American Academy of Religion

Buddhist Monks and Business Matters: Still More Papers on Monastic Buddhism in India byGregory SchopenReview by: Joseph WalserJournal of the American Academy of Religion, Vol. 73, No. 4 (Dec., 2005), pp. 1251-1254Published by: Oxford University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4139794 .

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Book Reviews 1251

remarks of the traditional commentators, often ignored here. Thus, part of a passage from the Guanzi is rendered "tones precede words," and this is taken up with the interpretation as "resonance that exists in musical tones" (112); in all probability yin, translated as "tones" is a textual error for yi "intention," "signi- ficance," or "ideas." Shen ming is rendered as "the spirits and the illuminated" (161; see also 172), regardless of the use of ming to signify "sacred" and possibly its double entendre. A sentence from the Lii shi chun qiu reads "In the current generation, the rulers use crackmaking [i.e., divination with turtles' shells] and milfoil divination ... " (173), and the citation is used to demonstrate the degree of criticism levelled against the rulers of Qin; however, shang is probably not to be taken to mean "the rulers," but as "there is respect for" and will not support Puett's argument. Dong Zhongshu was not a minister at court, as stated (287), thereby implying that he was a man of influence in public life and government; he never rose to a position at the center that was higher than Counsellor of the Palace. Historians will find difficulty in comprehending a description of Shun's sacrificial system as being based on a "feudal political arrangement" (301). Translation of text as "Heaven's eyes" rather than as "Heaven day by day ... " is disquieting, being based on a hasty misreading of a character (310). The term xing is rendered throughout as "form," without warning the reader that in many contexts it denotes a material form, that is, a human body.

Puett enunciates subtle arguments and reveals some fine distinctions that have been overlooked, but the texts and their extracts do not necessarily warrant the certainty with which his somewhat general conclusions are expressed, and he may be prone to assert these on the basis of hints rather than certainties. The book is replete with terms such as "divinization practice," "ascension literature," "self-divinization," but the time is in no way ripe for incorporation of these in discussion and analysis of Chinese thought and religious practice. Possibly the book is incorrectly addressed as it passes over too many technical matters to sat- isfy specialist readers but includes peculiarities of Chinese expression whose assumptions are not fully comprehensible by non-specialists; it may even run the risk of being misleading. A glossary of Chinese terms and characters would ease the path of the student reader.

doi: 10. 1093/jaarel/lfi 142 Michael Loewe Faculty of Oriental Studies, Cambridge

Buddhist Monks and Business Matters: Still More Papers on Monastic Buddhism in India. By Gregory Schopen. University of Hawai'i Press, 2004. 421 pages. $29.00.

To scholars working in the field of historical studies of Buddhism, Gregory Schopen has certainly been one of the more influential scholars in recent decades. His unique blend of scholarly acumen and creative insight has perhaps single-handedly revived interest in the archaeology of ancient India and

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1252 Journal of the American Academy of Religion

challenged some of the most deep-seated assumptions in the field of Buddhist studies. If Schopen is relatively unknown to other scholars of religion, this may be due to the fact that he prefers to publish his articles in rather a wide range of venues rather than to publish book-length studies. In 1997 the University of Hawaii Press published its first collection of his essays spanning some twenty years under the title of Bones, Stones and Buddhist Monks. The present work, Buddhist Monks and Business Matters: Still More Papers on Monastic Buddhism in India, published in 2004, is the second installment of his writings and consists of a collection of fourteen essays written between 1994 and 2001.

The essays of Buddhist Monks and Business Matters combine the study of Indian archaeology with close readings of Buddhist monastic law (vinaya), espe- cially that of the Milasarvastivida and Theraviada Vinayas. As with his earlier collection of articles in Bones, Stones and Buddhist Monks, Schopen's work on the Vinaya in the present collection constitutes a critical contribution to the field of Buddhist studies. While editions of Buddhist Vinayas have been available for quite some time, most western scholars of Buddhism pay only cursory attention to them. If nothing else, Schopen may reverse this trend simply by making the study of Buddhist law exciting by giving us a fresh perspective on Buddhist legal materials.

Buddhist Monks and Business Matters continues the theme begun in his ear- lier collection of articles of Buddhist monks' relation to material wealth. In the present collection the stereotype of the monk who renounces all contact with the "material world" does not last more than a few pages. The articles of Buddhist Monks and Business Matters provide ample documentation that Buddhist monks and their monasteries not only had access to money but availed themselves of a wide range of financial devices, from loan contracts, to old age homes, to manu- facturing industries, to perpetuities, and so on.

As with the essays of Bones, Stones and Buddhist Monks, Buddhist Monks and Business Matters is again concerned with the discrepancy between monk's prac- tice and the academic understanding of the Buddhist textual norm. Here, how- ever, an additional thematic element seems to be that the Buddhist legal corpus is far more sophisticated than scholars had assumed it to be. The present volume presents us with a detailed and nuanced reading of the Vinaya literature, and it demonstrates that many of the uses of wealth reflected in the archaeological record were in fact already sanctioned in Vinaya literature.

Some of the evidence for monks' possession of wealth has been right under scholars' collective noses-and thereby effectively invisible. In this regard Schopen is a master at drawing our attention to the purloined letter. For example, Schopen points out in the chapter "The Good Monk and His Money" that the fact that the Milasarvdstivdda Vinaya levied fines against monks who were guilty of infractions and required them to pay their own tolls indicates that they must have had personal wealth. Similarly, in "Death, Funerals, and the Division of Property in a Monastic Code" Schopen points out that the Theravdda Vinaya allows a monk to pay for yarn "from his own wealth." Such rules related to fines assume that monks had personal wealth at their disposal even after ordination.

