Power, Wealth and Women in Indian Mahāyāna Buddhism: The Gaṇḍavyūha-sūtra

🤓 Admin Zone 🛠️ hidden to non-admins
view on research edit on research Add an excerpt Add a bilingual page Add full text subpage

Book

LibraryBooksBibliography PDF Link

Please note that many items in our library are simply pages that represent a detailed library catalog entry and citation of someone else's work, presentation, or performance. Read our General Disclaimer for more information.

Descriptionངོ་སྤྲོད།

This book examines the concepts of power, wealth and women in the important Mahayana Buddhist scripture known as the Gandavyuha-sutra, and relates these to the text’s social context in ancient Indian during the Buddhist Middle Period (0–500 CE).

Employing contemporary textual theory, worldview analysis and structural narrative theory, the author puts forward a new approach to the study of Mahayana Buddhist sources, the ‘systems approach’, by which literature is viewed as embedded in a social system. Consequently, he analyses the Gandavyuha in the contexts of reality, society and the individual, and applies these notions to the key themes of power, wealth and women. The study reveals that the spiritual hierarchy represented within the Gandavyuha replicates the political hierarchies in India during Buddhism’s Middle Period, that the role of wealth mirrors its significance as a sign of spiritual status in Indian Buddhist society, and that the substantial number of female spiritual guides in the narrative reflects the importance of royal women patrons of Indian Buddhism at the time.

This book will appeal to higher-level undergraduates, postgraduates and scholars of religious studies, Buddhist studies, Asian studies, South Asian studies and Indology. (Source: Routledge)

Citation

Osto, Douglas. Power, Wealth and Women in Indian Mahāyāna Buddhism: The Gaṇḍavyūha-sūtra. Routledge Critical Studies in Buddhism. London: Routledge, 2008. https://secureservercdn.net/50.62.195.83/ihx.d74.myftpupload.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Power-Wealth-and-Women-in-Indian-Mahayana-Buddhism.pdf.

Table of contents

Prefacexi
Acknowledgementsxiv
Abbreviationsxvi

1. Introduction1
- Textual ontology3
- A textual history of the Gaṇḍavyūha4
- Modern scholarship7
- Chapter outline12

2. Worldview14
- Reality in Indian Buddhist thought15
- Reality in the Gaṇḍavyūha19
- Society24
- Individual29

3. Narrative34
- Genre35
- Narratology36
- Formulas43

4. Power48
- The Nidāna-parivarta49
- Mañjuśrī and the monks57
- Mañjuśrī meets Sudhana58
- The authority of the monks59
- The sage and the brahmin62
- The power elite: the three final friends65
- Spiritual power and royalty: an overview71

5. Wealth73
- Why is Sudhana called 'good wealth'?75
- The grammarian and the merchant-banker77
- The two kings79
- The god and goddess who give84
- The centrality of wealth in the Gaṇḍavyūha86

6. Women88
- Queen Āśā89
- Women with looks and money91
- The nun and the courtesan93
- The goddesses96
- The female royalty of the Dharma realm100
- The royal and wealthy women in the Gaṇḍavyūha104

7 The Indian context105
- Dates of the Gandavyuha105
- Geographical origin of the Gaṇḍavyūha108
- The Middle Period109
- The Gaṇḍavyūha in the middle period113

8 Conclusion117
- Summary of findings117
- The target audience120

Appendices
- A List of Kalyāṇamitras 123
- B Concordance of Sanskrit editions and MS A125
- C Concordance of three Tibetan editions127

Notes129
Bibliography161
Index172

Interconnections

Works related to this item

2 Scholarship on

Gaṇḍavyūhasūtra [बुद्धावतंसकनाममहावैपुल्यसूत्रात गण्डव्यूहसूत्रः पटलः]. sdong pos brgyan pa'i le'u [སྡོང་པོས་བརྒྱན་པའི་ལེའུ]. [Chapter 45: The Gaṇḍhavyūha Sūtra (84000)]. Translated by Divākara, Jinamitra, Surendrabodhi, Ye shes sde, Prajña, Sheng-chien. Kangyur, RKTSK 44-45 http://www.rkts.org/cat.php?id=44-45&typ=1.

Classical WorksAbout this item

In this lengthy final chapter of the Avataṃsaka Sūtra, while the Buddha Śākyamuni is in meditation in Śrāvastī, Mañjuśrī leaves for South India, where he meets the young layman Sudhana and instructs him to go to a certain kalyāṇamitra or "good friend," who then directs Sudhana to another such friend. In this way, Sudhana successively meets and receives teachings from fifty male and female, child and adult, human and divine, and monastic and lay kalyāṇamitras, including night goddesses surrounding the Buddha and the Buddha’s wife and mother. The final three in the succession of kalyāṇamitras are the three bodhisattvas Maitreya, Mañjuśrī, and Samantabhadra. Samantabhadra’s recitation of the Samantabhadracaryāpraṇidhāna ("The Prayer for Completely Good Conduct") concludes the sūtra. (Source: 84000)

Maitreyavimokṣa [मैत्रेयविमोक्ष]. byams pa'i rnam par thar pa [བྱམས་པའི་རྣམ་པར་ཐར་པ།]. [Liberation of Maitreya]. Translated by Jinamitra, Surendrabodhi, Ye shes sde, Prajñā (translator), Sheng-chien, Divākara. Kangyur, D44, chap. 45. http://www.rkts.org/cat.php?id=44-45&typ=1.

Classical WorksAbout this item

According to Paul Harrison in his essay "Śāntideva: The Author and His Project" in Readings of Santideva's Guide to Bodhisattva Practice (2019), the Maitreyavimokṣa is chapter 54 of the Gaṇḍavyūhasūtra (see page 39). He explains that verse 1.14 of the Guide makes mention of Maitreya's commendation of the aspiration to awakening to Sudhana, which is a reference to a sequence of verses in chapter 54 (Maitreyavimokṣa) of the Gaṇḍavyūha. The relevant verses are given in full in the Anthology (See B101-104:G103-106; cf. also B9:G11).