Head, Eyes, Flesh, and Blood: Giving Away the Body in Indian Buddhist Literature. By Reiko Ohnuma. . Columbia University Press, 2006. 392 pages. $45.00.
摘要
In Head, Eyes, Flesh, and Blood, Reiko Ohnuma presents a wide-ranging exploration of the distinguishing characteristics and central themes of a body of Buddhist narrative literature, and situates that exploration within broader conversations in the study of religion about “the gift” and conceptions of the body. At the same time, however, she also seeks to develop an ambitious argument, positing “two entire sides of the Buddhist tradition and complexes of thought and practice that seem to be brought together, over and over again, by the gift-of-the-body genre” (271): the “ethos of the jātaka” (characterized by the “perfections” undertaken by the bodhisattva) and the “ethos of the avadāna” (characterized by the “devotions” carried out by “ordinary Buddhists”). This fundamental dichotomy provides the primary lens through which Ohnuma analyzes the narratives in question.
Although the precise contours of this argument are not made fully explicit until the conclusion of the book, Ohnuma initially delineates the “two sides” in question in the course of proposing that “gift-of-the-body” stories constitute a genre (Chapter 1). While noting that “genres are always grounded in the critic's explanatory purpose, defined by the critic herself in order to achieve certain ends, and constitutively powerful [sic] of the texts being examined,” Ohnuma grounds her relatively ahistorical approach in an attempt to imagine how a “qualified and competent Indian Buddhist reader” might interpret these stories (33–34). She joins other scholars in positing a basic distinction between the two broader genres in which “gift-of-the-body” stories are found: jātakas and avadānas. While these genres overlap in several respects, they can be distinguished, Ohnuma argues, in terms of ethos. The jātaka genre is defined by its focus on the radical path of moral perfection undertaken by the bodhisattva, whereas the avadāna genre typically demonstrates the benefits of …
