Desire, Death and Goodness: The Conflict of Ultimate Values in Theravada Buddhism.

• Author: McDermott, James P.

It is generally admitted that the Nikayas of the Theravada Buddhist Pali canon consist of a number of strata, some of them earlier and some later. Text critical studies have made clear that the verses of the Suttanipata, especially the Atthakavagga and the Parayanavagga, are to be counted among the earlier strata, which present a picture of a Buddhism fairly different from what is taken by many scholars to be representative of earlier, or "primitive" Buddhism. In Indian Buddhism: A Survey with Bibliographical Notes (Hirakata City, Japan: Kansai University of Foreign Studies Publication, 1980), 57-58, Hajime Nakamura summarizes some of the distinctive features of this relatively early layer of textual tradition as follows: Certain core Buddhist doctrines and peculiarly Buddhist technical vocabulary do not appear. A skeptical attitude toward what might be called "dogma" (i.e., ditthi) is expressed. And the life of Buddhist monks was fairly different from the later, fully developed monastic life.

In her book Desire, Death and Goodness, Grace Burford presents a detailed textual analysis of the Atthakavagga of the Suttanipata, focusing on the values which it propounds. Burford finds the Atthakavagga "exceptional within even the earliest Buddhist literature in its non-metaphysical presentation of the summum bonum" (p. 190). These teachings are then carefully compared with the interpretations of the text contained in two classical Theravada commentaries on the Atthakavagga, namely in the Mahaniddesa and in the Paramatthajotika, generally ascribed to Buddhaghosa. The commentaries are also compared with one another. Through her analysis, Burford finds that "[i]n the commentaries, a new set of...