東亞佛教; 東南亞佛教; 比較研究; East Asian Buddhism=東亞佛教; Southeast Asian Buddhism=東南亞佛教; Indigenization=本土化; Sinification=中國化; Sanskritization=梵語化
摘要
Based on extensive geographic and ecological similarities, albeit of quite different scale, I compare the Buddhist traditions of East Asia and continental Southeast Asia during the first and second millenia of the common era. I show that East Asian Buddhism is older and far better documented than its Southeast Asian counterpart, and that the enterprise of translation meant that it evolved over time in East Asia in an organic fashion. Buddhism was certainly present in Southeast Asia during the first millenium, but the nature and extent of its presence there is difficult to gauge. In addition, during the second millenium Buddhism in continental Southeast Asia came to emphasize the Pāli canon as the standard by which religious authenticity was to be judged, based on shared conceptions of religious purity and orthodoxy. Based on this analysis I speculate that there is a parallel between the East Asian emphasis on a discovery model of spiritual training and its organic historical development, and a similar parallel in Southeast Asian Buddhism between a purification model of individual perfection that resembles what occurs there in the demands for orthodoxy in social movements. Finally, I suggest that the analysis of publically chartered religious foundations in the formation of Southeast Asian fiduciary institutions may suggest new avenues for the study of East Asian Buddhism, where negative Confucian models of the economic dimensions of religion have dominated scholarship to date.
