Table Of ContentThe “Path” to attain liberation (“mārga”), a central N S Cristina Pecchia and
IN
notion of Buddhist praxis and thought, designates N O
OI Vincent Eltschinger (Eds.)
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specific patterns of behaviour and methods of practice TIDI
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connected with transformative powers and soteriological A
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R Mārga
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goals. This volume shows the plurality and complexity of BT
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Buddhist views on the Path found in Buddhist doctrinal, LS
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narrative and philosophical literature, epigraphic sources TD
SD Paths to Liberation in
and iconographic programmes from South Asia. Through H
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new analyses—rather than general pictures—of A South Asian Buddhist Traditions
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different kinds of sources, this volume examines how . A
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the Path was interpreted, discussed and represente d in GAS
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Buddhist traditions of South Asia. It traces the contours ĀH
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of ideologies of the Path that have variously influenced
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the formation and development of Buddhist identities
in the religious and intellectual landscape of premodern
South Asia and contributes to revisiting modern
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ISBN 978-3-7001-8549-9
SBph
9 783700 185499
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Made in Europe
CRISTINA PECCHIA AND VINCENT ELTSCHINGER (EDS.)
MĀRGA
PATHS TO LIBERATION IN SOUTH ASIAN BUDDHIST TRADITIONS
ÖSTERREICHISCHE AKADEMIE DER WISSENSCHAFTEN
PHILOSOPHISCH-HISTORISCHE KLASSE
SITZUNGSBERICHTE, 900. BAND
BEITRÄGE ZUR KULTUR- UND
GEISTESGESCHICHTE ASIENS, NR. 100
HERAUSGEGEBEN VOM INSTITUT
FÜR KULTUR- UND GEISTESGESCHICHTE ASIENS
UNTER DER LEITUNG VON BIRGIT KELLNER
Mārga
Paths to Liberation in
South Asian Buddhist Traditions
Papers from an international symposium held
at the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna,
December 17 – 18, 2015
Cristina Pecchia and Vincent Eltschinger (Eds.)
Angenommen durch die Publikationskommission der philosophisch-
historischen Klasse der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften:
Accepted by the publication committee of the Division of Humanities
and Social Sciences of the Austrian Academy of Sciences by:
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Contents
Foreword . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1
Rupert Gethin
Schemes of the Buddhist Path in the Nikāyas and Āgamas . . . . . . . . .5
Naomi Appleton
The Story of the Path: Indian Jātaka Literature and the Way to
Buddhahood . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
Vincent Eltschinger
The “dhyāna-Master” Aśvaghoṣa on the Path, Mindfulness, and
Concentration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
Vincent Tournier
Stairway to Heaven and the Path to Buddhahood: Donors and Their
Aspirations in Fifth- and Sixth-Century Ajanta . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177
Nobuyoshi Yamabe
Ālayavijñāna in a Meditative Context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249
Daniel M .Stuart
Map Becomes Territory: Knowledge and Modes of Existence in
Middle Period Buddhist Meditation Practice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 277
Malcolm David Eckel
The Poetics of the Path: Bhāviveka’s Tattvāmṛtāvatāra (“Introduction
to the Ambrosia of Reality”) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 303
Jowita Kramer
Concepts of the Spiritual Path in the*Sūtrālaṃkāravṛttibhāṣya
(Part II): The Eighteen manaskāras and the adhimukticaryābhūmi . . . 329
vi
Péter-Dániel Szántó
The Road Not to Be Taken: An Introduction to Two Ninth-Century
Works Against Buddhist Antinomian Practice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 363
Anna Filigenzi
Visual Embodiments of the Buddhist mārga: Space, Place and Artistry
in Ancient Swat/Uḍḍiyāna . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 381
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 415
Foreword
Mārga, the “Path” to attain liberation, is a central notion of Buddhist praxis
and thought . Revolving around the practical rather than the theoretical, and
interwoven with visions of liberation, mārga designates specific patterns of
behaviour and methods of practice connected with transformative powers
and soteriological goals . Ideologies of the Path have variously influenced the
formation and development of Buddhist identities in the religious and intel-
lectual landscape of Asia . In South Asia, in particular, such ideologies were
reflected in Buddhist doctrinal and narrative literature, philosophical views
and iconographic programmes for more than one-and-a-half millennium .
This volume collects ten papers on mārga in Buddhist traditions of South
Asia . The papers derive from the contributions presented at the international
symposium Mārga: Paths to Liberation in South Asian Buddhist Traditions,
convened by the editors of this volume from 17 to 18 December 2015 at the
Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna . On that occasion, seventeen schol-
ars from various areas of Buddhist Studies shared aspects of their research
connected with the topic of mārga . The principal aim of the symposium
was to revisit this topic, which became an explicit focus of consideration for
the first time in the 1992 book edited by Robert E . Buswell and Robert M .
