| This dissertation addresses the role of confession in various forms of Buddhism in India from 300 BCE to 1200 CE. Drawing on primary materials in Pali, Prakrit, Sanskrit, and Tibetan, I first examine Buddhist confessions in the context of the contemporaneous counterparts in Jainism and Hinduism. The work attempts to show that Buddhist confessions are related to other confessory practices found in Jain literature, but entirely separate from Hindu forms. My research also demonstrates that five distinct types of Buddhist confession can be identified in the literature of the period. My analysis of the literature takes two directions. First, putting aside the 'spiritual' concerns of inner development, I show how confession worked in forming and maintaining groups within Indian and Buddhist cultures. Second, with the aid of literary and religion theorists such as Mikhail Bakhtin and Paul Ricoeur, I interpret the work of the confession, and the mode of its meaning for those who encountered Buddhist texts in ancient India. I propose that confessions mobilized a range of negative emotions, but mainly fear, to encourage ethical change as well as allegiance to certain sutras, or to Mahayana religiosity in general. In so doing, they shaped the lives of people, and their view of the world around them. I point out that Buddhist confession had a place in early purificatory techniques, but that its primary role as a purification did not emerge until later. In particular, I examine the relationship between two forms, papadesana and apattidesana, to demonstrate that in the Suvarn&dotbelow;abhasottamasutra and in the Bodhicaryavatara of Santideva, as well as other works of that era, certain Buddhists understood the differing functions of different types of confession. That analysis also leads to the ironic conclusion that non-monastic practice of confession influenced monastic law. I conclude by offering some thoughts on how Buddhist confessions differ from those scrutinized by Michel Foucault, and what Buddhist confession can teach us about the general role of negative emotions in ethics. |
