THE JOURNAL

OF THE INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF

BUDDHIST STUDIES
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EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
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Roger Jackson
Dept. of Religion
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Carleton College
Northfield, MN 55057
USA

EDITORS

Peter N. Gregory Ernst Steinkellner

University of Illinois University of Vienna
Urbana-Champaign, Illinois, USA Wien, Austria

Alexander W. Macdonald JikidO Takasaki

University de Paris X University of Tokyo
Nanterre, France Tokyo, Japan

Steven Collins Robert Thurman

University of Chicago Columbia University
Chicago, Illinois, USA New York, New York, USA

Volume 14 1991 Number 2

 CONTENTS

I. ARTICLES

1. Reflections on the Mahesvara Subjugation Myth:

Indie Materials, Sa-skya-pa Apologetics,
and the Birth of Heruka,x by Ronald M. Davidson 197
2. A Newar Buddhist Liturgy: Sravakayanist Ritual in
Kwa Bahah, Lalitpur, Nepal, by D.N. Gellner 236
3. Chinese Reliquary Inscriptions and the
San-chieh-chao, by Jamie Hubbard 253
4. An Old Inscription from AmaravatI and the
Cult of the Local Monastic Dead in Indian
Buddhist Monasteries, by Gregory Schopen 281

II. BOOK REVIEWS

1. Buddha in the Crown: Avalokitesvara in the Buddhist

Traditions of Sri Lanka, by John Clifford Holt
(Vijitha Rajapakse) 331
2. High Religion: A Cultural and Political History of
Sherpa Religion, by Sherry Ortner
(Alexander W. Macdonald) 341
3. Mddhyamika and Yogacara: A Study ofMahayana
Philosophies, by Gadjin M. Nagao
(Paul J. Griffiths) 345

LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS 349

 REVIEWS 341

inner self-culture which emphasizes meditation. For it sits at the

very heart of Theravada spirituality, and when engaged in seriously,
it has salutary results, both on the individual and society. Besides, it
is on the whole more vital to traditional Buddhist practice in Sri
Lanka than the veneration of deities (George D. Bond's recent inves-
tigations into the place of meditation in the revival of Buddhism
there earlier this century brings to the fore several instructive consid-
erations on this score; see The Buddhist Revival in Sri Lanka: Religious
Tradition, Reinterpretation, Response, Columbia, S.C., 1988, chap. 4, 5, 6).
Clearly, then, there is room to argue against many of the positions
taken in Buddha in the Crown: its core interpretations in particular are
sometimes open to dispute, and may fairly be countered with other
accountings. Still, the new contribution to the study of religious
change in Sri Lanka presented in this book fully merits attentive
reading. Given its overall focus—Mahayanism in Sri Lanka's Thera-
vada setting, a hitherto insufficiently examined subject—it is a source
of much factual information. And even those who cannot quite agree
with them are likely to find the theoretical approaches developed
and applied here often both distinctive and thought-provoking.

Vijitha Rajapakse

High Religion: A Cultural and Political History of Sherpa Buddhism, by

Sherry B. Ortner. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989.
pp. xxi +245.12 illustrations and 3 maps. Cloth: $35. Paper: $12.95.

Sherry Ortner knows the Sherpa area of Nepal well. She spent
seventeen months there on general field-work in 1966-68; and in 1976
she helped to make a film in the area. In 1978, she published the book
for which she is best known: Sherpas Through Their Rituals (Cambridge
and New York, Cambridge University Press). T h e book reviewed
here is the result of field-work carried out again by the author
between January and June, 1979. It is based mainly on information
collected orally in the field during that period. However, considerable
use has also been made by S. B. O . of M. Oppitz, Geschichte und
Sozialordnung der Sherpa (Innsbruck-Munchen, 1968), translated by a
nameless student (p. 231), and of the Shar-pa'i chos-hyung sngon-med
tshangs-pa'i dbyu-gu (Junbesi-Nanterre, 1971), translated into English
for her by P. Pranke and C. Huntington (p. 234). Seemingly, Sherry
Ortner does not read Tibetan; and she does not read Nepali (p. 207).
342 JIABS VOL. 14 NO. 2

