16

‘A natural end might consist in the story of what happened to the Vedas after the Vedas’ : Renou 1960b did provide such a survey though ‘he could not have mentioned more recent events’ (p. 304).—‘Much is now known about the arrival of Vedism in South India’: Mahadevan, T.P. Forthcoming.

‘These periods are of special interest because they carried traces to:’ South-east Asia, including on Thailand, with Khmer information Skilling 2007 (# 149) and on Bali: Hooykaas 1966, 1983 a. and b., all referring to other works by the same author. In Bali, an apparently post-Vedic version of the Taittirīya Upaniṣad was found.—‘These and other contemporary developments’: Arnold has remained unpublished; Kashikar and Parpola 1983; Knipe 1997 and 2004; Mahadevan and Staal 2003, 2005; Raghavan 1957. ‘Present Position of Vedic Chanting and Its Future’, Bulletin of the Institute of Traditional Cultures (Madras): 49–69; Smith 1984, 1994, 2000, 2001; Witzel 1992. Staal 1961, etc.; T.P. Mahadevan. Forthcoming. Staal, CV and Itti Ravi 1983. Galewicz 2004 should be added.

‘He hardly explained ‘final redaction’, but let us assume that he refers to’ : Olivelle, xxxiv: ‘The issue of authorship is complicated by the fact that some of the earliest and largest Upaniṣads—at least the BĀU, the CU and the Kauṣītaki—are anthologies of material that must have existed as independent texts before their incorporation into these Upaniads by an editor or a series of editors …. leading us to believe that the editors at least partly drew upon a common stock of episodes and teachings.’ These are the words of the leading translator and scholar of the Upaniads who was not concerned with Buddhism when he penned them down—though, a few pages later, he was: 311 with note.

‘My second illustration comes from Toshifumi Goto’ : Goto 2005.

Pre-Buddhist Upaniṣads : BĀU, CA, Taittirīya, Aitareya and Kauṣītaki. See above p. 162 and Olivelle, Introduction, xxxvi–vii and #311.

‘Note that prajñā contains the same verbal root jñā as does jñāna …’ : on Upaniṣadic jñāna and prajñā, see p. 144 and note.

‘They also explain that, in due course, Buddhism returned’ : Snellgrove and Skorupski 1980 describe the Tibetan Buddhist culture of Ladakh and Zanskar. The area is depicted on the Frontispiece in eastern Kashmir, south of the Karakoram where the Indus flows through the valley of Ladakh, and immediately north of the western Himalayas which is the valley of Zanskar. Snellgrove and Skorupski’s pioneering studies are complemented by many others, e.g., Khosla, Romi. 1979. Buddhist Monasteries in the Western Himalaya. Kathmandu: Ratna Pustak Mandar, which provides architectural drawings. Vedic Indians must have been in those valleys but the evidence (e.g., Iranian influence on Vairocana, the Resplendent Buddha) is of later date. The same holds for the Swat valley south of Chitral, between 5 and 7 on the Frontispiece which was also a Buddhist area: Stein, Aurel. 1972. On Alexander’s Track to the Indus. Personal Narrative of Explorations on the North-west Frontier of India. New York: Benjamin Blom. Now being destroyed.

‘In partial response to that question I shall quote Etienne Lamotte’ : Lamotte 1958: 74–5, translated from the French. The present study of Buddhism covers so vast an area and has become so specialized that it is impossible for a non-specialist to keep up with it. I have often relied on Lamotte 1944–80, 1948, 1958, 1962 especially for the history of Buddhism. Supplemented on details by publications such as Bapat 1956, we would have to go back for more than a century before we find equally comprehensive surveys such as Oldenberg 1881, now dated but only in part.

‘The higher castes continued their demand for the great Vedic and Brahmanic deities’ : the cult of pagan gods survived throughout history until contemporary times, often in more remote areas, e.g., among the Rathvas of Central Gujarat: Jain 1979.

‘The Advaita philosopher Śri Harṣa … wrote an epic poem … called “lusty”’ : Granoff 1978, p. 2, adding that the author was a deeply religious man and did not perceive any inconsistency (as a monotheist might).—‘Here is how Śri Harṣa presents Cārvāka, tucked away’: Dasgupta, Surendranath. 1952. A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. III. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 549.

‘Entering the Order, Women and Sexualities’ : Bechert and Gombrich 1984, 1991; Faure 1998; Findly 2002; Jamison 1996; Patton 2002.

