Early Buddhist Discourses.

• Author: Mcdaniel, Justin
• Position: Book review

Early Buddhist Discourses. By JOHN J. HOLDER. Indianapolis: HACKETT PUBLISHING, 2006. Pp. xxiii + 216.

While John J. Holder's translation and edition of twenty early Buddhist discourses adds nothing to the scholarly understanding of early Buddhism, it does provide an inexpensive and clear introduction to Sutta(nta)-pitaka Buddhist literature. However, it is unclear why a new inexpensive introduction is needed. Every Buddhist Studies scholar's office bookshelves are littered with introductions to Buddhism and translated anthologies of Buddhist texts, sent as free copies in hopes that the professor will order multiple copies for an Introduction to Buddhism, Introduction to Asian Religions, or Introduction to World Religions course. The twenty discourses that Holder has chosen do not add to the standard Western canon of Pali, Tibetan, and Sanskrit texts first produced by T. W. Rhys-Davids, Henry Clarke Warren, E. A. Burtt, and Lucien Stryk, among others, and, since early Mahayana texts are excluded, this book would have to be supplemented for any "Introduction to Buddhism" course. Since Thanissaro Bhikkhu's two-volume Handful, of Leaves, a translation and introduction of early Buddhist discourses, is available for free ("gift of the dhamma"), and is much more comprehensive and elegantly introduced, Holder's new volume is a relative superfluous offering. His translations, while very readable, do not offer any radical alternative reading or improve on equally readable translations by Horner, Thanissaro, and others.

There are more fundamental problems though, not with Holder's translation and introduction, but with the entire idea of introducing English-reading students to Buddhism through a collection of Pali discourses drawn solely from the Sutta(nta)-Pitaka. Holder justifies this in his introduction by emphasizing that these discourses are canonical and therefore constitute the "essential teachings" of the Buddha. However, Holder uses this justification without reference to any of the rich literature on the formation of canon(s) in early Buddhism. In the view of one of the great scholars of early Pali literature, K. R. Norman, a canon of religious texts can either be closed or open. By closed, he means that it consists of a fixed number of texts or utterances, to which all additions would be considered the work of theologians, not the work of the prophet or first promoter of the faith. Norman's study of the canonical tradition of Theravadin...