Early Buddhist Discourses by John J. HolderReview by: Justin McDanielJournal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 126, No. 4 (Oct. - Dec., 2006), pp. 615-617Published by: American Oriental SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20064561 .

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Reviews of Books 615

datta 10-20" should read "Buddhadatta 19-20"; "thorn, posonous [sic] 402" should read "thorn, poi sonous 401"; "Ye shes di [sic] 417" should read "Ye shes sde 496"; other incorrect page references include "Blo ldan ses [sic] rab 593," "Pind, Ollie [sic] 586," "Yeh tu 307"). In the index and text, as

well as in the notes, transcriptions of the names of Tibetan places, authors, and titles of texts suffer from the lack of consistent transliteration and from general misspellings.

However, these inconsequential points do not undermine the quality of the contents of the present volume and its unmatched usefulness as a reference tool. It brings together a number of authors and works of great importance that are as yet not well known, and its introduction provides a practical overview of the main themes characteristic of the period.

The first volume of the Encyclopedia is now accessible online (http://faculty.washington.edu/ kpotter/). It is my hope that in the future other volumes will be added to this website, as it would increase the convenience of the Encyclopedia and would offer a solution to the above-mentioned issue of layout and readability. In addition, and more important when it comes to texts that have not yet been translated or comprehensively studied, it would enable easy and continuous updating.

PASCALE HUGON UNIVERSITY OF LAUSANNE/IKGA VIENNA

Early Buddhist Discourses. By JOHN J. HOLDER. Indianapolis: HACKETT PUBLISHING, 2006. Pp. xxiii + 216.

While John J. Holder's translation and edition of twenty early Buddhist discourses adds nothing to the scholarly understanding of early Buddhism, it does provide an inexpensive and clear introduc tion to Sutta(nta)-pitaka Buddhist literature. However, it is unclear why a new inexpensive intro duction is needed. Every Buddhist Studies scholar's office bookshelves are littered with introductions to Buddhism and translated anthologies of Buddhist texts, sent as free copies in hopes that the pro fessor will order multiple copies for an Introduction to Buddhism, Introduction to Asian Religions, or Introduction to World Religions course. The twenty discourses that Holder has chosen do not add to the standard Western canon of Pali, Tibetan, and Sanskrit texts first produced by T. W. Rhys-Davids,

Henry Clarke Warren, E. A. Burtt, and Lucien Stryk, among others, and, since early Mahayana texts are excluded, this book would have to be supplemented for any "Introduction to Buddhism" course. Since Thanissaro Bhikkhu's two-volume Handful of Leaves, a translation and introduction of early Buddhist discourses, is available for free ("gift of the dhamma"), and is much more comprehensive and elegantly introduced, Holder's new volume is a relative superfluous offering. His translations,

while very readable, do not offer any radical alternative reading or improve on equally readable trans lations by Horner, Thanissaro, and others.

There are more fundamental problems though, not with Holder's translation and introduction, but with the entire idea of introducing English-reading students to Buddhism through a collection of Pali discourses drawn solely from the Sutta(nta)-Pitaka. Holder justifies this in his introduction by empha sizing that these discourses are canonical and therefore constitute the "essential teachings" of the

Buddha. However, Holder uses this justification without reference to any of the rich literature on the formation of canon(s) in early Buddhism. In the view of one of the great scholars of early Pali litera ture, K. R. Norman, a canon of religious texts can either be closed or open. By closed, he means that it consists of a fixed number of texts or utterances, to which all additions would be considered the

work of theologians, not the work of the prophet or first promoter of the faith. Norman's study of the canonical tradition of Theravadin Buddhists shows that, even though they claim to have a closed canon, many of the works contained therein are not and do not claim to be the words of the Buddha. Therefore, other parameters for canonicity, chronological, topical, etc., must be examined. The prob lems with the canonization in Buddhism have been discussed in detail also by S. Collins, von

Hinuber, Luiders, Blackburn, Freiberger, Allon, and J. Samuels. This critical analysis of the way the canon was formed by different lineages and communities in South Asia and later in Southeast Asia,

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616 Journal of the American Oriental Society 126.4 (2006)

Tibet, and beyond has not lessened the value of studying the so-called early discourses, but has called

into question the notions of "essential teachings," "succinct expressions," and "basic doctrines," to

which Holder gives a brief introduction. Different Buddhist transmitters were collecting and commenting on a wide array of teachings in the

first five hundred years of Buddhism, and there was much cross-fertilization with Jaina and Brahmanic

literature. Anthologies were made and re-made; there were "internal" commentaries in the "canon."

