Speech Acts of the Buddha: Sovereign Ritual and the Poetics of Power in Mahāyāna Sūtras
In this essay, I analyze the multilayered metaphors of sovereignty and sovereign ritual through which the Saddharmapuṇḍarīka and the Suvarṇa(pra)bhāsa, two Mahāyāna sūtras, represent and enact their own potency. I develop a theory of ritual-poetic speech acts and an interpretative methodology from t...
| Subtitles: | "History, Performativity, and Solidarity in the Study of Mahāyāna Sūtra Literature" |
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| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
University of Chicago Press
2021
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| In: |
History of religions
Year: 2021, Volume: 61, Issue: 2, Pages: 173-211 |
| Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains: | B
Tipiṭaka. Suttapiṭaka. Saddharmapuṇḍarīka-sūtra
/ Suvarṇaprabhāsa-sūtra
/ Buddha 563 BC-483 BC
/ Speech act
/ Ritual
/ Power
/ Dharma
/ Embodiment
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| RelBib Classification: | AG Religious life; material religion BL Buddhism |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | In this essay, I analyze the multilayered metaphors of sovereignty and sovereign ritual through which the Saddharmapuṇḍarīka and the Suvarṇa(pra)bhāsa, two Mahāyāna sūtras, represent and enact their own potency. I develop a theory of ritual-poetic speech acts and an interpretative methodology from this analysis. According to these sūtras, the dharma that constitutes them is the verbal essence of sovereignty. It consecrates its listeners through predictions and related speech acts that are activated in the moment of utterance; it proclaims the royal decrees through which buddhas govern reality in their own fields; it embodies all buddhas and makes them present in its eternal ritual-poetic substance. Through the performative strategies mobilized by these metaphors, the sūtras rhetorically position their audiences as subjects of (and subject to) this supreme sovereign power and motivate their engagement in a progressive series of ritual-verbal practices of incorporation by which they are in turn transformed into buddhas with the same sovereign essence. The ritual metaphors and mechanisms through which these transformations are evoked and effected reveal linguistic theories and practices quite different from those that continue to dominate the study of religious texts, and demand that we develop new approaches to the interpretation of these and other texts. |
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| ISSN: | 1545-6935 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: History of religions
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1086/716427 |