Abstract
What do we mean by 'text'? Is it a clearly defined category, which reflects the content intentionally designed by distinct authors? In the case of the early discourses attributed by tradition to the historical Buddha, such attitudes are deeply suspect. Here, texts had a dynamic life, being shaped and re-shaped by a web of creative processes, so that the purported collections of the Buddha's words emerge as methods for generating authoritative scripture. A text is a potential more than a fixed entity, and the end product we read today in the 'canon' shifted boundaries, much in accord with the Buddhist law of impermanence.
Prof. Eviatar Shulman | Site
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
9/11/2022 - WED 16:30- Room 5318
