Biographies of the Buddha
By David Edward Shaner
Philosophy East and West
Volume 37, no.3
July 1987
P.306-322
(C) by University of Hawaii Press
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The Buddha. By Michael Carrithers. Oxford: Oxford
University Press. 1983.
Gotama Buddha. By Hajime Nakamura. Tokyo: Buddhist
Books International, 1977.
The Life of Gotama Buddha. By Earl H. Brewster. New
York: AMS Press Inc. (forthcoming). Reprint of
original published by Kegan Paul, Trench,
Trubner and Co., Inc., 1926. Also reprinted in
Sonarpur, Varanasi: Bhartiya Publishing House,
1975.
The Life of the Buddha, By H. Saddhatissa. London:
George Allen and Unwin Ltd., 1976.
Shakyamuni Buddha: A Narrative Biography. By Nikkyo
Niwano. Tokyo: Kosei Publishing Co., 1980.
The Way of Siddhartha. By David J. and Indrani
Kalupahana. Boulder, Colorado: Shambhala, 1982.
When I read a review article I like to read a clear
and succinct account of the book in question. I
prefer critical commentary only after a thorough
review of, first, the author's style, rigor, and
methods of investigation; and, second, the sources
consulted and scope of the work. In spite of my own
preference, however, in this feature review it is
appropriate to begin with a preliminary discussion
of some key issues pertaining to the history of
biographies written about the Buddha. This
introductory discussion is necessary in order to
identify the criteria I believe one should utilize
when evaluating the merits of works within this
special genre. Prior to evaluating the relative
merits of each book, consideration must be given to
the events immediatly following the Buddha's death,
the presuppositions of Indian historiography
(specifically the status of fact and fiction), and
of course some mention of the intended audience for
whom each book was written, for example, scholarly,
devotional, or popular.
Herein I will assume that most of my readers are
neither Buddhist specialists nor philologists whose
primary interests, in this context, may legitimately
concern each author's use of varied biographical
sources. While these scholars might find more
substantive content in a more specialized journal
devoted to Buddhist textual scholarship, I will
direct my attention to those readers who may be more
interested in accessing interesting questions
pertaining to the life of the Buddha, and to his
later glorified paradigmatic role, for areas of
scholarship that are much more broadly defined. To
this end I have provided readers an extensive
bibliography that attempts to reconstruct the events
of the Buddha's life. The list is
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comprehensive, but not exhaustive. I selected works
that represent a great diversity of style, methods
of analysis, and sources upon which the various
accounts rely. The books selected for the most part
have been written by scholars, thus contributing in
some significant way to the Western world's
understanding of the life of the Buddha,
I. A CONSIDERATION OF PARTICULAR TEACHERS AND
UNIVERSAL TEACHINGS
I must mention at the onset--with apologies to
scholars of Buddhism for this
oversimplification--that there is no single
authoritative autobiography by, or biography of, the
Buddha that has been passed down from the ancient
times of the Pali canonical texts. There is,
however, a wealth of information concerning the life
of the Buddha that may be reconstructed from the
posthumous record of his sermons. This initial point
occasions the first of numerous comparative
observations herein.
In the Western world, influenced by the New
Testament record of the life of Jesus, we often look
to the paradigmatic founders of other religions with
a hidden agenda. We often superimpose, correctly in
the case of Christianity and incorrectly in the case
of Buddhism, the belief that ethical teachings are
justified to some significant degree by the living
example of the teacher. In order to appreciate
Christianity and the paradigmatic role of Jesus, for
example, there is considerable attachment to the
actual story and sequence of events from Jesus'
birth, baptism, persecution, crucifixion,
resurrection, and so on. I do not wish to imply that
the commitment to values, as evidenced by Socrates
and Jesus, for example, is not important. Nor do I
imply that it would be acceptable for someone like
the Buddha not to serve as an ostensive example of
his message concerning compassion and the
elimination of suffering. I am suggesting, however,
that the meaning of the teachings need not always be
so significantly attached to the founder of a
tradition. The warrant for justifying or
authenticating the validity and importance of a
given teaching might just as well come from some
other source. I am reminded of Socrates' discussion
with Euthyphro concerning piety. Piety, for
Socrates. must be defined by some essential and
universal quality without which it could no longer
be itself; hence, his displeasure when Euthyphro
began defining piety by relying upon particular
examples of pious acts. Is something pious because
it is god-beloved, or is it pious because it is
characterized by some essential feature?
I remind the reader that upon the passing away
of the Buddha several records state that the Buddha
did not appoint another (particular) person to be
the successor in order to carry on the vital role of
leadership. Instead, according to the Pali Canon,
the Buddha instructed, "make oneself an island (or
lamp) unto oneself" (which has often been loosely
interpreted as "let the teachings (universal dharma)
be the teacher"). Thus we begin to appreciate the
significance of the Buddha's emphasis upon universal
teachings, not particular ostensive examples.
