The brevity of Metaphor and Literalism in Buddhism: The Doctrinal History of Nirvana seems to belie the potentially immense nature of the title. However, halfway through the brief Introduction to his first major-length publication, Soonil Hwang offers his rationale for limiting the scope of the work by opting to ignore (p. 3), or rather postpone (p. 4), the Mahāyāna interpretations of nirvana (nirvān?a). This sets up the much less daunting challenge of tracing the history of nirvana by confining the study to non-Mahāyāna India. Thus, “Southern” is used to designate the Theravāda and “Northern” to refer to the two other major Indian non-Mahāyāna schools, the Sarvāstivāda-Vaibhās?ika and the Sautrāntika. The reader should also be warned that, while it adds intrigue to the history, the author’s insistence on calling Buddhaghosa a “northerner” (pp. 46, 74) often blurs the just-mentioned distinction. There are those who might believe that lexicographers ought to stay well clear of ‘nirvana,’ a word to be left on the “indefinable” shelf along with its ineffable relatives, such as ‘satori’ and ‘God.’ But Soonil Hwang is convinced that his mentor, Richard Gombrich, is on to something in tracing the meaning back to the sacred fires of early Brahmanism, supplying the Buddha with an analogy for the ‘blowing out’ of the three ‘fires’: passion, hatred, and delusion. In classic Gombrich style, the hypothesis is at once historical and culturally embedded, and, at least from a Buddhological point of view, textually justifiable. However, in tracing the meaning of the word ‘nirvana,’ one cannot but sense a gaping omission in pre-Buddhist Indian history (p. 9), and though likely due to lack of data rather than lack of research, the omission restricts the scope of the analysis.
