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430
Albrecht Wezler
The warrior taking to flight in fear
431
what goes on ... is rather different * .... The donor is ... understood to be giving the gods his merit as a quid pro quo, as if he were buying their protection for cash; for he adds that what I have just called 'the popular understanding' is actually not explicit: When questioned people either confess ignorance or give the ortho dox explanation. The view of merit as spiritual cash is affective belief only... And it is also true that Gombrich explicitly states that the only sense in which it is accurate to describe these beliefs and practices as 'popular' is the everyday one of *widely liked' or 'prevalent'. But if so used 'popular' no longer distinguishes merit transference from, say, the Four Noble Truths or alms-giving
But it is he, too, who most convincingly points to the <emotional need to do something for your dead relatives >> as forming the psychological starting point and basis of this practice;
who explains the doctrine of merit transference as an ingenious legitimation of the practices of those people (i.e. everybody, or nearly everybody) who could not accept a particular consequence of the intentionality doctrine, namely that they could do nothing for their dead relatives ;
and who thereby implicitly emphasizes that what he calls the « reified concept of merit is a wide-spread and deep-rooted albeit unconscious or unreflected mode of thought of common people in Sri Lanka.
5. This leads us now to the final problem to which I should like to call attention in the present essay. A considerable part of the studies on the transfer/transference of merit - also called « merit transfer/transference - (referred to in the introduction [cf. 0])is devoted to materials from Buddhist texts, and the discussion alluded to by me centres by and large on the problem of the correct interpretation of relevant passages in Pali sources in terms of the history of ideas: Quite a number of these passages are con
• troversial, and taken together they raise the important question whether they testify, as Bechert thinks", to semi-mahāyānistic tendencies in Theravāda Buddhism or not. Much of the subject matter of this discussion does not have a direct bearing on the analysis of M. 7.94 and 95; nevertheless it is noteworthy because it clearly shows that O'Flaherty's contrasting of the « very materialistic >> karma transfer in Hinduism with the spiritualized one of Buddhism is a hazardous simplification; for there are quite evidently common traits in both, and they are of such a nature that it is highly questionable if the category of an influence exercised by one on the other, and vice versa, is at all applicable. i.e. if the similarities observed are not more plausibly explained by assuming that both the religions are to some extent fed by, or at least not completely insulated against, the ground-water of popular ideas about the effects of deeds and their not being inseparably connected with their rightful owner
Yet, I find these studies still more instructive as regards the term 'transfer of merit' itself: The use of this term, I feel, should strictly be confined to the idea of an intentional act by which one's own merit is really transferred to another person for the sake of his well-being or even salvation. To use it inflationarily as a ready-made label for each and every phenomenon, however faintly similar to it, does not by any means contribute to sharpening our eye and deepening our understanding of the individual ideas, their cultural context and historical setting.
But I do not want to enter here into a detailed critical discussion with contemporary scholars: instead let me conclude by adding that already Lüders seems to have used the term « Uber
96. The emphasis is mine. 97. Loc. cit. (fn. 94 a)), p. 216. 98. Loc. cit. (in. 94 a)), p. 206. 99. Op. cit. (In. 94 b)), p. 319; the subsequent quotation is found ibid.,
101. Cr. his essay Buddha Feld und Verdienstübertragung: Mahdydna Ideen im Theravdda-Buddhismus Ceylons in Bulletin de la Classe des Lettres et des Sciences Morales et Politiques, S. série, tome LXII (1976), pp. 27-51.
102. See her "Introduction" (p. XIX) to the book edited by her: Karma and Rebirth in Classical Indian Traditions, Berkeley.Los Angeles-London, 1980.
103. As to how Buddhist thought came to terms with such ideas and where it was unable to accept them, cf. first of all L. Schmithausen's article Critical Resportse in Karma & Rebirth. Post Classical Developments, ed. by Ronald W. Neufeldt, New York, 1986, pp. 203-230, particularly p. 211 ff.
104. Varunta. Aus dem Nachlass hrsg. v. L Alsdorf, Bd. II, Göttingen, 1959, p. 657.
p. 323.
100. Op. cit. (fn. 94 b)). p. 251.