Of course there have also been doctrinal debates
in the history of Christian
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theology. The teachings of Jesus cannot be separated
from centuries of commentaries concerning the
facticity of a life entangled in persecution,
political pressure by civil authorities, and
passion. In contrast. the Buddha's life was one rid
of unsatisfactoriness/suffering (dukkha) . The
earliest literature suggests that the Buddha's
enlightenment was occasioned by his empirical
understanding of causality (pa.ticcasamuppaada) and
the conditions of the "arising and passing away" of
all things, that is, their impermanent (anicca) and
nonsubstantial (anattaa) ontological status. These
causally dependent conditions reflected the
universal laws about which the Buddha preached. The
universal laws, not the particular events of a life
of searching and serenity, were to be emphasized.(1)
The entire Mahaayaana tradition, laden with
symbolism and mythology pertaining to the particular
life of the historical Buddha, can be interpreted by
this account as a series of events which underscore
the importance of the teaching.
This emphasis upon the teachings (dhamma), at
the expense of recapitulating the life story of the
teacher, may at first glance seem unfortunate for
contemporary scholars in search of accurate
historical data. Certainly the unique
characteristics of Indian historiography (to be
examined in the pages ahead) and the absence of a
single canonized biography complicate efforts to
unravel accurately the facts regarding the Buddha's
life. The fact that mythopoeic thinking frequently
accompanies the development of cultural heroes adds
yet another obstacle for the would-be biographer. In
the case of paradigmatic philosophers and religious
reformers the situation is further compounded. It is
instructive, however, to note that the problems
pertaining to reconstructing accurately the Buddha's
life history become truly problematic only if the
biographer holds a more axiomatic presupposition,
namely, the expectation (and desire) that the
historical personage should be kept pure, devoid of
euhemerization. This presupposition is undertandably
consistent with Early Buddhist philosophy based upon
the pali Nikaayas and Theravaada philosophy, and
happens to be suggestively reminiscent of New
Testament exegesis. However, this expectation is not
consistent with early Indian historiography, nor is
it indicative of later philosophical developments
within the Buddhist tradition. As the centuries
passed after the Buddha's death, Buddhist thinkers
speculated at great length about the intended
meaning of the Buddha's utterances. There were
occasions when devotees constructed elaborate
metaphysical systems in order to write themselves
out of philosophical corners that were created by an
ever increasing amount of debate and speculation. In
short, a hermeneutic circle developed in which new
interpretations fostered new paradoxes, which in
turn inspired even more creative, and sometimes
transcendentalized, commentaries on earlier texts.
Furthermore, it is likely that since the spread of
Buddhism occasioned more frequent interaction with
competing Indian and Chinese philosophies, there
would have been powerful temptations to mythologize
the Buddha; position within the tradition while
formulating more and more elaborate commentaries.
There are two important ramifications of these
points. First, I underscore
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the notion that this interpretive circle is as
typical of Buddhism as of any other major religious
or philosophical system. Second, I emphasize that
readers of biographies of the Buddha must be
cognizant of the degree to which the euhemerization
of the historical Buddha, and gradual development of
paradigms encompassing a plurality of Buddhas, hides
or covers (not unlike sa.mv.rti) important evidence
that might otherwise lead scholars toward a more
easily recognized trail of pertinent factual
evidence.
II. FACT AND FICTION: RESISTING THE REDUCTIONIST
TEMPTATION
I am not here advocating that we dispense with an
analytical reconstruction of the life of the
historical Buddha I am leading to a more significant
claim. It is unfortunate that we frequently gloss
over complex interpretative problems by setting up
dichotomies with only two possible and contradictory
outcomes. It is well known, for example, that in the
case of the so-called mind/body problem we often
claim that they must either be one
(epiphenomenalism) or two (Platonism/ Cartesianism).
This sort of reductionism often systematically
encourages us to overlook all kinds of subtle
distinctions, perspectives, criteria, and potential
meanings in favor of compartmentalizing the world by
means of various reductionist "knives"--Aristotle's
square of opposition, for example--justified by
appeals to logical necessity.
In our present context, reductionism presents
itself by assuming that the Buddha's life can only
be meaningful if we divide available information
into fact or fiction. This neat division helps the
historian in some obvious pragmatic ways that I do
not mean to contest. I am suggesting, however, that
this reductionist approach is also limiting and can
systematically lead us away from the important
aforementioned Buddhist teaching concerning the
relationship between the contingent history of
particular paradigmatic individuals and their
teachings about universal laws.(2) In principle this
was the parting message that the Buddha gave his
followers as well. The contingencies of any
narrative history, including the Buddha's, hold no
candle to universal truths that must be experienced
for oneself. One can learn "on the shoulders of
giants," but the Buddha taught that one must realize
the import of universal teachings for oneself. Quite
literally the followers of the Buddha, we recall,
were instructed to be "an island (or lamp) unto
oneself."
At this juncture I would like to point out that
it is possible to pursue another, entirely different
line of argument in support of my insistence that we
scrutinize carefully the division between fact and
fiction in Indian historiography in general and
biographies of the Buddha in particular. A. L.
Basham(3) has pointed out that prior to the Muslim
invasions the pre-Buddhist Indian civilization
cultivated a very different attitude toward history.
