The cult of the book
Through the miracle tales, we see the development of cults around various objects of power. It might be a bodhisattva like Guan-yin or Dizang, or it might be the Lotus or Prajnaparamita sutra. Reverence for sutras is intimately connected with the birth of the Mahayana. India had an oral culture, so stories and teachings were preserved in the minds of practitioners and passed directly from one person to another. Memorization was considered the best way to protect the teachings, since written texts could be lost or destroyed by flood or fire. Writing down the teachings also made them available to any literate person—even people of the lowest castes, to whom Brahmanism, for instance, forbade such transmission.
Buddhism was the first Indian religion to write down its teachings and make them available to everyone. As those teachings spread across a larger and larger geographic area, translating the sutras into the various local languages and handing them down correctly was made much easier by the availability of written texts.
Scriptures such as the Lotus Sutra that encouraged practitioners to venerate, copy and recite them as acts of piety ensured their own preservation and the expansion of Mahayana influence. Even folks who couldn’t read or understand the sutras were promised a glorious rebirth, abundant food, good health, and other spiritual and material benefits if they showed the scriptures the proper respect.
Mahayana sutras sometimes positioned themselves as relics. Relics were believed to be bits of the Buddha’s own corporeal body—a shard of bone, or a tooth—which were saved from his funeral pyre. These relics were kept in tiny caskets, which in turn were housed in reliquary monuments, or stupas. The Buddha’s teachings were likewise considered to be bits of his dharma body (dharmakaya). That being the case, the books in which they were kept were also stupas, and they were treated with reverence. In the same way that relics were preserved in a casket and housed in a stupa, sutras could be preserved in books and housed in stupas of their own.
Scriptures such as the Lotus Sutra promoted the veneration of corporeal relics and their stupas as well as the scriptures themselves, and advocated the enshrining of books. However other texts, like the early Prajnaparamita literature, positioned themselves as substitutes for physical relics. It was the dharma, rather than his physical body, that allowed the Buddha to reach awakening; therefore the sutras were seen as more powerful relics than bones and teeth. The scriptures’ self-consciousness in advocating their own veneration and the way they describe their own status differentiates Mahayana texts from earlier works.
A theory widely accepted by modern scholars holds that Mahayana Buddhism itself began as a collection of cults centered on various texts. The first Indian Buddhist stupas were erected at sites important in the life of Siddhartha Gautama, and were under the control of established orthodox Buddhist groups. The new Mahayana practitioners needed their own sacred places. Since the Perfection of Wisdom was the cause for the Buddha’s awakening, rather than a mere result of that awakening, wherever its sutra was set forth was seen as a sacred place; enshrining and venerating the Prajnaparamita literature made any location sacred without the necessity of consecration by institutional Buddhism. That allowed Mahayana practitioners to create their own centers of worship independent of the Buddhist establishment. By equating the physical text of sutras with the sacredness of the Buddha, the early Mahayana found a way to both create new sacred sites and provide followers with devotional opportunities that were not tied to the specific historical presence of Siddhartha Gautama.
Fǎxiǎn (ca. 337 - ca. 422 CE) was a Chinese monk who traveled to India early in the 5th century in search of Buddhist sutras. He wrote about his observations of stupas that honored scriptures, and that helped to make the Chinese aware of the practice and of the importance of these texts. The veneration of texts was not a new idea in China, though, because the Chinese were already carving Confucian writings on stone caves and walls. Now they took up the same practice with sutras, which both preserved the scriptures and turned the sites into sacred places.
The earliest Chinese collections of sutras on paper were compiled during the period of the Northern and Southern dynasties (317 - 589 CE). Emperors and wealthy families commissioned the transcription of a number of copies of the canon for enshrinement in major provincial temples. By the T’ang dynasty (618 - 907 CE), seventeen-character lines and twenty-eight line pages had become the standard format for sutra copying. The completed individual sheets were then pasted together to form scrolls.
