[Buddha-l] Monk/nun or lay person

[Stephen Hodge]

Bruce Burrill wrote:

> that bit of rank ugliness introduced by the LS, the word/concept hinayana.
Is it your contention that the LS is the first extant source of the H word ? 
Do you have any evidence of this ?  It would be useful know.  And did the 
Theravadins, for example, not have a word of their own for Mahayanists ?

I also think that the purported use of the H word in the LS is vastly 
exaggerated -- probably by those who have not actually bothered to read it. 
Doing a word count for the Tibetan equivalent "theg-pa dman-pa" in a 
convenient etext of the LS I have to hand, I was very surprised to find that 
it only occurs 5 times in 217 pages -- with 2 or 3 more "dman-pa"s on their 
own.

Also, even if the LS people introduced the word, do we know enough about the 
social context to say how they actually intended the word to be taken ? 
Sometimes, people in the same family or group call each other some pretty 
unpleasant this.  take this for an example.  Some time in 1917 or 1918, a 
sqaud of US soldiers were sitting in with some ANZACs.  As was their wont, 
the ANZACs were complaining about British troops, calling them "pommy 
bastards".  A little later, the ANZACs overheard the US soldiers using the 
same phrase for the British.  The ANZACs were outraged at this.  The US 
soldiers said, "But you call them that !".  The reply was interesting: 
"That's different -- we're family !".

> The reality is that the Mahayana was, in India, always a primarily -- if
> not exclusively -- a monastic endeavor.

Well, not exclusively.  An early stratum of the Mahayana Mahaparinirvana
Sutra points to non-monastic dharmakathikas -- though perhaps bhik.sus of 
some
kind -- who were involved in its compilation and promulgation.

Best wishes,
Stephen Hodge