We must not offhandedly dismiss this attitude as a
ramification of an essentially ahistorical
orientation or as a result of the much celebrated
cyclic view of time. The early Indian civilization
may have been predisposed toward poor historiography
by Western standards, but by their
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own standards the blending of fact and fiction
occasioned the development of influential and
powerfully symbolic literature. The so-called
"fuzzy" mixture of fact and fiction is evidenced in
the Mahaabhaarata and Raamaaya.na, which, by many
accounts, provide the corpus for the greatest epic
literature of all time. When seen in this light it
is possible to argue(4) that Indian cultural history
was preserved in a manner that served the people in
ways more significant than a mere analytical
reconstruction of past political and military
events. The people at once retained the knowledge of
past clan indiscretions, in the Bhagavadgiitaa, for
example, while simultaneously passing on lessons for
cultivating a richer political, moral, and spiritual
existence.
The authors of the six books under consideration
openly acknowledge that their studies reflect some
proportion of fact and fiction. In this review I
think we must purposefully blur this neat and all
too comfortable distinction. If my posture as
critical reviewer considered only the stance that
the best biographies employed Sgt. Friday's 'just
the facts ma'am' supported by the authoritative
sources, I would be forced into a Nietzschean and
Derridean skepticism. The deconstruction-minded
philologist or literary critic would argue that
since there is neither a true (autobiographical)
text nor any real hope of reconstructing an
authoritative biography, there is no true historical
Buddha to be uncovered via textual criticism.
Although I admire the sophistication of the
fully elaborated forms of this argument, issuing
primarily from the Continent (Derrida, Nietzsche),
reception theorists, and the school of Yale
Criticism, I find this approach too narrow and even
smug. The argument systematically leads us to the
deconstructionist conclusion by posing the question
in terms of a simplistic and reductionist dichotomy.
The text must either be available in some limited
sense or it must, of necessity, remain hidden. The
argument is in the form of a reductio ad obsurdum,
where one demonstrates that the "original" texts
(assuming, I suppose, that they constitute some sort
of closed set) have been lost, damaged, or
transposed through time, and so one is left with the
only alternative that there are no sources of
authority/texts.
To the contrary, there is a variety of texts
containing biographical information: Pali Canonical
texts; independent Pali works; the Sinhalese triple
canon: Vinaya Pi.taka, Abhidamma Pi.taka, and Sutta
Pi.taka, encompassing the five Nikaayas;
Buddhaghosa's fifth-century-A.D. commentaries; the
Burmese Malalankara Watthu text; A`svaghosa's
first-century-A.D. Sanskrit biographical poetry
(Buddhacarita); its fourth-century Chinese version
(found in Taisho, no. 192) and the version in the
Tibetan canon (Bstan-.hgyur); the Mahaavastu and
Lalitavistara in the Buddhist hybrid-Sanskrit; the
Abhini.skrama.na Suutra, translated into Chinese in
the sixth century A.D.; the Chinese
Fang-kuang-ta-chuang-yen-ching,
Kuo-ch'u-hsien-tsai-yin-kuo-ching,
Fu-pen-hsing-chi-ching, Chung-hsu-mo-ho-ti-ching,
Fu-pen-hsing-ching, and Chung-pen-ch'i-ching; the
writings of early pilgrims; and numerous mediums of
relevant artist artifacts.(5) All of these sources
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present complex problems occasioning many
differences of interpretation. However, the use of
conflicting sources does not imply that there is no
truth to reconstruct at all. The assumption of
scholars must be that if we ran the time tape back
we would indeed find the life of the historical
Buddha. This must be the scholar's assumption or
telos for purely methodological reasons. The
diversity of complex data, as in science, informs us
that our reconstructive histories contain a
legitimate warrant for a number of alternative
interpretations that may be chosen freely. Indeed
the authors of the six books to be discussed have
straight-forwardly stated their own attitudes toward
the material. Accordingly, a responsible
investigation into the Buddha's life must consider
many sources and perspectives because there is no
single, privileged interpretive slant warranted by
the available sources.
Many of the biographies that I have consulted in
preparation for this review reflect the division
between fact and fiction or life and legend.
Consider the following titles and the relation
between the Buddha's life and teaching: Edward J.
Thomas's The Life of Buddha as Legend and History
(1927), Ernst Waldschmidt's Die Legende vom Leben
des Buddha (1929), Hermann Oldenberg's Buddha: Sein
Leben, seine Lehre, seine Gemeinde (1881), Carl
Friedrich Koeppen's Die Religion des Buddha und ihre
Entstehung (1857), W. Wassiljew's Der Buddhismus:
seine Dogmen, Geschichte und Literature (1860), E.
Senart's Essai sur la legende du Buddha (1875),
Richard Pischel's Leben und Lehre des Buddha (1906),
Alexander C. Korosi's The Life and Teachings of the
Buddha (1957), Theodor Simon's Buddha: Sein Leben,
seine Lehre und sein Einfluss bis auf unsere Zeit
(1908) , Herman Beckh's Buddha und seine Lehre
(1958), Herbert Gunther's Der Buddha und seine Lehre
(1956), Thera Naraada's The Buddha and his Teachings
(1964), and finally, P. Bigandet's The Life or
Legend of Gaudama, The Buddha of the Burmese (1866).
