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Richard F. Nance, Speaking for Buddhas. Scriptural Commentary in Indian Buddhism (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012), VIII +298 pp., $55,00, ISBN 978-0-231-15230-3. The author is certainly right when he draws attention to a gap, or almost a gap, in the study of Buddhist literature, namely the study of commentaries in general and of sūtra commentaries in particular (p. 4). Of course the content of commentaries is widely used, because otherwise hardly any study in the history of Buddhist thought would be possible. However, the way in which commentaries are composed, the commentarial techniques and the theoretical presuppositions of the commentators have attracted comparatively little attention. That researches into this direction can be done only in an all-Indian context is clearly seen by the author who, however, wisely postpones this as a vast “project for another time” 1 and concentrates on sūtra commentaries. As these commentaries presuppose certain “normative conventions” (p. 7), the author discusses norm versus practice in the study of Indian Buddhism, which, unsurprisingly, leads him almost immediately to the widely read article on “protestant presuppositions in the study of Buddhism” by G. Schopen of 1991 (pp. 7–12). In his critique of this article the author
Indo-Iranian Journal – Brill
Published: Jan 1, 2015
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