Western Notions of Canon is Buddhism Obscuring the Nature of a Multiplex Scriptural Tradition

Rachel McLean

Date of Award

2011

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Humanities

First Advisor

Newman, John

Keywords

Buddhism, Canon, Scripture

Area of Concentration

Religion

Abstract

This thesis explores the extent to which Western notions of canon can be applied to the Buddhist scriptural tradition. It seeks to resolve inconsistent portrayals of Buddhist scriptural collections rendered by Buddhist scholars in the West; these portrayals often use the technical term canon to frame the tradition's sacred texts in terms of Theravadin Pali, Chinese Mahayana, and Tibetan canons. Although canon has been employed by Buddhist scholars since the mid-19th century to frame depictions of Buddhist scripture, there has been little consideration within Buddhist Studies about using this term in a specifically Buddhist context. In my research, I explored canon's origin in Christianity and its secular and religious meanings. I surveyed the most recent scholarship on the primary extant Buddhist scriptural domains, analyzing how canon has been employed to characterize the Buddhist tradition, and considered the earliest usage of the term by Western Buddhist scholars. From this, I assessed whether Western notions of canon actually applied in the Buddhist case, concluding that usage of canon misrepresents Buddhism in all cases, except with respect to the Theravadin Pali collection, which is but one of many collections within Buddhism.

Rights

This bibliographic record is available under the Creative Commons CC0 public domain dedication. The New College of Florida, as creator of this bibliographic record, has waived all rights to it worldwide under copyright law, including all related and neighboring rights, to the extent allowed by law.

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