The inductive tenor here is intended to emphasize
that an instructive demarcation between the Buddha's
historical life and teaching has been central to
Buddhist scholarship in the West for some time. It
is reminiscent of the Buddha's emphasis upon
distinguishing universal law from one's own life
story. Since the Buddha was apparently aware, by
some accounts, of the sort of glorification that
routinely accompanied the death of a perceived sage
(the Mahaviira of Jainism offers a case in point) he
purposefully redirected his follower's interests
away from his own narrative history and toward the
discovery of the universal dhamma and its
manifestation in the lives of each particular
person. In this way adherents were discouraged from
being overly devotional and encouraged to create
their own narrative story by empirically verifying
the meaning of the dhamma for themselves.
To return once again to our comparative
strategy, it is noteworthy that the doctrine of the
Christian incarnation--the universal law being made
manifest in the life and passion of Jesus of
Nazareth--has underscored for Christian theologians
the imperative of reconstructing the specific
historical events of Jesus' life. Since Yahweh, as
Lord of History, offers guidance to key individuals,
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thus influencing the linear unfolding of history,
the Old and New Testaments can best be interpreted,
by many theological accounts, as a history of the
fulfillment of the promises to Abraham. Jesus, as
the fulfillment of the last promise, is the Truth
made flesh, and thus the critical importance of his
days on earth. When Jesus' life is seen in this
historical perspective, his coming is interpreted as
the fulfillment of the purposes of Yahweh as
understood by the Old Testament prophets. The
facticity of Jesus' presence is thus given
tremendous value and significance in the context of
the successive fulfillment of the first of Yahweh's
promises given to Abraham: namely, that Abraham will
father a nation and that this nation will be
delivered to a promised land to be Yahweh's people.
From this perspective, one can better appreciate the
crucial requirement that Christian adherents not
only possess knowledge of, but also have faith in,
the life, the crucifixion, the resurrection, and
Messianic role of Jesus as the deliverer that had
been prophesied.
When considering the life of the historical
Buddha, however, I think we can now appreciate that
the stage is much different. The events of the
Buddha's life, and an analytical reconstruction of
those events, are not as central to the legacy of
the varied canonizations of his teachings. His
teachings and his personal story were, apparently by
his own instruction, to be clearly demarcated.
Biographies of the Buddha might, therefore, be
judged according to a different, and admittedly
slippery, criterion. Although historians of Buddhism
do correctly wish to separate the symbolic and
mythological from the actual, in an important sense
the teachings themselves suggest that the dichotomy
between fact and fiction must not be made central.
III. REVIEW AND COMMENTARY
The discussion thus far has prepared the way for the
"clear and succinct" account of each text mentioned
at the onset. The relative proportion of fact and
fiction employed by each author will be described.
Fortunately, each author has been most self-critical
and self-effacing in his preface; hence, this does
not require guesswork on my part. Since the six
accounts to be considered are written for very
different audiences and are written by monks and
scholars alike, the reader would do well to remember
that the Buddhist teachings themselves warn against
assuming a single criterion against which a
diversity of persectives should ultimately be
judged.
I begin with David and Indrani Kalupahana's
text, The Way of Siddhartha (1982), because this
work provides an excellent example of a number of
points I have mentioned concerning the interplay of
fact and fiction. From one perspective the book is
entirely fiction. Written in the storybook style of
Herman Hesse's classic, it is wonderfully readable
and provides the reader an intimate encounter with
the life, intellectual development, and pedagogical
style of Siddhaartha. At the same time, the
Kalupahana text could very well be the most factual
presentation of Siddhaartha's life, especially in
terms of the development of his philosophy.
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David Kalupahana's familiarity with the Pali Canon
bolsters the manuscript with realism, so much so
that the fictionalized style ought not to be
confused with the real substance of the text. The
authors have reconstructed a detailed chronological
history of the Buddha's intellectual development. By
relying upon early Buddhist texts, an attempt has
been made to eliminate the mythological in favor of
portraying the philosophical positions of those with
whom Siddhaartha interacted intellectually. In this
way, the book's philosophical richness is its most
distinctive feature. The extreme pre-Buddhist
positions of annihilationism as represented by the
materialist thinkers (AAjiivikas) and eternalism as
represented by the Upani.sadic thinkers, between
which the Buddha's philosophical "middle path" is
constructed, are represented by leading
personalities in the text. For those familiar with
David Kalupahana's works in Early Buddhist
philosophy (Early Buddhist Philosophy: A Historical
Analysis and Causality: The Central Philosophy of
Buddhism), the underlying philosophical menu of The
Way of Siddhartha will be most apparent.