As is well known, the Sherpas are a small, ethnically Tibetan,

group who live close to Mt. Everest in three districts of north-eastern
Hindu Nepal (Khumbu, Pharak and Solu). Today, they live at alti-
tudes varying between 8,500 and 14,000 feet. They combine agricul-
ture (wheat and potatoes) with herding (yaks, cross-breeds and
cows) and trans-frontier and local trade (salt, animals, etc.). Their
villages are small and their homesteads sometimes isolated. They
are organised in patrilineal clans which regulate clan-exogamous
marriage. Property in herds, houses and land is privately owned.
Since 1950, the boom in "trekking" and the proliferation of foreign
mountaineering expeditions have opened up, to all ranks of Sherpa
society, possibilities of non-traditional employment and the rapid
earning of large sums in cash. The Sherpas practice Mahayana Bud-
dhism and they are thought to have started migrating from Khams
(Eastern Tibet) towards their present habitat in the 15th or 16th cen-
turies C.E. Solid information concerning the religious habits and
customs of the Sherpas prior to their arrival in Khumbu is scant: like
many other Central and Southern Tibetan groups, they lay claim, in
their writings, to prestigious ancestors in the North-East.
The central problem examined in this book is how, why, where,
and by whom Sherpa monasteries were founded. The dates of the
principal foundations were already known locally: the dgon-pa at
Tengboche, Chiwong and Thami with which this volume is mainly
concerned, all were founded within the past seventy or eighty years.
Sherry Ortner has much that is new and interesting to tell us about
the social motivations and mechanisms behind these foundations.
The Sherpas who first settled in Khumbu were few in number, and
the accumulation of capital sufficient to meet the cost of building
large and fairly complex religious edifices took time. During that
time, individuals became rich in widely differing ways, as tax-collec-
tors, as political leaders, as traders, as labour-contractors in Darjee-
ling, etc. Some of this was already known through the works of Ch.
von Fiirer-Haimendorf and others. The novelty of S. B. O.'s
approach is that she draws attention to a "cultural schema" which,
according to her, characterised Sherpa society during the years in
question. She writes: "The tales begin with a political or fraternal
rivalry, or both. The protagonists struggle back and forth, often
quite violently, and the rival appears to gain the upper hand. The
hero then departs for remote places and acquires a powerful protector.
He returns to the conflict, and with the aid of his protector, defeats
the rival. He acquires the rival's subjects. The rival is humiliated and
leaves the area permanently. The hero founds a temple, an act of
great virtue" (p. 71). The author emphasizes "the extraordinary cul-
 REVIEWS 343

