Buddhaghosa biography of william james

The interpretations provided by Buddhaghosa have generally constituted the orthodox understanding of Theravada scriptures since at least the 12th century CE. Limited reliable information is available about the life of Buddhaghosa.

4 The fact that 'David Hume' and 'William James' each have more references in the index than a word like 'rebirth' surely bears witness to this concern.

Three primary sources of information exist: short prologues and epilogues attached to Buddhaghosa's works; details of his life recorded in the Mahavamsa , a Sri Lankan chronicle; and a later biographical work called the Buddhaghosuppatti. The biographical excerpts attached to works attributed to Buddhaghosa reveal relatively few details of his life, but were presumably added at the time of his actual composition.

The Mahavamsa records that Buddhaghosa was born into a Brahmin family in the kingdom of Magadha. On finding a text for which the commentary had been lost in India, Buddhaghosa determined to travel to Sri Lanka to study a Sinhalese commentary that was believed to have been preserved. In Sri Lanka, Buddhaghosa began to study what was apparently a very large volume of commentarial texts that had been assembled and preserved by the monks of the Anuradhapura Maha Viharaya.

Buddhaghosa went on to write commentaries on most of the other major books of the Pali Canon, with his works becoming the definitive Theravadin interpretation of the scriptures. The details of the Mahavamsa account cannot readily be verified; while it is generally regarded by Western scholars as having been embellished with legendary events such as the hiding of Buddhaghosa's text by the gods , in the absence of contradictory evidence it is assumed to be generally accurate.

The Buddhaghosuppatti , a later biographical text, is generally regarded by Western scholars as being legend rather than history. While traditional accounts list Buddhaghosa as the author of all of these works, the current consensus among scholars accepts only the Visuddhimagga and the commentaries on the first four nikayas as Buddhaghosa's work.

James was a unique hybridization of his ex traordinary family background and the peculiarities of his personal development-his spiri tual crises, his struggle.

In the 12th century, the Sri Lankan Sinhalese monk Sariputta became the leading scholar of the Theravada following the reunification of the Sri Lankan Sinhale monastic community by King Parakramabahu I. In later years, Buddhaghosa's fame and influence inspired various accolades. His life story was recorded, in an expanded and likely exaggerated form, in a Pali chronicle known as the Buddhaghosuppatti , or "The Development of the Career of Buddhaghosa".

Finally, Buddhaghosa's works likely played a significant role in the revival and preservation of the Pali language as the scriptural language of the Theravada, and as a lingua franca in the exchange of ideas, texts, and scholars between Sri Lanka and the Theravada countries of mainland Southeast Asia.