In both China and Japan, clerics organized opportunities for groups of laypeople to copy sutras by hand as a devotional practice. After washing and putting on clean clothes, the practitioner sat down and mindfully wrote out a sutra with carbon ink on paper or on thin wooden strips that were bound together once completed. (A few of the devout wrote out scriptures in their own blood as an offering, but others saw this practice as distasteful because blood was seen as impure, and inappropriate for pure texts like sutras.)
Buddhism was the first Indian religion to write down its teachings and make them available to everyone. As those teachings spread across a larger and larger geographic area, translating the sutras into the various local languages and handing them down correctly was made much easier by the availability of written texts.
Scriptures such as the Lotus Sutra that encouraged practitioners to venerate, copy and recite them as acts of piety ensured their own preservation and the expansion of Mahayana influence. Even folks who couldn’t read or understand the sutras were promised a glorious rebirth, abundant food, good health, and other spiritual and material benefits if they showed the scriptures the proper respect.
Mahayana sutras sometimes positioned themselves as relics. Relics were believed to be bits of the Buddha’s own corporeal body—a shard of bone, or a tooth—which were saved from his funeral pyre. These relics were kept in tiny caskets, which in turn were housed in reliquary monuments, or stupas. The Buddha’s teachings were likewise considered to be bits of his dharma body (dharmakaya). That being the case, the books in which they were kept were also stupas, and they were treated with reverence. In the same way that relics were preserved in a casket and housed in a stupa, sutras could be preserved in books and housed in stupas of their own.
Scriptures such as the Lotus Sutra promoted the veneration of corporeal relics and their stupas as well as the scriptures themselves, and advocated the enshrining of books. However other texts, like the early Prajnaparamita literature, positioned themselves as substitutes for physical relics. It was the dharma, rather than his physical body, that allowed the Buddha to reach awakening; therefore the sutras were seen as more powerful relics than bones and teeth. The scriptures’ self-consciousness in advocating their own veneration and the way they describe their own status differentiates Mahayana texts from earlier works.
A theory widely accepted by modern scholars holds that Mahayana Buddhism itself began as a collection of cults centered on various texts. The first Indian Buddhist stupas were erected at sites important in the life of Siddhartha Gautama, and were under the control of established orthodox Buddhist groups. The new Mahayana practitioners needed their own sacred places. Since the Perfection of Wisdom was the cause for the Buddha’s awakening, rather than a mere result of that awakening, wherever its sutra was set forth was seen as a sacred place; enshrining and venerating the Prajnaparamita literature made any location sacred without the necessity of consecration by institutional Buddhism. That allowed Mahayana practitioners to create their own centers of worship independent of the Buddhist establishment. By equating the physical text of sutras with the sacredness of the Buddha, the early Mahayana found a way to both create new sacred sites and provide followers with devotional opportunities that were not tied to the specific historical presence of Siddhartha Gautama.
Fǎxiǎn (ca. 337 - ca. 422 CE) was a Chinese monk who traveled to India early in the 5th century in search of Buddhist sutras. He wrote about his observations of stupas that honored scriptures, and that helped to make the Chinese aware of the practice and of the importance of these texts. The veneration of texts was not a new idea in China, though, because the Chinese were already carving Confucian writings on stone caves and walls. Now they took up the same practice with sutras, which both preserved the scriptures and turned the sites into sacred places.
The earliest Chinese collections of sutras on paper were compiled during the period of the Northern and Southern dynasties (317 - 589 CE). Emperors and wealthy families commissioned the transcription of a number of copies of the canon for enshrinement in major provincial temples. By the T’ang dynasty (618 - 907 CE), seventeen-character lines and twenty-eight line pages had become the standard format for sutra copying. The completed individual sheets were then pasted together to form scrolls.
In both China and Japan, clerics organized opportunities for groups of laypeople to copy sutras by hand as a devotional practice. After washing and putting on clean clothes, the practitioner sat down and mindfully wrote out a sutra with carbon ink on paper or on thin wooden strips that were bound together once completed. (A few of the devout wrote out scriptures in their own blood as an offering, but others saw this practice as distasteful because blood was seen as impure, and inappropriate for pure texts like sutras.)
