Scholastic Method came from Buddhist viharas

A forum for those wishing to discuss Buddhist history and teachings in the Western academic manner, referencing appropriate sources.
Locked
MiphamFan
Posts: 1096
Joined: Thu Jun 18, 2015 5:46 am

Scholastic Method came from Buddhist viharas

Post by MiphamFan »

I just read an interesting essay by Christopher Beckwith called "The Sarvastivadin Buddhist Scholastic Method in Medieval Islam and Tibet".

His main argument is that the scholastic method was invented in Sarvastivada Buddhist circles to explicate Abhidharma, and was passed orally in viharas. Muslims and Tibetans both got it from the same source -- Central Asian viharas. From there, Western Christians got it from the Muslims and passed it back to Europe.

The scholastic method of presentation is not at all like that of the classical Greeks, which are just discursive treatises. For example, Aristotle's writings have no particular structure other than those determined by the topics of interest to him, Plato's dialogues are basically covert treatises too because the other voices are usually not genuine alternatives.

The Scholastic Structure is as follows:

1. First argument
I. Topic (Title/Question/Argument)
II. List of Subarguments for and against the topic
[1] Subargument 1, for or against topic
[...]
[n] Subargument n, for or against topic
III, Author's View (not that important where it's found, in Latin tradition it's in the middle, other traditions and authors can put it first or at the end)
IV. List of Subarguments about subarguments above
[1] Subargument 1.1, for or against subargument 1 above
[...]
[n] Subargument n.n, for or against subargument n above
2. Second argument
as above

Alternative views are given a serious consideration and sometimes accepted without comment, unlike the Classical treatises. The entire text just consists of this structure repeated for dozens or hundreds of Topics. This is a very exhaustive and recursive type of analysis. The medieval Latin "summa" follows this structure and Beckwith calls the Abhidharmamahavibhasa and the Kosabhasya likewise "summas".

Beckwith mentions how the Islamic madrasa is essentially an Islamicized form of the vihara. The first Muslim to use the scholastic method was Ibn Sina (Avicenna) who was from Central Asia. Although no translations of Buddhist scholastic texts are known in Arabic, Beckwith says that based on logic, deduction and historical analysis it is apparent that the scholastic method was transmitted from the viharas. It is unlikely this method, first found in Buddhist texts, would emerge spontaneously in Islam and especially in a recently conquered area with Buddhist presence. Education was mainly done orally through most of history. You don't need to identify any literary source as a precondition for someone to learn something.

Therefore, the question is not whether Ibn Sina learned this orally from a teacher (which is basically a given), we should ask rather whether any teachers knew the method who could transmit it to him. Beckwith says that the conversion to Islam of Central Asia left a lot of things such as architectural forms of religious institutions, functions and legal statuses unchanged. The teachers likewise, forced to change their religious affiliations, still carried this knowledge with them. Muslims themselves note that madrasas started in Central Asia and spread out from there to the Near East (of the three founders of Baghdad, one was a Barmakid, a family which used to manage a vihara in Balkh).

So that's the transmission on the Muslim end. Beckwith notes on the TIbetan end that the later Tibetan method is not really the ancient Sarvastivadin method with recursion. Shantarakshita and Kamalashila did follow the method, but later Tibetans based their structure more on Rngog Lotsaba's tripartite method (dgag gzhag spang gsum) which consists of: objections (of others, and arguments against them), establishing (one's own view), refutation (of further objections to one's view). Dreyfus notes that nonetheless, this method has nothing to do with the debates Tibetan monks do, which has the Question-Answer type of dialogue structure found in ancient literature. Later Latins and Arabs also developed their own tripartite models but the essential feature of the scholastic method is not the number of parts but the recursive structure.

In the appendix Beckwith shows how arguments essentially follow the structure laid out above in the Kosabhasya and the Mahavibhasasastra.
Zla'od
Posts: 46
Joined: Wed Apr 13, 2016 9:35 am

Re: Scholastic Method came from Buddhist viharas

Post by Zla'od »

Since expanded into a book: http://www.amazon.com/Warriors-Cloister ... bc?ie=UTF8

I recall him discussing architectural parallels as well. Of course, the European "university" refers to a type of autonomous legal organization, which I am not sure would have described Islamic or Buddhist predecessor institutions like al-Azhar or Nalanda. Also, I would be wary of valorizing the "scholastic" style of argumentation, which can be stultifying ("How many angels...") as well as narrowing (e.g. Tibetan debate's reliance on Dharmakirti to the exclusion of modern perceptual psychology).
Easy answers to everything: https://tuttejiorg.wordpress.com/
User avatar
Wayfarer
Former staff member
Posts: 5150
Joined: Sun May 27, 2012 8:31 am
Location: AU

Re: Scholastic Method came from Buddhist viharas

Post by Wayfarer »

Very interesting! This Beckwith sounds someone worth reading.
'Only practice with no gaining idea' ~ Suzuki Roshi
Zla'od
Posts: 46
Joined: Wed Apr 13, 2016 9:35 am

Re: Scholastic Method came from Buddhist viharas

Post by Zla'od »

He is indeed. Here's his latest: http://www.amazon.com/Greek-Buddha-Pyrr ... 0691166447

(His title "Greek Buddha" refers to Pyrrho, not Shakyamuni.)
Easy answers to everything: https://tuttejiorg.wordpress.com/
User avatar
Wayfarer
Former staff member
Posts: 5150
Joined: Sun May 27, 2012 8:31 am
Location: AU

Re: Scholastic Method came from Buddhist viharas

Post by Wayfarer »

I am familiar with the Buddhist=Pyrrhonist connection from earlier sources (notably Adam Kuzminski), and I think there's a lot of truth in it. I'm sure that the original sceptics were very close to Nāgārjuna in spirit.
'Only practice with no gaining idea' ~ Suzuki Roshi
Zla'od
Posts: 46
Joined: Wed Apr 13, 2016 9:35 am

Re: Scholastic Method came from Buddhist viharas

Post by Zla'od »

It's an interesting line of thought (or several lines of thought), and I'm glad to see some iconoclastic approaches to the historical Buddha (if indeed he can be said to have existed as a historical figure). Jayarava Attwood has written on this as well.

I don't see any reason to suppose that Pyrrho's gymnosophists were Buddhist (as they would need to have been for Beckwith to use Pyrrho as an early source of historical information on Buddha). They seem to have been yogis of some sort, but we know that Buddhists and non-Buddhists routinely borrowed from one another. Just because Pyrrho sometimes sounds like Nagarjuna later, doesn't mean they didn't both get their ideas from some other source.

And while I am intrigued by the radical revision (not just by Beckwith) of Shakyamuni's biography and theology, I wonder whether we can so confidently state that "Shakya-" refers to Sakas / Scythians; or that Shakyamuni must have come from Gandhara rather than the Terai, and was hardly an Indian at all; or that his teachings would have represented a classical Iranian pagan reaction against Zoroastrianism. I can appreciate that at this late date, it is hard to recover any firm historical information about him at all, however tempting it might be to believe the more plausible-sounding details supplied by the Pali canon.
Easy answers to everything: https://tuttejiorg.wordpress.com/
Locked

Return to “Academic Discussion”