Christian K Wedemeyer

Making Sense of Tantric Buddhism

History, Semiology, and Transgression in the Indian Traditions

• Broschiertes Buch

Produktbeschreibung

Making Sense of Tantric Buddhism challenges the notion that Buddhist Tantras were "marginal" or primitive and situates them instead--both ideologically and institutionally--within larger trends in mainstream Buddhist and Indian culture. Through close analysis of primary sources, Christian K. Wedemeyer reveals the lived world of Tantric Buddhism as largely continuous with the Indian religious mainstream and deploys contemporary methods of semiotic and structural analysis to make sense of its seemingly repellent and immoral injunctions. Innovative readings of the Guhyasamaja Tantra underscore the text's overriding concern with purity, pollution, and transcendent insight and a large-scale, quantitative study of Tantric literature shows its radical antinomianism to be a highly managed ritual observance restricted to a sacerdotal elite. These insights illustrate how these "radical" communities were integrated into the intellectual, institutional, and social structures of South Asian Buddhism.

---

Hinweis: Dieser Artikel kann nur an eine deutsche Lieferadresse ausgeliefert werden.

Produktdetails

• South Asia Across the Disciplines
• Verlag: Columbia University Press
• Seitenzahl: 336
• Erscheinungstermin: 10. Juni 2014
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 226mm x 151mm x 20mm
• Gewicht: 492g
• ISBN-13: 9780231162418
• ISBN-10: 0231162413
• Artikelnr.: 40542218

Autorenporträt

Christian K. Wedemeyer

Inhaltsangabe

List of Figures and Tables
Preface and Acknowledgments
List of Abbreviations
Introduction: Making Sense in and of the Human Sciences
Part 1: Historiography
1. Origins
Understanding Tantric Buddhism through its Origins
The Quest for Origins as Method in the History of Religions
2. Narrating Tantric Buddhism
The Poetics of Historiography
The Tropology of Esoteric Buddhism
Historical Narrative and Ideological Implication
3. Going Native: Traditional Historiography of Esoteric Buddhism
Historiography and Cosmology in Exoteric Buddhism
Historiography and Cosmology in Esoteric Buddhism
Observations on Structure
Part 2: Interpretation
4. The Semiology of Transgression
The Literal and the Figurative in Tantric Hermeneutics
Connotative Semiotics as Exegetical Method
Connotative Semiotics in Tantric Ritual
Connotative Semiotics in Tantric Scripture
5. "The Practice" of Indian Esoteric Buddhism
Terms of Art as an Interpretative Problem
Interpreting the Practice Observance I: Irony and Inversion
Interpreting the Practice Observance II: Prerequisites and Temporal Frame
Interpreting the Practice Observance III: ?aiva Parallels
6. Tantric Buddhist Transgression in Context
The Social Location of Tantric Buddhism as an Interpretative Problem
Contriving Marginality
The Common Repertoire of Buddhist Professionals
"Carnivalesque" or "Rituals of Rebellion"?
But...Did They Really Do It?!
Conclusion: No Two "Ways" About It
Appendix I: The Indrabhuti Story According to Pad ma dkar po (ca. 1575)
Appendix II: Chapter Nine of the Buddhakapala Tantra, "The Practice"
(Caryapatala)
Notes
Bibliography
Index