Collected Papers on Buddhist Studies.

• Author: Heim, Maria
• Position: Book Review

By PADMANABH S. JAINI. New Delhi: MOTILAL BANARSIDASS, 2001. Pp. v + 557.

This collection brings together over four decades of the author's research in Buddhist studies. The volume contains twenty-nine articles, assembled under the following topics: "Introduction to Buddhist Faith," "Buddhist Studies," "Buddhism and Jainism," "Abhidharma Literature;' "Jataka and Avadana Literature," "Mahayana" and "Ritual Texts." Some of the pieces here will be of interest to readers today primarily as historical pieces, such as the article, "Buddhist Studies in Recent Times," published in 1956 on the state of the field at that time. Yet most of the articles, though previously published, offer valuable perspectives and scholarship that will continue to stimulate for decades to come.

Jaini's work is very strong on the history of ideas. He traces the vitality of ancient Indian culture to the creative clash of ideas between the Brahmanical orthodoxy and the various sramanic heterodoxies. For Jaini, most of the essential ideas that define the development of Indian religion, including the doctrines of samsara and karma, came from the sramanas. Many of his discussions of Buddhism and Jainism are informed by this basic aim of finding in them the creative seeds for the flourishing of Indian intellectual culture.

In the first article of the volume and the only piece not previously published, "States of Happiness in Buddhist Heterodoxy," Jaini offers a novel approach to introducing Buddhism through the angle of happiness. He argues that early Buddhism departed from Brahmanical orthodoxy by its emotional appeal, broadening human aspirations for both mundane contentment and eternal bliss. Against a single Upanisadic notion of bliss in the infinite self, ananda, which varies only in degree, the Buddha spoke of different kinds of happiness: that of the householder making merit and rejoicing in others' merit, that of the missionary impulse (and later royal decree) to bring about the "welfare and happiness of the many folk," of the tranquility of the renouncer's life, and ecstasy of meditation, and of course the bliss of awakening. Documenting the Buddhist attention to the lovely (kalyana) and the auspicious (mangala), as well as the interest in emotions, Jaini suggests that Buddhism owed its initial success in part to its innovations in affective human experience.

Many of the articles in the collection demonstrate how Jaini's unique expertise in Buddhism and Jainism can...