The neat and compact portrayal of the historical
Buddha's steady intellectual growth as seen through
his relationships with his teachers is admirable. At
the same time, however, the student of Buddhism
would do well to bear in mind that the philosophical
development of the Buddha may be depicted as almost
too neat and economical. That is, in the
Kalupahanas' text most of the Buddha's yearnings
seem to arise in response to some deep moral or
intellectual concern. The social, economic, and
political climate of the day have been mentioned by
other authors--Carrithers and Nakamura, for
example--who attempt to widen the discussion of the
influences upon the Buddha's most important
decisions and overall world view. In particular,
other biographers believe it is likely that these
nonintellectual influences must have entered into
the Buddha's calculus and thus affected seriously
the time and place of his movements. However, for an
intimate acquaintance with the moral backbone,
intellectual consistency, and charismatic
pedagogical style of the Buddha's personality, the
Kalupahanas' book remains unsurpassed. Since the
Buddha's parting instructions encouraged followers
to concentrate upon the teachings, I believe that
the Kalupahanas' focus upon the Buddha's
philosophical development is entirely appropriate.
Hajime Nakamura's Gotama Buddha (1977) is, for
quite different reasons, also in a class by itself.
Originally published in Japanese as part one (Gotama
Buddha no shogai (Life of Gotama Buddha) of his 1958
Japanese publication Gotama Buddha (Kyoto: Hozokan),
this book offers a condensed (154 pages with notes
and index) view of the historical Buddha.
Unfortunately, Nakamura's most extensive and
authoritative analytical reconstruction of the
Buddha's life, his 574-page Gotama Buddha (Tokyo:
Shunjuusha, 1969) (volume eleven of the Nakamura
Hajime zenshuu) , is still available only in
Japanese. In consideration of the author's access to
nearly all the sources available, this latter work
may well be the most thorough and rigorous
biographical account written in any language in the
world today. As dense and concise as it is, the
present English volume
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continues to fill a companion niche that has been
needed since the days when Hermann Oldenberg's 1881
publication, Buddha, Sein Leben, seine Lehre, seine
Gemeinde, was the uncontested definitive biography
for the Western world. Oldenberg's classic was
reprinted frequently by various publishers before it
was finally translated into English; a cursory
search in the Harvard Widener and Yenching Libraries
uncovered German editions in 1897, 1903, 1906, and
1914.
The Importance of Oldenberg's work may be
underscored by the recalling of several well-known
points pertaining to the history of Buddhist
scholarship. In Japan, at the end of the Meiji
period, scholars were sent to Europe to study
mechanics, law, medicine, political philosophy, and
so on as part of a well-orchestrated, methodical
effort to "catch up" with rapidly advancing
industrial societies at about the same time that
Japanese Buddhist scholars recognized that they had
fallen behind the European scholars of Buddhism, who
remained free from the internal distractions
occasioned by Buddhist sectarian debates and the
limited confines of Chinese-language-based Buddhist
scholarship. Accordingly, a new breed of young
Japanese scholars of Buddhism went to Europe and
South Asia to interact with more diverse language
communities in order to benefit from more detached
forms of textual interpretation/criticism and
greater familiarity with the earlier canonical
literature. Since books of the caliber of
Oldenberg's classic were considered mandatory
reading, the Japanese scholars were exposed to other
resources in German philosophy and literature as
well. The importance of the European French, German,
Italian, and Latin works that contributed most
authoritatively to Buddhist topics in the nineteenth
and early twentieth centuries is thus underscored.
(Many of these works are cited in the bibliography
accompanying this article.)
It was not until the 1920s that numerous English
biographies were published. As the Pali Text Society
gained prominence, there were no less than ten
influential biographies published in four years
(1925-]929)--six in English, three in German, and
one in Italian. Many of the editions that I
discovered during latenight excursions into the
bowels of the dustiest sections of our libraries
were from the personal collection of Charles R.
Lanman (Professor of Sanskrit at Harvard from 1880
to 1926) . The marginalia written in Professor
Lanman's own handwriting underscore the notion that,
at least for some experts, Oldenberg's work was
considered the standard against which all other
biographies were evaluated.
Nakamura's book is a companion to Oldenberg's in
the sense that it attempts to delineate fact from
fiction through a painstakingly thorough account of
a wide variety of texts available. In this regard,
Nakamura's consultation of Pali, Chinese, Sanskrit,
and Tibetan texts forms a basis of discussion that
is inclusive of a wider range of documents and
cultural artifacts than the Oldenberg classic. In
short, for a clear, authoritative, and balanced
account of the Buddha's life in a textbook format, I
believe Nakamura's treatment to be the best
available in English. The chapter divisions
reflecting the stages of the Buddha's life--I.
Birth, II. Youth, III. Search for the Way, IV.
Realization of the Truth, V. Preaching the
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Dharma, VI. Conversion of Influential Followers, and
VII. The Last Years--are concise, and in each case
give a sense of the many sources which Nakamura has
consulted. This traditional organization
accommodates a variety of uses in the classroom, for
which this volume was intended, while still giving a
sense of the rigor of Nakamura's investigations and
the inherent difficulties of attempting a coherent
reconstructive analysis.