Gimello, Paths to Liberation . The Mārga and its Transformations in Bud-
dhist Thought (Honolulu, University of Hawai‘i Press) . Its editors identified
the concept of mārga as “a theme central to the whole of Buddhism” and
potentially useful “in the cross-cultural study of religion and in the study
of religions other than Buddhism .”1 Their book offered an overview of the
meaning and role of Buddhist theories of the Path in premodern Asia . In
the same year, Rupert Gethin’s Buddhist Path to Awakening (Leiden, Brill)
presented a thorough study of the “thirty-seven conditions that contribute to
awakening” based on Pāli sources, while Wilhelm Halbfass’s Tradition and
Reflection (especially Chapter 7; State University of New York Press, 1991)
provided insightful reflections on the relationship between philosophy and
soteriology in South Asia . In showcasing the complexity of the concept of
1 See Buswell and Gimello 1992, Introduction: 2 .
Cristina Pecchia and Vincent Eltschinger (eds .), Mārga. Paths to Liberation in South Asian Buddhist
Traditions . Papers from an international symposium held at the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vi-
enna, December 17 – 18, 2015 . Vienna: Austrian Academy of Sciences Press, 2020, pp . 1–3 .
2 Cristina Pecchia, Vincent Eltschinger
mārga and related issues, these and a few other publications expanded our
common understanding of the Path, as reflected in descriptions of “the noble
eightfold path” or “the Bodhisattva path” .
In the last three decades, the study of (sometimes newly available) texts
and other types of sources concerning South Asian Buddhist traditions has
increasingly addressed topics concerning the Path, such as the dynamics
between insight, meditative practices, and ethical commitment; the inter-
play between the Path and rituals or ritual-related actions; and the reciprocal
influence that soteriological and philosophical discourses exerted on one an-
other . Following the concept of the symposium, the chapters comprising this
volume form a partial update of Buswell and Gimello’s book insofar as they
are a series of case studies on the Buddhist mārga, but are limited in scope
to traditions of South Asia .
The chapters are loosely arranged according to the chronological se-
quence of the sources discussed therein . With mārga as their common focus,
the authors offer new analyses—rather than general pictures—of particular
texts, textual corpora or iconographic materials . They explore specific as-
pects of descriptions of the Path as expounded or reflected in those sources,
and show the links between mārga and a variety of views and concerns .
Also, they unfold some more general research on Buddhism in South Asia .
Overall, this collection of papers makes a significant contribution to our
understanding of the Path by displaying important facets of how it was inter-
preted, discussed and represented in premodern Buddhist traditions of South
Asia . Moreover, the volume shows that there are many historically-given
embodiments of the Path which still need to be fully explored, thus possibly
opening up new avenues of investigation that look into the entanglements
between views of the Path and the religious and intellectual discourses of
South Asia and beyond .
It is our pleasure to thank the Institute for the Cultural and Intellectual His-
tory of Asia (IKGA) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences for its gener-
ous financial and organisational support of the symposium Mārga: Paths
to Liberation in South Asian Buddhist Traditions, out of which this volume
has grown . Our thanks also go to all the symposium participants . In addi-
tion to the authors represented in this volume, contributions were presented
by Martin Delhey, Harunaga Isaacson, Anne MacDonald, Cristina Pecchia,
Francesco Sferra, Federico Squarcini, and Alexander von Rospatt . The ini-
tial impulse to organize the symposium came from the need to understand in
Foreword 3
more detail the critique of other Paths in a sixth/seventh century philosophi-
cal text in Sanskrit, Dharmakīrti’s Pramāṇavārttika . It was this critique that
was the focus of investigations in the project Indian Buddhist Epistemology
and the Path to Liberation (2013–2016) and is one the subjects of the current
project The Nobles’ Truths in Indian Buddhist Epistemology—both conduct-
ed by Cristina Pecchia at the IKGA and financed by the Austrian Science
Fund (FWF) (Project Numbers P 26120-G15 and P 30710-G24) . Vincent
Eltschinger’s confidence in the importance of the symposium and the related
publication provided and maintained momentum in the course of events . By
the end of December 2015, when the symposium took place, he had left the
IKGA and become Professor for Indian Buddhism at the École Pratique des
Hautes Études in Paris . The editorial work carried out for the completion of
this volume has given us a rewarding opportunity for continuing our conver-
sation between Paris and Vienna . For the care they have put into finalizing
their respective chapters, we are very grateful to the authors who contributed
to this volume .
Cristina Pecchia and Vincent Eltschinger
Vienna and Paris, December 2018
