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RELICS, RITUAL, AND REPRESENTATION IN BUDDHISM: REMATERIALIZING THE SRI LANKAN THERAVADA TRADITION.
By Kevin Trainor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. xiv + 223 pp.
Although many Buddhologists and scholars of Theravada Buddhism have suggested that relic veneration is best seen as a degeneration of the Buddha's original teaching, an accommodation to "lower-class" values and needs for the concrete and material, Kevin Trainor convincingly argues for a much higher view. Relic veneration, he says, was practiced early in India, played an important role in the spread of Buddhism stimulated by the zeal of Asoka, and is a key to the way Theravadins practice the dhamma today. Archaeological evidence supports this view, the Pali texts narrate approved instances of relic veneration, and the Sri Lankan chronicles (Mahavamsa and Dipavamsa) feature it with approval. Trainor's argument seems to raise the Buddha's relics from the ash heap of scholarly disdain.
This resurrection, however, is not all that simple. Resurrections never are. The earlier dismissive arguments were, after all, based on textual evidence themselves. The Buddha downplayed the physical body's importance, encouraging his followers to seek enlightenment elsewhere. The Vinayapitaka warned bhikkhus against the distracting attachment that might accompany relic veneration. Relics were always in danger of being stolen, counterfeited, and deified. The evidence used by earlier scholars to minimize the importance of relic veneration for Sri Lankan Theravada Buddhists has not magically disappeared, and any argument seeking to explain this ritual must somehow account for...