Earl H. Brewster's The Life of Gotama Buddha was
originally established in 1926 as one of Trubner's
Oriental Series (I included it in the 1925 to 1929
flurry of biographies already cited). Brewster's
volume was reprinted in 1975 in India by the
Bhartiya Publishing House, Varanasi, and it is
reported that it will be reprinted in the near
future by AMS Press, New York. Brewster's work is
dated. The text relies exclusively upon the Pali
Canon as translated by Mrs. Rhys Davids. Brewster
arranged translations of primary texts in a
chronological fashion in order to allow the reader
access to some of the primary literature that is
relevant to the various events of the Buddha's life.
There is no commentary other than a four-page
preface. In its time, and to a limited extent now,
the work occupied a important niche as a primary
companion to narrative biographies written for
nonspecialists. The work's best feature is that it
gives the novice a sense of the style and tempo of
the original canon. As one not well-versed in the
original Pali Canon, I have benefited from
Brewster's book being close at hand. For example,
while reading S. Radhakrishnan's 1938 lecture to the
British Academy entitled "Gautama: The Buddha," I
could rely upon Brewster's work fairly effectively
as a companion to Radhakrishnan's text. Whenever
Radhakrishnan cited texts of the Pali Canon from
which he derived inspiration concerning the life of
the Buddha, I could more often than not find a
translation of the text in Brewster. Without a
developed commentary, I believe this sort of
activity to be the most common use of Brewster's
work that I can imagine. Although scholars
frequently praise Dr. and Mrs. Rhys Davids for their
energy, enthusiasm, and voluminous work, the Davids'
critical and organizational skills have come under
fire in recent years. As a case in point, Arthur
Lillies, in his 1974 publication The Life of the
Buddha, says Dr. Rhys Davids was "hardworking," but
an "untrained" and "confused thinker.'' As an
outside but attentive listener to these technical
debates among philologists, I rely upon Brewster's
translation with caution. For the general reader,
however, interested in accessing primary literature
concerning the life of the Buddha, the Brewster text
offers much in one volume.
The last three texts have less value for
professionals, but they do merit our attention, if
only to make it known that they exist and that
beginning students of Buddhism may be reading them.
These three books offer their own approach to the
material, which I do not mean to dismiss
offhandedly, but for scholarly purposes one can do
better by recommending Kalupahana, Nakamura, and
older biographies included in the selective list at
the end of this article.
Michael Carrithers' book, entitled The Buddha
(1983), is brief, 102 pages
P.316
including a two-page index. I like Carrithers'
account because of his sensitivity to many
sociological, political, and economic issues that
ought at least to be considered in discussions of
the Buddha's life. In five chapters--typically
divided into early life, the search for
enlightenment, the enlightenment itself, and
teaching--Carrithers provides interesting
descriptions of the cultural context of the
development of the Buddhist doctrines. This approach
offers novel explanations for the adaptability of
Buddhist teachings across the continents. Although
Carrithers relies solely upon the Pali Text Society
editions of the Theravaada canon (p. viii), it is
clear that he is not dependent upon them. Instead,
Carrithers is skeptical that even the earliest
texts, being significantly removed from the Buddha's
lifetime, can be the sole source of authority upon
which scholars should rely. Carrithers, therefore,
introduces atypical, but important, discussions of
the political scene. He challenges the common notion
that Siddhaartha's father was a king. At the time
and place of his birth, says Carrithers, that part
of the Gangetic civilization was probably ruled by
"oligarchies or councils of elders" and so "they did
not have kings in the strict sense" (p. 13).
Similarly, Carrithers challenges common assumptions
concerning the caste system, the centralization of
political authority along the lines of the Greek
polis, and the climate of social and intellectual
change during the Buddha's lifetime. It is possible
through these considerations to interpret
Siddhaartha's Socratic questioning of authority--the
Brahmin caste, for example--as an act consistent
with overall social change. When reading Carrithers
I often have the impression that he, like Jaspers,
sees Siddhaartha as a self-questioning Socrates that
must be understood in the context of great economic,
political, and social change.
Nikkyo Niwano's Shakyamuni Buddha: A Narrative
Biography (1980) and A. Saddhatissa's The Life of
the Buddha (1976) form an interesting, more
devotional, couplet. Both write most
sympathetically, often adoringly, towards Buddhism;
Saddhatissa is a monk born in Ceylon and ordained in
1926 (currently holding the rank of Mahaathera), and
Niwano is President of the Rissho Koseikai (an order
of five million Buddhist lay people) . While
Saddhatissa declares that his purpose is to develop
the "compassionate and humane nature of Gautama
himself" (p. 7), Niwano "envisioned a biography that
simply related the life of the founder of Buddhism
and the lives closest to him without spending a
great deal of time explaining or interpreting his
profound teachings on the history and sociology of
ancient India" (p. 7). There is a third book, not
reviewed here per se, but so similar to this last
group that I should at least mention it. Daisaku
Ikeda's Watakushi no Shakuson-kan (My View of
Shakyamuni), originally published in 1973 by Bungei
Shunjuu in Tokyo, has been translated by Burton
Watson and has been available since 1976 under the
title of The Living Buddha: An Interpretative
Biography (New York: Weatherhill). This volume, like
Niwano's and Saddhatisaa's, is devotional, highly
interpretative, and is based to a significant degree
upon the personal reflections of a Buddhist
practitioner. By their own description these authors
share a deeply personal and intimate connec-
P.317
tion with the life of the Buddha. Accordingly, it
would indeed be unfair of me as reviewer, and you as
reader, to expect their contents to rival the
scholarly demands of Kalupahana or Nakamura.
