[Buddha-l] Banned Buddhist Books (was: The Universe Story)

Jamie Hubbard jhubbard at smith.edu
Wed Apr 18 11:06:41 MDT 2012


Orthodoxy has always been of great concern to Buddhists everywhere and so
banning the heretical takes place. In Chinese Buddhist history entire
sections of bibliographies ("sutra catalogs") were devoted to spurious and
suspicious texts. This is a huge and fascinating topic, and Buswell's
edited volume "Chinese Buddhist Apocrypha" is the best place to start (w/
his intro and Kyoko Tokuno's article on Chinese Buddhist catalogs, and then
the other articles mostly on specific texts).

Although many of these listings refer to texts banned because they were
believed to be written in China and falsely attributed to Indian origin,
others were banned for other reasons. Long ago I wrote about the Sanjie
movement, whose writings, institutions, and practices were banned on
several occasions. Of course, getting banned often has the effect that the
texts become lost, so their study is often difficult. An enhanced version
of my book, electronic versions of the texts, and various other studies
about these folks (a bit dated now) are available online at:
http://sophia.smith.edu/~jhubbard/publications/books/materials/

Have fun-- write an apocryphal Buddhist text; maybe, like most of the great
sutras we know and love, you won't get busted!

Jamie Hubbard

On Wed, Apr 18, 2012 at 4:29 AM, Margaret Gouin <m.gouin at tsd.ac.uk> wrote:

>
> From: buddha-l-bounces at mailman.swcp.com [buddha-l-bounces at mailman.swcp.com]
> On Behalf Of Christopher Fynn [chris.fynn at gmail.com]
> Subject: Re: [Buddha-l] The Universe Stor
> ....It's also worth reading works by Buddhist authors that were banned and
> suppressed by the Buddhist establishment.
> _______________________________________________
>
> Could you give some examples of these banned Buddhist authors? Sounds
> intriguing...
>
> ----------------------------------------
> Margaret Gouin, PhD (Bristol)
> Honorary Research Fellow
> School of Theology, Religious Studies and Islamic Studies
> University of Wales Trinity Saint David
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