‘The Mahāyāna challenged the distinction between monks and laymen’ : the greatest lay bodhisattva was Vimalakīrti. Of his Sanskrit teaching only a few fragments have been preserved, but many translations were made into other Buddhist languages. The fifth century CE translation into Chinese by Kumārajīva became an instant success and remains one of the best sources for the understanding of the Mahāyāna. Translated by Lamotte into French, here is an example (Lamotte 1962: 303): ‘The ideas of pollution and purification are two. If one understands pollution, the notion of purification does not arise. Destroying every imagination (vikalpa) and the road which leads there is to penetrate the doctrine of non-duality.’ Lamotte wrote in his Preface: ‘Perhaps it scandalized the Indians … but it amused and charmed the Chinese.’—Little is known about Vimalakīrti’s life in India though his house is supposed to have been in Vaisali, north of Pāṭaliputra, modern Patna. Snellgrove, David. 1987. Indo-Tibetan Buddhism: Indian Buddhist and their Tibetan Successors, II, Boston: Shambhala: 312.—On the life and works of Lamotte: Durt, Hubert. 1985. ‘Etienne Lamotte 1903–1983’, Bulletin de l’école française d’éxtrême orient 74: 1–28.—‘(Forest monks) are still found in Myanmar and Thailand’: Tambiah 1984. This continues to be true for Thailand at the time of writing these source notes (November 2007). I believe it continues to be true for Myanmar also though other monks have now risen against their dictators and been abused, imprisoned and killed.

‘They are paṇḌḍakas, often translated as ‘eunuch’ but in fact’ : Faure 1998.

‘I believe it reflects different periods of history … ferret out’ : the only publication which, to the best of my knowledge, has studied the geography of homosexuality in reasonable historical detail (pace Michel Foucault, Mahathir and so many others) is due to Richard Burton (not to be confused with the actor): 1886. The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night. Literal Translation from the Arabic. Vol. X with Terminal Essay, 63–302, concluding on pp. 206–7: ‘There exists what I shall call a ‘Sotadic Zone,’ bounded westwards by the northern and southern shores of the Mediterranean.’ It includes, as I paraphrase freely, France, the Iberian Peninsula, Italy and Greece with the coast regions of Africa from Marocco to Egypte. Running east it narrows to Turkey, Mesopotamia, Afghanistan, Sind, the Punjab and Kashmir, and broadens again to Indo-China enfolding China, Japan and Turkistan, then the South Sea Islands and the New World. ‘Within the Sotadic Zone, the Vice is popular and endemic, held at the worst to be a mere peccadillo, whilst the races to the North and South … practice it only sporadically.’ Britain is not included because Burton was British and, at times, a civil servant. (Whether he practiced ‘the Vice’ himself remains controversial.)

‘Performances of large Vedic rituals were generally hidden but became public’ : several essays edited by Harris 2007 put the transition from private to public in Buddhism in a political context. Deeper connections have been explored by Shimoda 2006: 26–9 who explains how Mahākaśsyapa, ‘Great Turtle,’ could have confirmed the teachings that had until then been contained in the private memories of individual disciples by collaborative recitation (saṃgīti). That development reflected an earlier transition from the wordless experience of the Buddha’s meditation to his verbal expression by means of language. Though the Mahāyāna was familiar with the technology of writing, many of its adherents continued to give priority to hearing a teacher’s voice. They are, therefore, worthy of the name śrāvaka or ‘hearer.’ The entire development should be related to the origins of writing in India. Falk, Harry. 1993. Schrift im alten Indien. Ein Forschungsbericht mit Anmerkungen. Tübingen: Gunter Narr and von Hinüber 1999.

‘This discovery inspired Jan Fontein, art historian, archeologist and museum director’ : Fontein 1989.

‘The MuṇḌḍaka Upaniṣad expresses the synthesis or identity that is the endpoint of the Vedic perspective’ : MuṇḌḍaka Up. 3.2.2. Śvetāśvatara Up. 1.8,3.20, 4.16, etc. also discourse on freedom from sorrow and all fetters.

‘The distinction is obsolete because it cannot be expressed in Chinese’ : Graham’s views are found in a series of studies discussed by Staal. 2001. ‘Article One,’ in Bronkhorst, Johannes (ed.), La rationalité en Asie / Rationality in Asia in Etudes de Lettres. Lausanne: Faculté des lettres: 59–95. Graham 1989 puts his own views in a wider perspective.

‘Kamaleswar Bhattacharya has looked into similar problems’ : Bhattacharyya 1968, 1973, 1998.