The Saddhatissa and Niwano books are brief
indeed. Saddhatissa's text is eighty-nine pages,
including bibliography and index; Niwano's is 128
pages, with no index, but it does include
photographic reproductions of Buddhist monuments in
India and a helpful glossary. Saddhatissa's work is
clear and concise. Predictably he makes the point,
from the perspective of the Buddhist practitioner,
that the issue concerning the intermingling of fact
and fiction regarding the life of the Buddha is of
little consequence. The real issues concern the
symbolic quality of the Buddha's life, personality,
and character. I underscore this telling point for,
as a reviewer, I believe it will instruct readers
wisely concerning the appropriate circumstances for
utilizing this work.
Niwano's work is similarly not suited for
scholarly discourse, but does offer a testament to
the Buddha in the fashion of the Saddhatissa volume.
The text is stylistically in the tradition of Hesse
and Kalupahana (a fictionalized portrayal) but
offers neither the literary power of Hesse nor the
philosophical content of the Kalupahanas' joint
project. Niwano has been forthright in his
introduction, stating, "I have purposively refrained
from discussing the Buddha's teachings and the
doctrines of Buddhism in this book." He then offers
suggestions for further reading. The author states
that his purpose is to stimulate interest in the
life of the Buddha, hoping that if he is successful,
readers will pursue this topic by consulting
additional sources. I recommend consulting
Kalupahana and Nakamura.
IV. CONCLUSION: FACT, FICTION, AND REFLECTIONS ON
BEING HUMAN
I can summarize the theme of this feature review by
relying upon Kipling's 1891 "Ballad of the East and
West." If you approach the subject of the Buddha's
life expecting an unambiguous, succinct, and highly
authoritative account, you may be left disappointed.
In your frustration you may join the camp of many
who routinely misquote the spirit of Kipling's
ballad and utter:
On East is East and West is West, and never the
twain shall meet....
I hope that my preliminary remarks and critical
commentaries convey some sense of the complex
difficulties for not only reviewing, but also
writing, and appreciating, biographies of the
historical Buddha. (The difficulties for the casual
reader are many, for, according to my quick count,
there are at least thirteen published biographies in
Western languages in the last thirteen years.) The
difficult, but not a priori impossible, collective
task of reconstructing the life of the historical
Buddha on the basis of texts and cultural artifacts
may now bring to light Kipling's belief in the
possibility of overcoming culturally based
presuppositions and language-related obstacles that
sometimes dam the flow of comparative studies.
P.318
Oh, East is East and West is West, and never the
twain shall meet,
Till Earth and Sky stand presently at god's great
Judgment Seat;
But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor
Breed, nor Birth,
Whentwo strong men stand face to face, tho' they
come from the ends of the earth!
In particular the presuppositions concerning the
relative merit of both fact and fiction must be
scrutinized thoroughly before judging too quickly
the strengths and weaknesses of biographical
studies. Writing biographies and reviews of
biographers is a tricky business. Although
philosophers of history have pointed to some of the
inherent difficulties occasioned by attempting to
record past events and personalities, I wonder
whether or not it is meaningful to ask if there is
such a thing as a single most effective hermeneutic
device available to the historian. Surely, the
question already tends to presuppose that there may
be a variety of intentional orientations, with
corresponding heuristic tools, that can be justified
independently according to different criteria.
Although I acknowledge that this variety
characterizes comparative studies, I would argue
that for "two strong" people ever to be successful
at dissolving the distinctions between "East' and
"West," and "Border" and "Breed" (thus fulfilling
Kipling's prophecy), they would have to start on a
common epistemological ground. At the axiomatic
level, for example, we might recognize that the two
participants share, as Homo sapiens, similiar
epistemological apparatuses through which they gain
information about the world. We might call these
shared eidetic structures of experience
"homoversals"(6) because they describe that which is
experientially universalizable for human beings.
Homoversals would, therefore, be representative of
the most primordial axiomatic cross-cultural common
denominators that are necessary to legitimate
comparative studies. The presence of homoversals
would imply, in opposition to the premises of
existentialism, that we are thrown into the world
with shared experiential equipment (the essences of
our experiential manifold precede existence).
