinese and Sanskrit/ Pali, respectively. He cannot be blamed for not knowing these languages, nor may anyone justly upbraid him if he is unwilling to learn them. How- ever, if he is indeed unwilling to learn them, then he should have the decency to stay out of the field. For the alternative to learning to read the Buddhist literature of China and India in the original languages is to be thrown upon a highly uneven European literature whose quality the person in question is totally unable to judge.

This is Mr. Saunders' case. He clearly reads neither Chinese nor Sanskrit. There is, however,




some first-rate secondary material in Japanese dealing with the antecedents of Japanese Bud- dhism. On the other hand, one has no way of knowing how much, if any, of this literature he has consulted, since he does not cite his sources. His defenders might, of course, say "Why should he quote things written in Japanese in a book intended for persons who cannot read that language?" The reason is that any author of a work such as the one under review must expect the book to come to the attention of qualified specialists as well. Apart from this, the readiness to cite one's source of information is an indication of the will- ingness to assume responsibility for one's statements. Mr. Saunders time and again makes bland, offhand statements, at times of highly questionable character, without ever saying where he got his information. One is tempted to read between the lines.

The termination of the Tokugawa hegemony in Japan occasioned contacts between that country and the Occident such as had never existed before. Certain Japanese were rightly eager to spread knowledge of their homeland and its civilization in the world at large. In view of the staggering difficulty of the Japanese written language, circumstances all but precluded the reading, on any significant scale, of Japanese literature on the part of Occidentals. The information had to go one way, if it was to go at all. The eager young Japanese would learn a Western European language, English in the majority of cases, by methods ranging from the very best to the very worst. Where Japanese Buddhism is concerned, it contains a great store of ideas, and words and phrases used to express them, that are quite absent from the European languages. These would defy translation even into the native tongue of the translator, however well he might understand the original. In the case in question, however, the translations were being made from the mother tongue of the translator into a language in which he was not usually at home, quite apart from the frustrating difficulty of rendering one's native

language into any other. The result: a huge vo- cabulary of mistranslation ("Buddhist priest," "Buddhist temple," "consciousness," "sect," etc.) which the typical Occidental reader must take at face value because, in his ignorance of the Japa- nese language, he has no choice. Once fixed, these "equivalents" tend to perpetuate themselves. The Occidental seriously intending to convey some of the message of Buddhism to his fellows must, if nothing else, break this chord. Mr. Saunders has not done this, and for two reasons: (1) He appears to have relied very heavily on this Wes- tern-language material, and very little on material written in Japanese. (2) he manifestly has only the foggiest understanding of basic Buddhist ideas. One comes back to what was said early in the preceding paragraph: The book should simply not have been published.

There are implications here that go far beyond the individual case of Mr. Saunders. For there is a most regrettable tendency in American academic life for the specialist in Japan or in almost any aspect of that country's civilization to ignore Japan's enormous cultural debt to China, or to learn to read Chinese. Until very recent times, however, the Japanese intelligentsia were all literate in classical Chinese (to varying degrees, to be sure), and had all had a Confucian education. To understand their thought processes, it is necessary to know at least something of what they knew themselves, and, as has been indicated above, there is virtually no access to that through translations or even through secondary writings in European languages. One does not ask that the Japan specialist have a great zeal for the learning of the Chinese written language, merely that he acknowledge the necessity of knowing it, and act on this acknowledgment. Indeed, to judge by the way in which China and Japan are treated in most of the American university world today, one would think that they are situated on two different planets instead of being, in fact, next-door neighbors. If justice is to be done to either of these civilizations, this practice must cease.



HuRVITZ: A Recent Work on Japanese Buddhism 399

GLOSSARY

CHAROCTER GLDSSARY

an original

and

annyoin (an'ybin) AA-

as (x-a) 3

as (x-b) /*

bestoWs his traces 1 I birushana

chen. yen 4 J ch'eng siUh lun,

chi teang

'Chih-k'ai'

chiing K

ching te ch'uan teng lu k-

chung sheng k'ung

ekan

fa klung

fa haien

fa lang ' RR

for

aklai




gozan Jid

hannya baramitta yhinaa

hkbben

honji sUijakuC~l t94

hossA

hai k'ug uani haien lu pu ting chiao

hlien lu ting chiao

hua yon

hut kuo

hui neng t

hui ywiaa

hung jen KA

hung wan tsu uit

hyegwan 2 tg

interpreted I !

isahin sangana

isu

j8Jitau

jUshin



kaidaor~

kana li

kegon school 4i >

keihE

kemp-0

kenshf uuJi0

k5frkuji

kokt~z'

kusha school

'U.

lua

xappo

meijiL

nara

nichiren

nippon shoki

not in conflict

not neosssarily

okada

pi a pu ting chiao iI&+3 . 4

rohna

zebu shint04

401



samb_

shan tao,4~.

shen haiu

ahen hui

Shen lung

shihl

shijh or me lN

sh~b~gensO

ali~toku

shilu

si'la

aOig nArang

slung

sung kao, song chuan

ta chih tu luni

t'ang yung t'ung

tao an

tendai

the data of common experience

the inaccessibility of Truth to thought construction

402



HuRvITz: A Recent Work on Japanese Buddhism 403

the same Chinese word

tiX

t'i k'ung kuan

tlien

t'ient' is

tokugawa

to aru h?

tongo (oy)

tonkyO (toa5)

tsang

taung lie

wu men kuan t 3Jr

yao hsien b

yu lan b ,

yuan ch'i

yuishiki

yungning



a recent work on japanese buddhism

Documents