Paul W. Kroll

Jonathan A. Silk

"Albert Hoffstädt, a classicist by training and polylingual humanist by disposition, has for 25 years been the editor chiefly responsible for the development and acquisition of manuscripts in Asian Studies for Brill. During that time he has shepherded over 700 books into print and has distinguished himself as a figure of exceptional discernment and insight in academic publishing. He has also become a personal friend to many of his authors. A subset of these authors here offers to him in tribute and gratitude 22 essays on various topics in Asian Studies. These include studies on premodern Chinese, Indian, Japanese, and Korean literature, history, and religion, extending also into the modern and contemporary periods. They display the broad range of Mr. Hoffstädt's interests while presenting some of the most outstanding scholarship in Asian Studies today"--

Asian Studies for Hoffstädt

"At the Shores of the Sky"

Riven by Lust explores the tale of a man accused of causing the fundamental schism in early Indian Buddhism, but not before he has sex with his mother and kills his father. In tracing this Indian Buddhist Oedipal tale, Jonathan Silk follows it through texts in all of the major canonical languages of Buddhism, Sanskrit, Pali, Tibetan, Chinese, and Japanese, along the way noting parallels and contrasts with classical and medieval European stories such as the legend of the Oedipal Judas. Simultaneously, he investigates the psychological and anthropological understandings of the tale of mother-son incest in light of contemporary psychological and anthropological understandings of incest, with special attention to the question of why we consider it among the worst of crimes. In seeking to understand how the story worked in Indian texts and for Indian audiences—as well as how it might work for modern readers—this book has both horizontal and vertical dimensions, probing the place of the Oedipal in Indian culture, Buddhist and non-Buddhist, and simultaneously framing the Indian Oedipal within broader human concerns, thereby contributing to the study of the history of Buddhism, the transmission of narratives in the ancient world, and the fundamental nature of one aspect of human sexuality. Starting from a brief reference in a polemical treatise, Riven by Lust demonstrates that its authors borrowed and intentionally adapted a preexisting story of an Oedipal antihero. This recasting allowed them to calumniate their opponents in the strongest possible terms through the rhetoric of murder and incest. Silk draws on a wide variety of sources to demonstrate the range of thinking about incest in Indian Buddhist culture, thereby uncovering the strategies and working methods of the ancient polemicists. He argues that Indian Buddhists and Hindus, while occupying the same world for the most part, thought differently about fundamental issues such as incest, and hints at the consequent necessity of a reappraisal of our notions of the shape of the ancient cultural sphere they shared. Provocative and innovative, Riven by Lust is a paradigmatic analysis of a major theme of world mythology and a signal contribution to the study of the history of incest and comparative sexualities. It will attract readers interested in Buddhism, Indian studies, Asian studies, comparative culture, mythology, psychology, and the history of sexuality.

Incest and Schism in Indian Buddhist Legend and Historiography

Riven by Lust

With a Study of the Ratnarāśisūtra and Related Materials

The Origins and Early History of the Mahāratnakūṭa Tradition of Mahāyāna Buddhism

Vincent Eltschinger

Oskar von Hinüber

It has been evident for many years that no authoritative, reliable, and up-to-date reference work on Buddhism yet exists in any language. Brill's Encyclopedia of Buddhism aims to fill that gap with a comprehensive work, presented in two phases: a series of six thematic volumes including an index volume, addressing issues of global and regional importance, to be followed by an ever-expanding online resource providing access both to synthetic and comprehensive treatments and to more individuated details on persons, places, texts, doctrinal matters, and so on. Illustrated with maps and photographs, and supplemented with extensive online resources, the print version of the thematic encyclopedia will present the latest research on the main aspects of the Buddhist traditions in original essays written by the world's foremost scholars. The encyclopedia aims at a balanced and even-handed view of Buddhist traditions, presenting the most reliable accounts of well-known issues and filling gaps in heretofore-neglected areas. In doing so, it emphasizes that Buddhism is simultaneously constituted by a plurality of regional traditions and a far-reaching phenomenon spanning almost all of Asia, and more recently far beyond as well. Volume I, which appeared in 2015, surveys Buddhist literatures, scriptural and nonscriptural, and offers discussions of the languages of Buddhist traditions and the physical bases (manuscripts, epigraphy, etc.) available for the study of Buddhist literatures. Subsequent volumes will address issues of personages, communities, history, life and practice, doctrine, space and time, and Buddhism in the modern world.

Brill's Encyclopedia of Buddhism

Asian Studies for Albert Hoffstädt

The paradigmatic Buddhist is the monk. It is well known that ideally Buddhist monks are expected to meditate and study -- to engage in religious practice. The institutional structure which makes this concentration on spiritual cultivation possible is the monastery. But as a bureaucratic institution, the monastery requires administrators to organize and manage its functions, to prepare quiet spots for meditation, to arrange audiences for sermons, or simply to make sure food, rooms, and bedding are provided. The valuations placed on such organizational roles were, however, a subject of considerable controversy among Indian Buddhist writers, with some considering them significantly less praiseworthy than meditative concentration or teaching and study, while others more highly appreciated their importance. Managing Monks, as the first major study of the administrative offices of Indian Buddhist monasticism and of those who hold them, explores literary sources, inscriptions and other materials in Sanskrit, Pali, Tibetan, and Chinese in order to explore this tension and paint a picture of the internal workings of the Buddhist monastic institution in India, highlighting the ambivalent and sometimes contradictory attitudes toward administrators revealed in various sources.

Administrators and Administrative Roles in Indian Buddhist Monasticism

Managing Monks

Simultaneously, Silk investigates the psychological and anthropological understandings of the tale of mother-son incest in light of contemporary psychological and anthropological understandings of incest, with special attention to the question of why we consider it among the worst of crimes.

Jonathan A. Silk

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