Carrying the Load. Philological and Doctrinal Remarks on the Bharaharasutra
IIAS Lecture by Prof. Vincent Eltschinger, Numata Visiting Professor of Buddhist Studies at Leiden University.
Philological and Doctrinal Remarks on the Bharaharasutra
A controversy over the pudgala or 'person' raged among Indian Buddhists for more than a millenium. Their polemics were at least as much a matter of canonical exegesis as of reasoning and argument, for the 'mainstream' Buddhist doctors had to account for - and "explain away" - the numerous places in scripture where the Buddha speaks of the 'person'. The Bharaharasutra or sutra on the bearer of the burden was one of the scriptures most frequently quoted and discussed in this connection. This lecture is aimed at presenting this sutra and providing an overview of the doctrinal and argumentative uses that were made of it in the context of the energetic debates about the status of the 'person'.
Prof. Vincent Eltschinger
Vincent Eltschinger, Research Fellow in the Institute for the Cultural and Intellectual History of Asia in the Austrian Academy of Sciences Vienna, is Numata Visiting Professor of Buddhist Studies at Leiden University.