‘Śaṇkara, to whom I referred as an Upaniṣadic philosopher, had his go at Buddhism anusmṛteś ca’ : Brahmasūtra 2.2.25.

‘It has even been adopted by the Bonpos of Tibet: Kvaerne 1981.—‘The eleventh verse of the puzzle poem 1.164 of Chapter 15’: excerpts quoted on p. 35.

‘In the Vedic instance, dharma is ‘time,’ but it is not a single thing: there are many dharmas’ : Olivelle, Patrick (ed.), 2004 for Dharma in Indic civilization from the Vedas onward: #54.

‘A Sāmavedic Brāhmaṇa, the Pañcaviṃśa, described a sattra ritual’ : a complex ritual that may be of infinite duration.—‘Foremost among them are the decline of dharma through four ages’: Hayashi, Takao. 1995. The Bakhshālī Manuscript. An ancient Indian mathematical treatise. Groningen: Egbert Forsten, 109–13 discusses measures of time and provides tables.

‘The University of Nālanda is the first university in the history of mankind’ : the literature is extensive from the Chinese travellers, via Dutt 1956, van Gulik 1980: 14 ff. to Sen 2005, Chapter 8 #340.

‘The first is Amartya Sen’s book The Argumentative Indian’ : Sen 2005.

‘My only information is a letter of December 2006’ : Garten 2006.

‘Relevant facts about American universities’ : Kennedy 1987.—‘It sheds much light on Nālanda: students kept going there’: Bowring 2005 discusses implications for immigration.

‘It’s the logic, stupid!’ in Sanskrit : ānvīkṣiky eva mūrkha! Ānvīkṣikī is not Vedic but mūrkha, ‘fool,’ is an old Vedic and Indo-European word related to Old-Lithuanian mulkis (Burrow, see above #49: 391). On Indian logic there is a vast literature but one pioneer may be mentioned here: the Polish Sanskritist and logician Stanislaw Schayer (Balcerowitz and Mejor 2000).

‘The Leiden participants who knew Sanskrit did not know’ : the literature on Buddhist mediaeval logic is vast. It includes Bhattacharya 1973 and more recent articles by the same author. The birth of the New Nyaya or Navya-Nyāya logic has been most recently discussed by Wada, Toshihiro. 2007 (earlier Wada in Hino and Wada (eds.), 2004 and Wada (ed.), 2006).—‘A third international meeting, after Leiden and Hangzhou’: Strings 2006 deals with a theory which is said to be consistent though it is difficult to understand and there do not seem to be decisive experimental facts that support it—unlike Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity.

‘One reason is related to the talk I had just given: the level of mathematical knowledge’ : the language faculty, which first appeared with humans, was in due time fused with the mathematical faculty thus leading to the birth of artificial languages. Pp. 299–300 with ##.

‘Should one delve into the matter, starting with the universe’ : Thapar 1996, Chapter 5, provides excellent reasons for rejecting these ideas which were prominent in the Purāṇṇas (i.e., ‘the ancient’). #116. The Sanskrit proverb said already: ‘something is not true just because it is ancient’ (purāṇam ity eva na sādhu sarvam). Purāṇic cosmology is expressed by the four yugas, beginning with Satya, the ‘Age of Truth’, and ending with the Kaliyuga, an age that is characterized by mleccha rulers, corrupt brāhmaṇas and upstart śūdras. There are similar ideas in Theravada Buddhism, where, over the yugas, life-expectancy is said to drop from 30,000 to one hundred years; and in Jainism, where man’s height comes down from six miles (including 256 ribs) to about eighteen inches (with 16 ribs). I accept that these speculations should not be taken seriously, but stress on the remainder of this page that in the context of the cosmos, very large numbers make much sense.—‘Even if they were thinking of cows, there is no need’: the patron of the Agnicayana, above pp. 131–2.—‘According to recent estimates, perhaps already outdated’: Penrose, Roger. 1997, etc. The Large, the Small and the Human Mind. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: p. 26.—‘Contrast the story of creation ‘: Genesis, Chapter 1, Qur’ān 7: 54, 10: 3, 11: 7, 25: 59, 32: 4, 50: 38, 57: 4.—‘But even monotheists have not failed to note’: Pascal, Blaise. 1655–59 and later, never finished. Pensées (‘Thoughts’). Many editions of which I used Paris: Garnier Fréres, 1957, 90. The original reads: notre intelligence tient dans l’ordre des choses intelligibles le même rang que notre corps dans l’étendue de la nature.