Buddhist Studies 1984 1990

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

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Buddhist studies 1984 - 1990 (J. W. de Jong) scholars who are not at all at home in the world of Buddhist scholarship. For instance, in 1987 Frits Staal tried to show that Lamotte refrained from adopting a definite position in this regard. Staal made disparaging remarks about those who did not share his ill-founded opinion. It is to be hoped that the recent publication of an English translation of Lamotte's Histoire du boụddhisme indien will be able to dispel such fanciful interpretations of his ideas.
Oetke has shown convincingly that most of the arguments adduced in favour of the belief in an ātman in early Buddhism are invalid (op. cit., pp. 156-159). Whatever conclusion may be drawn from a few isolated texts, one has to take into account the fact that, as La Vallée Poussin has pointed out, the canon, in its entirety, denies the existence of any reality whatsoever apart from the impermanent skandhas. It is certainly rather perverse to assume that with regard to the ātman the Buddhists in later times adopted a position which would be entirely opposed to that found in the oldest texts.
5. The publication of facsimiles of Sanskrit manuscripts is of great benefit for the study of texts. In the previous article I mentioned the publication by the Institute for the Comprehensive Study of the Lotus Sūtra of a facsimile edition of more than thirty manuscripts. Twelve volumes have been published and three remain to be published. The same institute has now undertaken the tremendous task of publishing a romanized text and index of the manuscripts of the Lotus sūtra. Two volumes have already been published.
In 1984 a facsimile edition of a Nepalese manuscript of the Lotus sūtra, dated 1082, was published in Beijing and sold for the ridiculous price of $2,500. I have not been able to consult this edition nor the romanized version which was published in 1988. Hirofumi Toda was the first to report on the facsimile edition. Toda, himself, continued to publish editions and studies of Sanskrit manuscripts of the Lotus sūtra. Keisho Tsukamoto, one of the scholars engaged in preparing the roma
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