Authority against canonicity

Discussions of canonicity in Buddhism have recently centred on two historical moments:

the formation and purification of the Chinese canon, and the authorization strategies of the Treasure tradition in the rNying.ma school of Tibetan Buddhism. In both cases, translation from the original language(s) is a given, and the identification of original sources is a norm against which apocryphal or revelatory material is tested. The conservative position holds that in order for a text to be included in the canon it must be a translation of a pre-existing text which had such authority.

In the literary traditions of the rNying.ma.pas,¹⁰ two different responses are put forward. On the one hand, the rNying.ma.pa scholars try to show that such demonstrably old texts as the Guhyagarbha do indeed have Sanskrit originals, and have even questioned the revision of existing translations.¹¹ Thus ’O.rgyan.pa (1230–1309), arguing against the position put forward by “some Tibetan translators” that “the Nyingma translations had no origin in India”, argues first that it is impossible to know all the texts in India, and consequently that it would be impossible to know which had come to Tibet;

then, taking the opposite tack, that because manuscripts decay quickly in India, the argument from the absence of a manuscript is not convincing; and finally that

Furthermore, in later times original Sanskrit manuscripts were mostly preserved in Nepal. Among them, an inconceivable number of different Nyingma tantras were preserved in one of the temples of a Newari bahal.¹² (Rimpoche et al. 1991:891)

On the other hand, the rNying.ma Treasure tradition, which consists in revelation of materials that have been concealed by Padmasambhava until the appropriate moment for their rediscovery, is defended in more ambiguous terms which both accept the importance of canonical status and reject it. This point is made acute by Janet Gyatso.

But even more, the discoverers claim distinction within the venerable tradition with which they are associating themselves. The claim is not merely, ‘I have a sacred esoteric scripture that is just as powerful as the sacred Buddhist sūtras and tantras that we already have in our canon.’ It is also that this scripture has been obtained in a manner more impressive than the conventional method of transmitting sacred Buddhist texts, that is, from master to disciple in the ‘long transmission’. (Gyatso 1998:150)

The Treasure tradition defends itself as a whole by producing Indian precedents for the entire process of treasure recovery itself: discovery of new material which nonetheless has the status of buddhavacana. Perhaps the best known example of this sort of material is the five Maitreya texts which were taught to and which he made available along with his commentaries on them. Yet there is also a sense in which the very non-Indian-ness of the Treasure texts adds to their legitimacy:

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The explicit role that the Treasure tradition granted to historical Tibetan persons leads to a second fount from which the discoverers drew self-legitimation. Interestingly this fount produces a kind of legitimation that is in direct opposition to that afforded by affiliation with Indian scriptural practices. I am referring to the indigenously Tibetan factors in Treasure transmission, of which the spotlighting of a historical Tibetan person is but one example. The force of these factors is not usually made explicit—

probably for the same reasons that the Treasure apologists had to focus on their Indic precedents. But even if an important Treasure theorist has argued that it is wrong to value the Treasures simply because they represent the practice of one’s ancestors—the fault of ‘accepting one’s father’s cup as clean’—the fact is that the Treasure discoverers appropriated to their person the power and glory of ancient Tibetan civilization as much as that of Indian Buddhism. (Gyatso 1998:151)

Power and canonicity

Rob Mayer, in an extended discussion of the problem of canonicity in relation to the rNying.ma tradition, concludes that canonical closure only happens when there is the political will and power to force closure. In his summarizing list of the factors influencing closure, the first three items are

(a) in each missionised Buddhist cultural region, initially the canonical collections were de facto open, along the Indian model, where fresh scriptural revelation never ceased;

(b) subsequent attempts to select and close the canon invariably involved political factors;

(c) actual canonical closure could only be achieved where there existed sufficient intervention from a political state, effective repression. (Mayer 1996:20)

Mayer is elaborating a general theory of the relation between power and canonical closure following the similar proposal in Collins (1990). However, he has in mind the particular problem of the rNying.ma texts and the challenges to their authenticity in Tibet. He draws on Harrison (1994), who says

from the very beginnings of Buddhism in Tibet, the quest for the standardised and authoritative text or collection of texts has been driven by the struggle for prestige, power and hegemony, as much as by more scholarly imperatives.

