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Voice of the Buddha: Buddhaghosa on the Immeasurable Words
Contributor(s): Heim, Maria (Author)

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 ISBN: 0190906650     ISBN-13: 9780190906658
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
OUR PRICE: $142.50  

Binding Type: Hardcover - See All Available Formats & Editions
Published: October 2018
Qty:
Additional Information
BISAC Categories:
- Religion | Buddhism - Theravada
- Religion | Buddhism - Sacred Writings
- Religion | Buddhism - History
Dewey: 294.391
LCCN: 2018016558
Physical Information: 0.9" H x 6.3" W x 9.3" L (1.25 lbs) 288 pages
Themes:
- Religious Orientation - Buddhist
Features: Bibliography, Index
Review Citations: Choice 05/01/2019
 
Descriptions, Reviews, Etc.
Publisher Description:
What would a Buddhist theory of texts look like through the lens of the 5th-century thinker Buddhaghosa? In Voice of the Buddha, Maria Heim reads from the principal commentator, editor, and translator of the Theravada intellectual tradition, yielding fresh insight into all three collections of
the early Pali texts: Vinaya, the Suttas, and the Abhidhamma. Buddhaghosa considered the Buddha to be omniscient, the Buddha's words to be oceanic. Every word, passage, book--indeed the corpus as a whole--is taken to be endless and immeasurable in Buddhaghosa's view. Commentarial practice thus
requires disciplined methods of expansion, drawing out the endless possibilities for meaning and application. Heim considers Buddhaghosa's theories of texts, and follows his practices of exegesis to discover how he explored scripture's infinity.

By examining the significance of the immeasurability of scripture in commentarial practice and as a general principle, this book offers new tools to understand the huge scriptural and commentarial literature of the Pali tradition. And by taking seriously a traditional commentator's theory of texts,
it beckons us to learn from commentaries themselves how we might read and interpret them and the texts on which they comment.
 
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