These points of encounter, manipulation, and creative engagement reflect an episteme where classical

and canonical texts were for a long time neither sacrosanct nor static. Closure of the canon came at

different points in different communities. Moreover, the content of that closed canon has not been

agreed upon. The canon in present-day communities is, in practice, fluid and open. In Thailand, Burma,

Laos, and Cambodia, for example, the choice of source texts for pedagogical use is wide-ranging and most often non-canonical. There is nothing like Holder's anthology, for example, in Thai or Burmese, where non-canonical and even vernacular texts are nearly always included in any anthology (sankhep),

curriculum, or sermon series. In pre-modern and modern Thailand and Laos the term Tipitaka (Tri

pitakalTripidok) refers not just to the traditional "three baskets" (i.e., the canon) assembled by the

Mahavihara school in Sri Lanka over 1500 years ago, but to all types of religious books. Speaking

directly to Holder's choice of Sutta(nta)-Pitaka discourses (like the Kalama, Tevijja, and Sigalovada among others), in Pali Buddhist societies these discourses are often included in indigenous antholo gies alongside commentaries on the Jatakas and Dhammapada, as well as narrative sections of the

Vinaya-Tipitaka and commentaries on the Abhidhamma. Maintaining the closed integrity of the

Sutta(nta)-Tipitaka has been largely a practice of Western scholars of Buddhism. There are many ways to define a canon. I want to emphasize the importance of examining how

texts were used in an educational context, in what could have been the non-standardized and peculiar curriculum of a certain region and certain time. Throughout Pali Buddhist history there has been a

concerted effort to translate and comment on Pali texts, both canonical and extra-canonical. This con stant referral to and manipulation of Indic textual methods, rhetorical styles, tropes, and themes of the past in order to explain and manage the present were part of the general commentarial and trans lation (oral, textual, architectural, and artistic) culture of South and Southeast Asia. Commentaries,

anthologies, and translations produced by Buddhist communities obfuscated and elucidated source texts with inventive methods of teaching vocabulary, grammar, and occasionally meanings of a seem ingly random collection of Pali texts. The pedagogical methods and physical features of the manu

scripts show what sources these texts listened to, read, collected, and handled. Therefore, we have to

see them as intertextual-constantly referring to other texts, oral commentaries, and ritual/liturgical contexts. We must understand the gestures and the aesthetics that surround any pedagogical text.

And that's what Holder's text is, in the end, a pedagogical text. Even though this text was not

designed for the student or scholar interested in the social life of texts or the emic/etic distinctions in

approaches to Buddhism, it also cannot be considered a collection of literature for serious philosoph ical reflection or philological analysis. Holder's book is for students. However, it is a pedagogical text that ignores the diverse practices of Buddhist pedagogy. Not only has Holder ignored the oft

discussed feature of early Buddhist communities, that texts were transmitted orally, he also elides the

fact that later canonical and non-canonical manuscripts were most often read aloud among a group of

students and teachers. He has also ignored the fact that, according to some of our oldest manuscript

evidence, creative oral commentaries were offered in this communal reading that slowly became part

of the tradition of particular interpretative communities. Therefore, unlike John Strong's anthology of

Buddhist texts, The Experience of Buddhism: Sources and Interpretations, which includes a wide

array of canonical, non-canonical, Pali, and vernacular material, Holder's work is of little value to

those interested in the growing field of Buddhist pedagogy or intellectual history. He gives no de

scription of how these discourses are taught, preserved, anthologized, sermonized, or expanded upon

by teachers, readers, and students in aural/oral homiletic or classroom settings in contemporary Bud

dhist learning communities, or how they may have been in the thirteenth century, the first century, or

other periods in the past. These critical reflections should not take away from Holder's clear writing, good glossary, useful

index, accessible introduction, and careful choice of texts. In these features it is a fine anthology and

could prove very useful to undergraduate teachers. Moreover, the choice of the Alagaddupama and