Harrison’s position clearly supports Mayer’s b, but does not necessarily support c. This further conclusion I find problematic, partly because it is an unprovable statement in historical terms, but more importantly because along with b it has a somewhat simplistic notion of power. Economic factors may play a significant part in canon formation, for

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example, and as we have seen outside Buddhism, canonical closure can be achieved by simple decree if closure is an issue which worries the founder of a religion. The extension of political or especially economic coercion into the individual psyche, usually called

‘marketing’, renders the concept of repression hopelessly inadequate in the modern period, and yet it has clear implications for canon formation. This is, ironically, especially true for Buddhism in the developed West, where there are very few non-commercial systems for the translation and distribution of Buddhist texts.

Novel strategies The point has been made by Gyatso, Mayer and others that whether or not the rNying.ma appeal to Indian precursors for the Treasure tradition is convincing, the programme of legitimation which surrounds the Treasure tradition is specific to Tibet and an emergent feature of the type of Buddhism proper to the Tibetan cultural sphere.

Like the sprul sku system of reincarnate lamas, it is not found elsewhere in the Buddhist world. Studies of the lives of Treasure revealers (Aris 1989, Gyatso 1998) have exposed the insecurity and instability inherent in the claims of a Treasure revealer, and the sometimes abundant skepticism with which they and their textual discoveries are met.

The process of winning authority and of constructing a parallel Treasure canon, alongside the work of proving the canonical validity of older materials, is clearly analyzable in terms of the social structure model proposed above. Where the authority which derives from canonicity might be lined up with Weber’s notion of institutional authority, here it is charisma, the charisma of the Treasure revealers and the lineage whose authority they claim, which generates authority for the Treasure text.¹³

3.1.4 Braid

Let me try to gather and twist together the various, sometimes woolly, threads so far presented. The problem before us is to find a useable theory of how a text strives to win, and then maintains, its own authority in a religious community. The collection of texts regarded as authoritative in a religious community is called a canon. Canons are defined by their closure, however unsuccessful it may be. A text which is a plausible candidate for inclusion in the canon, but is rejected, is called an apocryphon. Without apocrypha there is no canon. There appears to be no typical size for a canon.

A canon is best described as a cognitive structure, existing in a realm of social facts, constituted and maintained by social acts. An example of this is the recitation of the Pāli canon or a significant subset; another example is the assignment to a novice monk of the responsibility of preserving a section of the canon; another is the writing of a prescriptive (dKar.chag) or descriptive catalogue of any particular block printed Tibetan canon; still another is fundraising on the Internet to pay for proofreading the digital Pāli Canon and soliciting scholarly help in this enterprise. It is a feature of a social, rather than an individual, epistemology, of the general type which Foucault or Bourdieu propose. An individual text which is a plausible candidate for canonical status will have certain formal features, such as its language, structure, doctrines and style, which meet criteria for inclusion in the canon, although it is always possible for a text to be stipulated and eventually accepted as canonical by some sufficiently powerful or persuasive agency so that, although it fails formal tests for membership at the time of its inclusion, it subsequently forms an exemplar within the canon through which other texts are eventually accepted.

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Texts seeking canonical status act in some ways like jātis seeking to raise their status in the hierarchy. This comparison points out the collaborative and cognitive nature of canonical status. A text’s canonical status is achieved through a network of ascriptions to that status, made both within a recitation, manuscript or edition of the text and without, in simply textual terms (such as by labelling themselves as vaipulyasūtra or mahāyānasūtraratnarāja) as well as in ritual modes. This latter can be internal to the text, as in recommending rituals for itself which are only appropriate to canonical texts, or external, when there is an act of public patronage (such as copying or recitation) only suitable to a canonical text. Thus as with a jāti there are verbal and ritual claims both involved in the shift to a higher status.

Moreover, the canon is constituted and preserved through the performance and re-performance of the canonicity of its members, as well as by statements and ritual actions which have the canon as a whole as their object. Actions addressed to individual texts include recitation, veneration, procession and so on. Actions which constitute the canon as a whole can range from the relatively trivial, such as an individual buying a Bible or the CD-ROM of the Pāli Canon, to the expensive and nontrivial compilation and recension of an entire canon; notable examples include the carving of wooden blocks at sDe’ rge and the series of councils which culminated in the Vulgate Bible. If the canon is so poorly closed as to admit of no obvious manifestation, there may be a smaller, better defined canon within the canon which can stand for the whole canon in rituals.

The medium of transmission is important: oral, manuscript, printed and digital technologies all condition the form and processes of canon. For the purposes of this study, manuscript transmission was the only technology widely used among the Newars in the 15^th century although they would probably have been aware of wood block printing, which was just then becoming important in Tibet.