tural generality of this story line" without, however, adducing much

material to substantiate her claim. Indeed, throughout the book, cul-
tural, social, economic and religious comparisons with other Tibetan
local cultures in the Himalayas (Limi, Mugu, Dolpo, Mustang,
Walung, etc.) are absent. Even Tibet as a conditioning cultural pres-
ence is only dimly perceived. Most of the book is in fact concerned
with a threesome played out among "the Sherpas," the Raj in British
India and the Gorkha Raj in Kathmandu. S. B. O. is convinced that
the founding of "celibate monasteries" marked "the transformation
of Sherpa religion" (p. 126). I am doubtful about this: it seems to me
that the Sherpas were Buddhists before and after such events: society
was not changed.
The book under review also aims to contribute to discussions
among Western academic authorities concerning what has come to be
known as the Theory of Practice (see, especially, pp. 11-18, 193-202).
I do not feel qualified to assess the importance of the contribution
this book makes to such debates. So, as I have personal knowledge
of the Sherpa area, I shall focus my remarks on what might be called
the celibacy issue. Is a non-celibate monastery a monastery? Let us
start with the buildings. C. Jest, for instance, in his Monuments of
North Nepal (Paris, UNESCO, 1981), pp. 31-32, divided the types of
buildings he had studied into monastery (dgon-pa), temple (Iha-
khang), chapel (bla-brang), meeting house {mi-mtshogs-pa) and her-
mitage (mtsham-khang); and he stuck to this classification through-
out. Whatever its merits or demerits, it corresponds to Tibetan and
local usage. S. B. O. cares for none of this and jumps from one
English word to another in her attempts to render local expressions.
On p. 24 she writes: "The early Sherpa lamas are shown... founding
gompa, which I will translate in the present context as "chapels." On
p. 48: "Even if the early temples were not separate monasteries "
On p. 68: "He erected a gompa (that is, Zhung temple]..." and on
p. 209, note 21: "The Sherpas use gonda and gompa interchangeably
for any religious temples." The perplexity thus induced in the
reader's mind will be increased by the appearance of the term
labstang, which the Glossary, p. 222, assures us derives from Tib.
bslab-tshang, "a celibate monastery." Whatever this latter expression
may mean—slob-pa means "to learn" and slob-grva is "a school"—it
cannot mean "a celibate monastery." One wonders whether grva-
tshang, "dwelling for novices," is not "behind" S. B. O.'s labstang; see
Das, Dictionary, q.v., p. 1020 and Jaschke, Dictionary, q.v., p. 75. To
my mind, when monasteries are considered as institutions, account
should be taken, by an anthropologist, of the vows pronounced by
their inmates. Of these, we learn next to nothing from S. B. O. Is the
344 JIABS VOL. 14 NO. 2

supreme aim of a Rnying-ma-pa-society to have, in its midst, com-

munities of celibate monks? Again, I am very doubtful about this.
Yet, almost unwittingly, Sherry Ortner seems to me to have put a
finger on an aspect of Tibetan society which, to date, has been little
studied by Western Tibetologists. Undoubtedly, there were or are
celibate communities in Tibet, Bhutan, etc. Such communities were
and are considered by local communities as super-natural-power-
houses. Nevertheless, if a village household calls a monk to do a
ritual in a case of extreme difficulty, it will, in my experience, sum-
mon a 'Brug-pa kun-legs type of individual rather than a chaste
monk from one of the great Lha-sa monasteries. Buddhism has never
got rid of magic. S. B. O.'s view of Buddhism seems to me to be con-
ditioned by American Pruitanism—in religion, sexless is best—and
by the literature in Western languages authored by those in contact
with Dge-lugs-pa. May I state quite simply that I admire this book
as Anthropology? I respect it less as Tibetology. In Sherpa-land I
knew very well a lama who "fell" for a woman. No one, in the local
community, criticised his sexual activities. Everyone considered the
fact that he had broken his vows as despicable. Homosexual relation-
ships provoke less reprobation in local society. It has always seemed
to me that Tibetans are much less worried than Westerners are by
who has sexual relations with whom: and this sometimes makes the
anthropological study of Tibetan kinship difficult.

Post-script:
Sherry Ortner starts her book by paying homage to her field-
assistant Nyima Chotar, who died in 1982. While writing this review,
I received the sad news that Sangs rgyas bstan-'jin had died on 12
July, 1990. For a partial view of his life, see "The autobiography of a
20th century Rnying-ma-pa lama" in Journal of the International Asso-
ciation of Buddhist Studies, 4 / 2 , 1981, p. 6 3 - 7 5 . Before he died, he had
completed a supplement to the Shar-pa'i chos byung which deals
mainly with Sherpa marriage rituals. This, along with the Sherpa-
Tibetan Phrase-Book and Word-list we had compiled, has been
made over to our German colleagues F.-K. Ehrhard and C. Cuppers
of the Nepal Research Centre at New Bhaneswar: and it is hoped
that some of these materials will be published in the not too distant
future. Sangs-rgyas bstan 'jin was a remarkable scholar; and several
other Westerners beside myself have benefited greatly from his learn-
ing and teaching.

Alexander W. Macdonald