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Reviews of Books 617

Assalayana Suttas, while not unique, is relatively novel. Still, even if this book is designed for begin ning students of Buddhism, as noted, it offers little insight into Buddhist ways of learning, translating, and transmitting their diverse tradition. In fact, "the aim" of his book, as he writes in the introduction, "is to offer the reader a broad understanding of all the basic doctrines of early Buddhism.... [O]ut of the vast material in the Pali canon, twenty discourses have been selected that cover all of the major subfields of philosophy addressed within the canon ... [T]he sequence of topics is roughly as fol lows: biographical and methodological material, metaphysics, meditative practices, epistemology, and ethics and social philosophy" (p. xxi). This set of categories and this sequence has no equivalent in any known Buddhist anthology. Such a selection, I imagine, reflects Holder's own notion of what a philosophical system should include, rather than that of any Buddhist pedagogical tradition. If Holder's aim was to build bridges between the philosophical and ethical epistemes of Buddhism and the West, then his is a strange creation-a bridge that only allows the traveler to go one way.

JUSTIN MCDANIEL

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, RIVERSIDE

Domesticity and Power in the Early Mughal World. By RUBY LAL. Cambridge Studies in Islamic Civilization. Cambridge: CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2005. Pp. xiii + 241, plates.

The book under review is a significant and vital contribution to a subject that has been relatively neglected in the study of South Asian history: namely the domestic sphere of the early Mughal court. In this lively record Ruby Lal highlights the influence of the familial world, especially the role of

women, upon the reigns of three Mughal kings: Babur, Humayun, and Akbar. Her study spans the period from 1487 to 1605 C.E.

As she illustrates in her introduction, the domestic space or haram of the Mughal court has invari ably been orientalized, exoticized, or simply written out of a scholarly narrative. Lal alerts us to a 1993 publication on Mughal India by the New Cambridge History of India Series, which included only one brief sentence on the institution, painting it in "fantastical" terms as a haven for sexual indulgence and excess. In addition to disputing this portrait of lasciviousness, she questions the pre vailing view of the haram as an architecturally bounded and structured space, constrained by physi cal markers. In contrast, her findings reveal that the haram had no "fixed realm" and only became a representative symbol of the Mughal world during Emperor Akbar's reign.

Lal challenges two prevailing misconceptions of the haram in her history: first, the sharp distinc tion between the "private" and "public" domains in the early Mughal world; and second, the complex and often contradictory nature of the lives of noble women, lives that were not merely an "endless journey between bedroom and kitchen, with the primary function of raising children and caring for husbands" (p. 4). As she argues, the creation of a more regulated and institutionalized Mughal domestic space reflected the making of a new Mughal monarchy. Thus women's roles, as mothers, wives, queens, elders, or juniors, were influenced by changing historical climates. "My hypothesis is a simple one, that the meanings of motherhood, wifehood, love, marriage, filial relationships, and sexuality are not given to us in some fixed, unchanging form. These meanings are historically and culturally constructed-in the light of different experiences, needs and conditions" (p. 5). As she points out, her book has three potential audiences: scholars of Mughal India, students interested in the diversity of differing Islamic societies, and those working on gender relations, domesticity, and the question of "public" and "private" in the early modern world. The main aim of her work is to "excavate a domain, the boundaries of which are very unclear" (p. 22). In this manner she brings attention to the "denizens of a hitherto invisible Mughal world: the mothers of the royal children, their nurses, and servants, and others who formed part of these (changing) intimate circles" (p. 22).

In her second chapter, Lal examines the writing of early European travellers and their encounters with the Mughal haram, drawing on a host of sources: the records of Jesuit missionaries who arrived at Akbar's court during the late sixteenth century; the diaries of English diplomats from the court of

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