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Book Reviews 1253

Some of Schopen's other theses, while equally obvious (after he has pointed them out!), have long-ranging implications for our study of early Buddhist insti- tutions. In "Monastic Law Meets the Real World" and "The Monastic Owner- ship of Servants or Slaves" Schopen points out that Buddhist monastic law could not have been written in a vacuum. The authors of the vinaya codes had to con- form to requirements of civil law. Schopen then accounts for the apparent laxity of the MflasarvastivZda Vinaya on monks' continuing right to private wealth and makes sense by placing it in the larger civil context where a monk is required to pay his own taxes and tolls. In both of these articles Schopen debunks the axiom, common among buddhologists, that the simpler the text, the earlier its composition. As a counterexample, Schopen turns to the example of the Rule of St. Basil in its relation to the Rule of St. Benedict. The former is earlier, and yet it is more complicated since it had to respond to the civil ordinances imposed by Diocletian stipulating that monks did not have the status of clergy and thus were not exempt from taxes. Benedict's Rule is simpler simply because he was not writing under the same civil constraints. This observation calls into question a number of attempts (such as that of Erich Frauwallner) to date the various "strata" of the vinayas based upon the relative simplicity of the skandhaka sec- tion. Schopen argues, rather, that the differences between the extant Vinayas can be accounted for by regional differences instead of historical differences. As for the dates of the Vinaya themselves, Schopen argues repeatedly that none of them date to before the beginning of the Common Era, since all of them contain dis- cussions of monasteries, locks, doors, and so on-items that do not appear in the archaeological record until the beginning of the Common Era.

Other essays in this collection provide key insights into the other vicissitudes of monastic life in classical India. The format of this book as a collection of arti- cles does not provide as systematic a discussion of monastic finances as, say, Jacques Gernet's treatment of monastic finances in China in his Buddhism in Chinese Society (Columbia University Press, 1995). Nevertheless, a complete read of Buddhist Monks and Business Matters still gives a pretty thorough taste of early monastic finances in India. In addition to strictly financial issues Schopen also addresses some important textual issues of the Mulasarvdstivdda Vinaya corpus. For example, in "Dead Monks and Bad Debts" Schopen gives us a lengthy discussion of the relationship between the Uttaragrantha and the Mdtrika sections of the Milasarvdstivdda Vinaya, the Vibhariga portion, and Gunaprabha's compendium.

Two other essays deserve special note. The first, "Lay Ownership of Monas- teries and the Role of the Monk," makes a case that many of the early monaster- ies were in fact owned by influential laypeople, a fact that was responsible for certain obligations and anxieties among the resident monks. The second, "Immigrant Monks and the Protohistorical Dead: The Buddhist Occupation of Early Burial Sites in India," argues that many, if not most, early monasteries were built near or on top of earlier burial sites. This essay continues the theme of the importance of Buddhist funerals begun in Bones, Stones and Buddhist Monks. Here Schopen argues that the Buddhists' claim to pacify spirits was a major sell- ing point that allowed Buddhism to spread in the early centuries of the Common

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1254 Journal of the American Academy of Religion

Era. This thesis has already inspired a book-length study of the issue by Robert DeCaroli in his recent book, Haunting the Buddha: Indian Popular Religions and the Formation of Buddhism (Oxford University Press, 2004).

Indeed, there is ample food for thought in each of these essays. The essays not only provide essential reading for the professional buddhologist, but some of them could be used profitably in undergraduate courses as well. Having said this, both the budding buddhologist and the professor should keep in mind that many of these articles are influential because they are the first, not the last word on the issue. Schopen's essays on Buddhist finances in the present volume con- stitute brief snapshots of the voluminous Mtilasarvastivdda Vinaya. He has yet (although I suspect he may in the future) to give us a comprehensive survey of monastic finances in this Vinaya.

Schopen's treatment of the Mulasarvastivdda Vinaya constitutes an impor- tant contribution to Buddhist studies since, in financial matters, the MuTlasarvas- tivdda Vinaya is much more elaborate than any of the other extant vinayas. Unfortunately, Schopen does occasionally allow himself to make claims about Indian monks in general based on his observations from the Malasarvdstividda Vinaya. The problem with this is that there is a great deal of vinaya material in the Chinese canon that is different from the Milasarvastiviida Vinaya-material that Schopen accesses only through French translation. In one essay ("Doing Business for the Lord" and "Dead Monks and Bad Debts") he justifies neglecting the Chinese sources because his French translation of the Chinese translation does not appear to be accurate to his reading of the Sanskrit. In "Monastic Own- ership of Slaves," however, he admits that his use of only Tibetan and Pali mate- rials is due to "my own linguistic incompetence" (195). For the most part, however, Schopen is careful to confine his claims to the Mfulasarvastivadin sect, and so his inability to read Chinese seldom compromises the points he makes. Much more needs to be done in the area of Buddhist monastic law and monastic finances, but any future study of the matter will have to take Buddhist Monks and Business Matters as its starting point.

doi: 10. 1093/jaarel/lfi143 Joseph Walser Tufts University

After Christianity. By Gianni Vattimo. Columbia University Press, 2002. 128 pages. $27.00.

After Christianity is a series of meditations on the themes for which Gianni Vattimo has become well known: hermeneutic ontology, the weakening of being, postmodern pluralism, and the possibility of Christian faith in a God of the scriptures. He begins his introduction with a vignette from his book Credere di Credere [(Garzanti, 1996) translated literally as "believing that one believes" but translated for the English title simply as Belief (Stanford University Press, 2000)] in which his response to an old philosophy professor's question about

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