Y. Karunadasa - The Buddhist Analysis of Matter

THIS ADMIRABLE BOOK began life more than half a century ago as a doctoral thesis for the School of Oriental Studies at the University of London, and when in due course it was published (by the government of Sri Lanka), Edward Conze, the most eminent Buddhologist of the day, wrote that it was likely to be the last word on the subject for some time to come. There can be little doubt that the same judgment could be repeated today. Although in the interim the serious study of Pli and its early literature so far declined that, if one excludes a few monastics in Theravda monasteries in Asia (who are not likely to read scholarly work in English), the number of those equipped to appreciate it almost dwindled away, there is now a keen interest all over the world in the study of Pli, both in lay Buddhist circles and in institutes of higher learning, and since there is so little corresponding to this book available, it meets a need.

Clearly, the great majority of those who are likely to want to read a book about early Buddhism are attracted to the subject out of a concern for its religious side. In his final chapter, The Ethico-Philosophical Basis of the Buddhist Analysis of Matter, Professor Karunadasa faces this issue directly. In the chapters opening paragraph he writes: The Buddha himself says that as a religious teacher he teaches only two things: suffering and its cessation. Buddhisms analysis of the world of experience is undertaken not for its own sake but for evolving a rationale for its doctrine and discipline. Attention is not concentrated on the empirical world in and for itself. The Buddhist inquiry into the nature and constitution of matter and its relevance for Buddhism cannot be properly understood if the subject is divorced from its religious context.

He then goes straight on to write: The close connection between the Buddhist analysis of matter and Buddhist ethics is indicated by the oft-recurring statement... [that] matter is something that is favorable to, or productive of... the fetters that bind the living being to sasric existence. He continues: The analysis of matter is thus necessitated by an ethical need... In the earlier texts where rpa [matter] is explained in simple and general terms the ethical approach to the subject is much more pronounced. That rpa is impermanent and that therefore it cannot be made the basis of true happiness is the main theme that runs throughout all such discussions.

The difficulty that the author cannot quite circumvent is that this straightforward explanation of the marginal position that matter holds in early Buddhist soteriology, while it is important, is hardly enough to fill a thesis or a book. Theoretical statements and arguments about matter are to be found in texts for more than a millennium after the time of the Buddha, and before long their connection to Buddhist ethics becomes increasingly tenuous. It is customary to call this theorizing Buddhist philosophy, but it no longer underpins the Buddhas religious teachings and it is hard to see any interaction between these theories and Buddhisms core, the soteriological doctrines, which continue unaffected.

On the other hand, a historian can trace influence and interaction between the Pli tradition and other ancient Indian cosmological teachings, both Buddhist and non-Buddhist, and here Prof. Karunadasa undoubtedly breaks new ground.

Prof. Karunadasa counts among his assets an exemplary clarity of thought and its natural concomitant, a gift for lucid exposition, and he conscientiously translates all Pli terms and quotations. Nevertheless I think it has to be admitted that the very nature of his subject matter makes it inevitable that readers who do not know any Pli will find it a challenge fully to understand even chapter 1, let alone what follows. However, the author has provided a one-page summary of the content of the book, containing no Pli words, which is printed in the front of the book. I would recommend that newcomers to the subject first read this summary and then the final chapter, after which they will be better equipped to tackle the rest of the book.

Richard Gombrich

Emeritus Boden Professor of Sanskrit, University of Oxford