These homoversals describe the nature aspect of
nature/nurture debates. Since many homoversal
structures may have developed, to a significant
degree, in concert with a complex array of selective
pressures that drive the rate of biological
evolution, perhaps research in neurobiology,
cognitive psychology, genetics, morphology and
developmental biology might best be equipped to lay
bare their specific influence upon our experiential
manifold.(7) Since Homo sapiens is neotonous,(8) the
presence of homoversals does not deny the plasticity
of these experiential mechanisms. Accordingly, the
diversity of our cultural evolution informs the
manner in which experience is habitually processed
(the nurture aspect), thus giving rise to
differences in the value and significance attached
to different patterns of experience. From this
perspective, Kipling's two participants would have
to cultivate the skills necessary to suspend
contingent cultural baggage, for example,
internalized attitudes (nurture) regarding fact and
fiction, and thus become intimate with each other at
a more primordial level (nature). I
P.319
would guess that at the level of individual persons
this phenomenological rhetoric presents no problem
and may be interpreted as a simple rehearsal of
Kipling's more eloquent and compact poetry. However,
at the level of the relationship between individual
person and historical text or artifact, I wonder
whether it is ever possible to establish an intimacy
as powerful as that between two indivduals. If the
dynamic quality of Kipling's interpersonal intimacy
cannot, for some reason, exist between persons and
texts/artifacts, then the so-called "fuzzy" mixture
of fact and fiction discussed herein is not fuzzy at
all; it simply is. The fuzziness is not a
ramification of scholarly tools or lack thereof; it
is rather descriptive of the limits of our
epistemological apparatus. According to this
scenario, the quest for certainty in reconstructive
histories and biographical studies, capable of
clearly and uniformly distinguishing fact from
fiction, reflects a desire to impose more meaning
than may be warranted. If we seriously consider the
possibility of some of these inherent
epistemological obstacles, then we may find
ourselves, at some time in the future, criticizing
today's historians/biographers for assuming naively
the possibility of greater certainty than is
warranted.
NOTES
1. Hajime Nakamura, Gotama Buddha (Tokyo:
Buddhist Books International 1977). pp. 4-5.
2. Why is it that in the study of the history of
science and the discovery of law-like events
(theoretical constructions) this insight is so
obvious?
3. A. L. Basham, The Wonder That Was India (New
York: Grove Press, 1954), specifically see chapter
3.
4. I would not argue for an exclusive preference
for this sort of historical documentation. The
unconscious coloring of historical events occasioned
by a necessarily limited culturally/morally defined
perspective is, of course, a main concern of any
historian, biographer, or journalist. In
consideration of this very important hermeneutic and
epistemic point, it must be added that no totally
un-fictionalized account is ever theoretically
possible. The separation between fact and fiction
celebrated in Western historiography, as opposed to
the early Indian civilization, is thus a matter of a
difference in degree and not a difference in kind.
5. Nakamura, Gotama Buddha, p. 2, and K. D. P.
Wickremesinghe, The Biography of the Buddha
(Columbo: Gunaratma Press (by the author), 1972),
pp. 271-320.
6. The term "homoversal" was first proposed by
Henry Rosemont, Jr. in a paper entitled "Against
Relativism," delivered at the 1984 Society for Asian
and Comparative Philosophy Conference (Honolulu,
Hawaii), to be published in Interpreting Across
Boundaries, edited by Gerald Larson and Eliot
Deutsch (Princeton University Press). For a brief
summary of Rosemont's use of the term and its
relevance to the conference theme, see David Edward
Shaner, "Interpreting Across Boundaries: A
Conference of the Society for Asian and Comparative
Philosophy," Philosophy East and West 36, no. 2
(April 1986).
7. I have qualified this last statement slightly
by stating"to a significant degree," insofar as I
do not wish to imply that the current utility of all
homoversal structures justifies a reconstruction of
their evolutionary developmental pathways occasioned
by strictly adaptationist explanations. Similarly, I
say a "complex array of selective pressures, "
insofar as it has been forcefully argued within the
last decade that the target(s) of selection may
include a hierarchy of levels encompassing not only
individual phenotypes (Darwin), but also genes and
species.
8. "Neotony" literally means holding on to
youth. In evolutionary theory it refers to the
retention of the juvenile characteristics of one's
ancestors (as opposed to "recapitulation"--a
nineteenth-
P.320
century term refering to the terminal addition of
developmental traits occasioned by an acceleration
of the rate of embryonic development) . While
"recapitulation" stood at the foundation of dated
"ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny" rhetoric (which
was thought to explain, for example, the formation
of gill slits in the early stages of human
embryological development), neotony stands today as
a cornerstone for more accurately understanding
human evolution. Human evolution has proceeded by a
slowing down of the developmental rates of primates
(human adults more closely resemble juvenile chimps
than adult chimps).
The point, in this context, is an
epistemological one. The rate of human development
is slowed down so much that we are born as living
embryos, thus requiring an abnormally long
dependence upon our parent guardian/teachers. This
long childhood, as it has sometimes been called,
suggests the importance of cultural evolution
(nurture) in human development. As a neotonous
species, Homo sapiens is characterized by a genuine
(nature) epistemic plasticity. Part of our
evolutionary success as shaper of landscapes, as
opposed to occupiers of limited niches, can be
explained by our youthful abilities as accelerated
learning machines assimilating languages, role
models, and so on. The sedimented habits of cultural
imprinting in the earlier years of development
suggest a close relationship between different
patterns of cultural evolution (nurture) and the
prior biological developmental process that
culminates in the birth of a healthy fetus
characterized by tremendous epistemic plasticity
(nature).
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