Reviews of Books.

• Author: Davidson, Ronald
• Position: The Symbiosis of Buddhism with Brahmanism/Hinduism in South Asia and of Buddhism with "Local Cults" in Tibet and the Himalayan Region - Book review

The Symbiosis of Buddhism with Brahmanism/Hinduism in South Asia and of Buddhism with "Local Cults" in Tibet and the Himalayan Region.By David Seykort Ruegg. Osterreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften. Philosophisch-Historische Klasse. Sitzungsberichte vol. 774. Vienna: OSTERREICHISCHE AKADEM1E DER WISSENSCHAFTEN, 2007. Pp. xiv + 197. [euro]35,50. Ruegg's book is his most focused and extended effort to revive his "pan-Indian religious substratum" thesis, which he first proposed in Journal asiatiqtue ("Sur les rapports entre le bouddhisme el le 'substrat religieux' indien et tibetain," Journal as'tatique 252 [1964]: 77-94), and consistently defended thereafter. Accordingly, the book affirms the employment of the Buddhist emic ideology of worldly/trans-worldly beings {laukika/lokottara); the former--the gods of India and the Himalayas with their cultus and sites--constitute the fundamental model for Ruegg's theory of a religious substratum. With this indigenous Indian Buddhist formulation, Ruegg proposes to explain shared or common ideas, rituals, divinities, and many other items in the Buddhist-Hindu world of South Asia as attributes of common descent. He does this to counter the "borrowing model" that he views as incorrectly representing the manner in which material is held in common and shared between Buddhist and non-Buddhist traditions in India, Tibet, and the Himalayan region.

The book is divided into many short sections, which gives it a somewhat confusing and choppy structure--a foreword, an introduction, twenty-five chapters, and two appendices. The chapters discuss diverse topics: 1. Sramanas and Brahmanas; 2. "Pan-Indian" divinities in Buddhism; 3. Docetism in Mahayana Sutras: 4. Karttikeya-Mahjus'ri in the Mahjusrimulakalpa\ 5. Worldly/mundane and popular/ lay; 6. The Substratum and opposition of mundane/supramundane; 7. Symbiosis, confrontation, and subordination in Yogatantras; 8. Further laukika/lokottara remarks; 9. The mundane clan (laukikakula) in Kriyatantra; 10. laukika/lokottara in Mahayana texts; 11. Sakyamuni's victory over a heterodox teacher in a Tibetan source; 12. laukika subordination in the tnandala; 13. Position, stratification, and peripherali/.ation; 13. Further laukika/lokottara opposition; 14. Continuity, substratum and emic classification; 16. Etic categories; 17. Hacker's concept of "inclusivism"; 18. An example of Hacker's inclusivism? i9. Borrowing/substratum in syncretism and/or symbiosis: 20. Vaisnava and Saiva elements in the Kalacakra; 21. Kalkin in the Kalacakra; 22...