Brief History Of Buddhist Studies In Europe And Maerica

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

Page 29

BUDDHIST STUDIES IN THE WEST
tinued this line of research in his Buddhistische Studien which were published in 1898.7 Famous is his distinction between a nominal style A and a hieratic, canonical style B in Buddhist Sanskrit texts such as the Mahāvastu, the Divyāvadāna, the Avadānaśataka, etc.% Style B closely resembles the style of canonical Pāli texts and is older than style A. Oldenberg is the first scholar to have undertaken the task which Burnouf was unable to accomplish: the comparison of Pāli and Sanskrit texts for the sake of establishing the older and common elements in both. Notable work has been done also in this respect by Ernst Windisch (1844–1918) in his studies on Māra and Buddha, the birth of the Buddha and the composition of the Mahāvastu.' Oldenberg already took into account the Sanskrit fragments discovered in Central Asia in the beginning of the twentieth century. As we will see later on, the publication of Sanskrit fragments and their comparison with parallel texts in Pāli, Chinese and Tibetan has made great progress in the last forty years.
Oldenberg's reliance on the Pāli texts was connected with his belief in the historicity of the Council at Vesālī and in the compilation of Buddhist texts before this Council. His examination of the traditions concerning the two first councils at Rājagrha and Vaiśāli in the introduction to his edition of the Mahāvagga in 1879 has stimulated in the following years an animated discussion on the Councils. A good summary of the different points of view and of the literature up to 1911 is found in L. de La Vallée Poussin's article in the Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics (vol. IV, 1911, pp. 179-185). The inconclusiveness of the debate shows the difficulties in obtaining reliable information from the conflicting Buddhist traditions. La Vallée Poussin, who also published a long article on the Councils in 1905, 10 declared that without a study of the Chinese sources no definite conclusions could be reached. However, even the transla
7 Buddhistische Studien, ZDMG, 52, 1898, pp. 613-694=Kleine Schriften, pp. 889-970.
8 Studien zum Mahāvastu, NGGW, 1912, pp. 123-154= Kleine Schriften, pp. 10371068; Studien zur Geschichte des buddhistischen Kanons, ibid., pp. 155-218=Kleine Schriften, pp. 973-1036.
Māra und Buddha, Leipzig, 1895; Buddha's Geburt und die Lehre von der Seelenwanderung, Leipzig, 1908; Die Komposition des Mahāvastu, Abb. d. K. Sächsischen Ges. d. Wiss., Philol.hist. Kl., XXVII, 1909, pp. 467-511.
10 Les deux premiers conciles, Muséon, VI, 1905, pp. 213-323; English tr.: The Buddhist Councils, IA, 37, 1908, pp. 1-18, 81-106.