Book Reviews

Author(s): J W De Jong
Publisher: J W De Jong

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REVIEWS
247
the need of the guru's oral explanation' (p. 54), which certainly is a feature of the tantric movement, but which the scholar must be free to evaluate and study in terms of its historical circumstances and limitations, and hence, if need be, disregard.
On one point I must express serious disagreement with Professor Wayman. Speaking of what an introduction to the tantras should be (p. 52), he states that it should show "what the Tantra is all about, the underlying suppositions, the leading instructions" (so far I certainly agree, but then he continues) "to the extent of recreating the Tantras as a viable entity to be liked or disliked" (my italics). There is no possibility of mistaking the author's views, for he continues: "The trouble with so much of the present writing on the Tantra is that the reader is, or should be, left with a feeling of distancy or bewilderment; he is neither genuinely for or against it, because he does not understand it" (my italics). If I understand this statement correctly, Professor Wayman is saying that understanding is a means to an end, the end being to become "genuinely for or against", and that only thus can "a feeling of distancy or bewilderment" be done away with. For my part, I would strongly urge that the study of the tantras, or of any other religious tradition, must be guided by entirely different motives. The historian of religions must always exercise the most scrupulous epochē when studying and interpreting a text, a phenomenon, or an entire religion; a genuine understanding is incompatible with value judgements. This is an ideal, of course; it is a truism that complete objectivity is a goal which can never be attained, but it is a goal and an ideal which must nevertheless never be abandoned. Needless to say, there is no question of anyone approaching a subject with a mental tabula rasa. Nevertheless, I strongly feel that the only tenable position is that expressed by the eminent Swedish historian of religions, Professor Geo Widengren: "What should be the accepted, objective norm according to which such value judgements could be passed? To put the question is to answer it! Such an objective norm does not exist. As a private person who feels and thinks I may approve of certain religious phenomena and detest others, but as a historian of religions I have no possibility of objectively motivating my sympathies and antipathies, and consequently no right to present my private views as being scholarly ... An attitude of evaluation deprives the scholar of that faculty of empathy and understanding which alone can lead to the goal. It goes without saying that the historian of religions, just like the historian, depends on those standards of objectivity which historical research demands". (Foreword (p. 7) of the Swedish translation of U. Bianchi, Problemi di storia delle religiani: Religionshistoriska problem, Stockholm 1968).
Lest this review of a remarkable book should end on a critical note, I would like to conclude by repeating my admiration for the author's knowledge of the tantric literature. Perhaps the book should be regarded as a fresh commentary on the Guhyasamājatantra, as indeed the author himself suggests (p. viii).
Oslo
PER KVAERNE
J. W. de Jong (editor), Nägärjuna: Mülamadhyamaka kärikäh. Adyar (Madras), The Adyar Library and Research Centre, 1977, vi + 57 pp.
Since its appearance in separate instalments more than half a century ago the standard edition of Nāgārjuna's Mülamadhyama ka kārikās has been the one published by Louis de La Vallée Poussin as volume iv of the Bibliotheca Buddhica (St. Petersburg, 1903-13). This edition was based on three manuscripts - from Paris, Cambridge and Calcutta - described by La Vallée Poussin (LVP) as mediocre copies of an original that does not seem to have been irreproachable; and LVP went so far as to observe that he considered the Tibetan version in the bsTan 'gyur as more worthy of trust than this manuscript tradition. It presents the text of the MMK con