When Did Buddhism Become Anti-Brahmanical? The Case of the Missing Soul
Abstract. Many textbooks for Introduction to Buddhism or World Religions courses treat Buddhism as a competitor of either Hinduism or Brahmanism by asserti
| Published in: | Journal of the American Academy of Religion |
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| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Oxford University Press
[2018]
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| In: |
Journal of the American Academy of Religion
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| Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains: | B
Tipiṭaka
/ Canon
/ Buddhism
/ Anātman
/ Brahmanism
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| RelBib Classification: | AX Inter-religious relations BK Hinduism, Jainism, Sikhism BL Buddhism |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (Verlag) Volltext (doi) |
| Summary: | Abstract. Many textbooks for Introduction to Buddhism or World Religions courses treat Buddhism as a competitor of either Hinduism or Brahmanism by asserti Many textbooks for Introduction to Buddhism or World Religions courses treat Buddhism as a competitor of either “Hinduism” or “Brahmanism” by asserting that Buddhism teaches that there is no eternal self or soul and Hinduism teaches that there is. I ask whether these assumptions hold up for one of the earliest sources about Buddhism, the Pali canon. Using statistical analysis of 5,126 suttas or “discourses,” I argue that there is little evidence that the doctrine of soullessness was preached to “convert” representatives of the Brahmanical tradition to Buddhism. On the contrary, it would appear that Brahmin Buddhists had their own canon-within-a-canon that simply avoided the topic of soullessness. Rather than seeing the canon as “what the Buddha taught,” the argument here will present canonicity itself as one of the stakes in a nexus of power where different communities strove to assert their version of Buddhism to be “what the Buddha taught.” |
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| ISSN: | 1477-4585 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: American Academy of Religion, Journal of the American Academy of Religion
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1093/jaarel/lfx024 |