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The Poetic Path to Awakening: Reading the Buddhist Literary Text as a Form of Practice in Aśvaghoṣa’s Mahākāvya |
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| Author |
Regan, Julie (撰)
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| Date | 2016 |
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| Pages | 306 |
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| Publisher | Harvard University |
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| Publisher Url |
https://www.harvard.edu/
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| Location | Cambridge, MA, US [劍橋, 麻薩諸塞州, 美國] |
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| Content type | 博碩士論文=Thesis and Dissertation |
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| Language | 英文=English |
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| Degree | doctor |
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| Institution | Harvard University |
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| Department | Committee on the Study of Religion |
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| Advisor | Gyatso, Janet |
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| Publication year | 2016 |
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| Keyword | Literature; Asian; Gender Studies |
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| Abstract | This thesis proposes a new approach to reading and understanding a Buddhist literary work as a form of practice relying on aesthetic pleasure to engage readers on a textual path that gradually awakens understanding. Its starting point is the claim of Aśvaghoṣa, the first known author of the genre of classical Sanskrit literature known as mahākāvya, that he has told truth in literary form in order to reach an audience interested only in pleasure and not liberation. My investigation of his second century CE works, Buddhacarita and Saundarananda, through the lens of this statement, together with traditional Indic commentaries on dramatic and poetic literature and contemporary theories of pleasure and textuality, suggests that the literary features of such works perform important functions in introducing Buddhist insights to their readers by focusing their attention in reading practices that may resemble and introduce more traditional forms of Buddhist training. Through my exploration of the formal strategies Aśvaghoṣa's works rely on to engage readers on a literary path to truth, this thesis seeks to contribute to the development of new methodologies for reading Buddhist literary works. While scholars have increasingly recognized the need to address the prominence of literary features in Buddhist textual traditions, many in Buddhist Studies continue to view the formal features of a text as distinct from what is presumed to be its content and repository of the meaning their interpretations seek. The literary methods I propose for reading Buddhacarita and Saundarananda challenge this assumption that the truth or meaning of a work can be extracted from its form as a whole and highlight the signifying powers of the poetic, dramatic and narrative features of these works, which actively engage readers in the production of meaning. Adopting methods that enable us to better read Buddhist literary texts in this way thus not only improves our analysis of how such signifying features operate to provoke insight but also promises to refine our scholarly understanding of what both emerging and classic works in the field have to say to us today. |
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| Table of contents | Chapter 1: Introduction 1
I. What do Buddhist Literary Texts do?
Reading is an Experience
Buddhist Practice/Literary Practice
II. Ways of Reading
Orientalism and the Philological Approach
Recent Philological Work on Aśvaghoṣa
Recent Readings of the Literary Texts of Aśvaghoṣa
III. A Literary Reading of Aśvaghoṣa
Reading is Translation and Translation is Reading
Literary vs. Literal Translation
Reading with (Asian) Theory
Reading with (Western) Theory
Reading with a Global or Planetary Lens
Reading through the Lens of Aśvaghoṣa's Statement
Chapter Outline
Chapter 2: Buddhism, Language and Literary Form 48
I. Buddhist Views of Language
The Buddha’s Silence
Buddhist Philosophical Views of Language
Silence is Not Completely Silent
Ways of Saying
II. The Development of Buddhist Literary Practices
The Brahmanical Inheritance
Kāvya and Buddhist Discourse
Literary Lives of the Buddha
III. Buddhism in the Early First Millennium C.E.
Textualization & Transformation
Paths, Practices & Presence
IV. Poetics as a Vehicle
The Mirror of Literature
VI. Literature (kāvya) and Literary Form in Aśvaghoṣa
The Heroic Character & Theme
Poetic Expertise & Imagination
Metrical Composition
Chapter 3: The Pleasures in and of the Text 104
I. The Pleasure of Courtly Culture
II. The Erotics of the Middle Way
III. Textual Erotics: Rasa
IV. Practices of the Pleasure of the Text
V. Mahākāvya as a Practice of Cultivation
VI. Other Practices of Textual Pleasure
Chapter 4: Telling Truth 140
I. The Buddha and the Poet
II. The Path of Narrative
III. The Structure of Mahākāvya’s Dramatic Narrative
IV. The Drama of Mahākāvya
Stages of the Path in Saundarananda
Rhythms of the Plot
Stages of the Path in Buddhacarita, Act I
Stages of the Path in Buddhacarita, Act II
V. Practices of the Pleasure of the Text on its Path
Chapter 5: The Form (or Guise) of Literature 176
I. Poetry and Truth
Truth, Lies, and the Guise of Reality
II. Seeing Through Figures
Bridges
Mirrors
Action Figures
Activations
Integrations
Chapter 6: Liberation 206
I. Seeing the Truth
Seeing Bridges
Darśan, Recollection & Recognition
II. From Pleasure to Liberation
Seeing as Mirror
Mokṣa
Seeing Actions
Seeing and Becoming Seen
Seeing the Buddha
Buddhist Seeing
The Stages of the Path of the Buddha’s Awakening
III. Seeing the Scene
IV. Breaking Through/The Break in the Text
“Grasping” Meaning or Recognition?
Appendix I: Awakening: Buddhacarita, Canto XIV 252
Appendix II: Notes on a Literary Translation 277
Appendix III: Important Terms 284
Bibliography 288
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| Hits | 324 |
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| Created date | 2021.12.14 |
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