Reviews Of Diffeent Books

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

Page 47

REVIEWS
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and the final authority is what we could call his conscience" (p. 68). It is obvious that such a doctrine is not addressed to the "downtrodden" who are more likely to be converted to a religion in which bhakti is the main element. Gombrich points out that the Buddha's recorded sermons to the laity deal mainly with morality and he explains why the Buddhist ethics appealed to businessmen. Particularly interesting are the two sections of chapter three, entitled "Buddhism as religious individualism" and "An ethic for the socially mobile". I believe that Gombrich has given many good reasons for explaining the success of Buddhism among the wealthier and more urban sectors of society. In this respect one must also stress the fact that the duties of the lay followers were not very onerous. It is, however, much more difficult to understand why members from the urban elite should abandon everything in order to strive for salvation.
The final section of chapter two puts the question to whom did the Buddha's message appeal. Gombrich remarks that the view that life is suffering had not been current in India before Buddhism and that it is his task to explain why it became acceptable when it did (p. 59). I have not been able to find a convincing answer to this question in his book. Urbanization does not necessarily lead to spiritual malaise as Professor Ghosh seems to believe. Gombrich adduces as a possible contributory cause the connection between cities and morbidity but the Buddhist texts do not give any indication of an increase in morbidity at the time of the Buddha. Buddhism may well have been an attractive religion for urban lay followers but why members of the urban elite came to the realization that life was suffering and decided that for them there remained no other solution than to become monks remains a problem which probably cannot be explained due to lack of sufficient source materials.
Gombrich is one of the few Western scholars who have an intimate knowledge of Buddhism in Sri Lanka in the past and the present. Three chapters deal in detail with the history of Sinhalese Buddhism, the rise of "Protestant" Buddhism in the nineteenth century and with contemporary trends and problems. It must be left to specialists to discuss details of interpretation but there is no doubt that these chapters make extremely stimulating reading.
Let me end with a few minor points. On p.-59 Gombrich refers to Frauwallner's hypothesis that the very format of the first sermon and its Four Noble Truths follows a medical model. This idea was first suggested by Hendrik Kern. Recently A. Wezler has discussed this question in great detail. He arrives at the conclusion that there is not the slightest evidence for the assumption that this fourfold division of the science of medicine inspired the Buddha to his Four Noble Truths.4