Back to Events of Week No. 2: Monday 07th January 2019 to Sunday 13th January 2019
Tuesday | 06:00 PM | Scriptural Authority, Blasphemy and Interpretation: The Revenge of Ciñcā the Malevolent in Lives of the Buddha Alan Wagner, Collège de France, East Asian Civilisations Research Centre (CRCAO) The story of Ciñcā the Malevolent, who is said to have slandered the Buddha by pretending to be pregnant and accusing him of being the delinquent father, offers us insights into controversial questions in Buddhist ethics as well as problems of transcultural interpretation. The account found in Dharmarakṣa's 竺法護 (230?-316) Lives of the Buddha (生經, T154) presents striking differences from those found in other Chinese and Pāli sources, raising issues of scriptural precedence and authority for both pious Buddhists and modern scholars. I will argue that these evolutions were driven by debates in India over competing scriptural understandings of the Buddha's karma, while also revealing an unexpected variety among Buddhist approaches to the transgression of "blasphemy". We shall see that these divergences have likewise impacted the transmission of this story to the modern West, as Édouard Chavannes (1865-1918) found the interpretive challenges they pose so daunting that he ommitted the chapter on Ciñcā from his French translation of Dharmarakṣa's text. Address Karl Jaspers Centre Room 212 Voßstraße 2, Geb. 44 69115 Heidelberg Homepage Event Organizer Heidelberg Centre for Transcultural Studies (HCTS) Homepage Organizer Contact |