Relics, Ritual, and Representation in Buddhism: Rematerializing the Sri Lankan Theravda Tradition.

• Author: SALGADO, NIRMALA
• Position: Review

Relics, Ritual, and Representation in Buddhism: Rematerializing the Sri Lankan Theravada Tradition. By KEVIN TRAINOR. Cambridge Studies in Religious Traditions, vol. 10. Cambridge: CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS,1998. Pp. xiv + 223. $54.95.

This study, which analyzes the textual and archeological sources that focus on the ritual, historical, and cultural significance of the Buddha's relics in the Theravada tradition of Sri Lanka, is very welcome and long-awaited. It addresses four major topics: it critiques early Western encounters with Buddhist ritual and relic veneration; it documents the appropriateness of the practice of relic veneration by laity and monastics; it discusses the power of the Buddha's presence and authority in his relics; and it assesses the legitimacy of the relics and their curators in Pali textual traditions. The investigation, centering on a critical examination of canonical and non-canonical Pali literature, as well as debates among archaeologists, linguists, and historians of religion, renders this the first fairly comprehensive study of relic veneration among South Asian Buddhists. Yet this investigation, despite its emphasis on the chronicle literature, largely evades the issue of how "Sinhala Buddhism" relates to relic veneration in the context of contemporary Sinhala nationalism.

Trainor indicates that early Western attitudes to relic veneration were guided by a distaste for the devotional and cultic aspects of Buddhism. This is evidenced in the works of Gogerly, Hardy, Oldenberg, Rhys Davids, and Carus, who tended towards a "textual-reification" of an idealized Buddhism. Some of these scholars also viewed relic worship as an "incomplete stage of religious worship" (p. 19) that excluded monastics, despite having extensive correspondence with monks who provided evidence to the contrary. Trainor, using texts such as the Mahaparinibbana Sutta, the Kathavatthu, and the Milindapanha, demonstrates that relic veneration was "a religious act fully consonant with the behavior of members of the satigha who had attained the highest religious ideal of nibbana" (p. 59), and furthermore that the archaeological evidence indicates "the well-established character of monastic involvement in the cult of the relics by the end of the second century B.C.E." (p. 62).

The symbolic identification of the Buddha with his corporeal remains is evidenced in Trainor's discussion of canonical, chronicle...