GANDHĀRAN AVADĀNAS: BRITISH LIBRARY inline image FRAGMENTS 1-3 AND 21 AND SUPPLEMENTARY FRAGMENTS A-C . By Timothy Lenz . Gandhāran Buddhist Texts, Vol . 6 . Seattle : University of Washington Press , 2010 . Pp . 192 + 58 , illustrations. $85.00 .
摘要
The Gandhāran Buddhist Texts series offers editions, translations, and studies of the British Library's collection of Buddhist manuscripts written in the Gāndhārī language and in the script, which date from the first century CE. This volume examines four or five fragmentary scrolls containing avadāna‐s, or stories, all written in the same hand—by the same monk, it seems, who wrote the series of previous‐life stories that Lenz discussed in Gandhāran Buddhist Texts, volume 3. The manuscript fragments comprise twenty‐one avadāna‐s, all tantalizingly brief. Most contain little more than a title, a main character, and a skeletal plot, with instructions that the text should be expanded “according to the model.” These stories address a wide variety of issues, from the disappearance of the Dharma to the history of the first Buddhist Council after the Buddha's nirvana, and (unlike later avadāna‐s) are less concerned with karma and its rewards. In a clear and concise fashion, Lenz explains the paleography, phonology, and morphology of these stories and then presents the reconstructed texts with a translation and commentary. Lenz also explores important questions about the early practice of Buddhism in India, puzzling over the purpose of these writing exercises and the role of avadānists, specialists in writing and reciting edifying stories for Buddhist or would‐be Buddhist audiences. These schematic stories are fascinating puzzles, rough drafts for Buddhist literature to come, and Lenz is an excellent guide for making sense of them.
