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Thesis (Ph.D.) -- McMaster University, 1999. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 309-324). Also available via World Wide Web.

Thesis (Master's)--Zhongguo wen hua Yindu wen hua yan jiu suo, 1987. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 203-219).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Sichuan da xue, 1990. / Originally presented as the author's thesis (doctoral) at Sichuan da xue, 1990. Includes bibliographical references (p. 244-247).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, Berkeley, 1994. / eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (p. 362-381).

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Pennsylvania, 2002. / Adviser: Victor Mair. Includes bibliographical references.

Revision and expansion of the author's Thesis (Ph. D.--Sichuan da xue, 2003). / "Sichuan da xue shi wu '211 gong cheng' zhong dian jian she xue ke xiang mu." 880-07 Includes bibliographical references.

This thesis is based on a study of classical Pali texts and of materials gathered during a year spent in a village in central Ceylon. The material consists in particular of interviews with monks living in nearby village monasteries. My notes of these interviews, which cover more topics than could be discussed in the thesis, are reproduced in Appendix One, and some of my printed materials are summarily presented in Appendix Two. The circumstances of my field work are detailed in the last part of the Introduction. Factually, the thesis aims to give an account of the religious beliefs and ethos of Sinhalese (Kandyan) Buddhist villagers, expressed as far as possible in their own terms. As explained in chapter 1, Buddhism is a system of belief almost exclusively concerned with liberation from this world. It is therefore necessarily secretive, requiring supplementation by beliefs concerning other matters. Beliefs about Gods and demons and how they can help or hinder human beings which to a Western observer fall within the domain of religion are not seen in these terms by Buddhists. These are therefore only examined in so far as they are relevant to the understanding of Buddhism. Issue is taken, on the other hand, with the Western interpretation of Buddhism as an essentially nonreligious philosophy. Chapter 2 introduces the terms used by my informants in talking about their beliefs and institutions. The arrangement of chapters 3 to 8 is in some measure due to the formulation of the Buddhists themselves: they consider Buddhism in terms of the Three Jewels, which are the Buddha, the Doctrine, and the Order of monks, while their doctrinal emphasis is on the operation of karma and on ethical questions. Chapter 3 deals with the Buddha, chapter 4 with karma and the arrangement of the universe, chapter 5 with some problem in the doctrine of karma, chapter 6 with ethics, and chapters 7 and 8 with problems primarily concerning the Order. On the theoretical level the thesis is largely concerned with the interaction of belief and behaviour as an agent of religious change. My problem and concepts are presented in the first part of the Introduction. Although the general tenor of the thesis is to show that Sinhalese Buddhism has been remarkably conservative, if it is compared with the Pali Canon and its commentaries, there have been changes, and I suggest that some at least have arisen because of discrepancies between what people say and what they do: behaviour has affected doctrine, which in turn has affected behaviour. There are still in the religion as observable to-day discrepancies between what people eay and what they do; the thesis attempts to record both statement and performance, and suggests further that statements may vary with the context. Finally the thesis proposes that an acquaintance with Ceylonese Buddhism as a living system may provide insight into the workings of early Buddhism as described in the classical texts. In particular the last chapter suggests that scholars relying on texts and preconceptions have over-drawn the distinction between monks and laity as moral agents, and between Theravada and Mahayana Buddhism as ethical systems.

The dissertation addresses a lacuna in current scholarship concerning the role and meaning of figurative language in Indian Buddhist Mahayana philosophical discourse. Attempting to fill part of it, the dissertation explicates and reconstructs an early Yogacara Buddhist philosophical discourse on metaphor (upacAara, nye bar `dogs pa) and grounds it in a broader intellectual context, both Buddhist and non-Buddhist. This analysis uncovers an Indian philosophical intertextual conversation about metaphor that reaches across sectarian lines, and since it takes place before the height of systematized alamkara-sastra in India, stands to illuminate what may be described as one of the philosophical roots of Sanskrit poetics. The dissertation proceeds by providing translations and analysis of key sections on upacara from a variety of Indian philosophical sources. The first part (chapters I-II) examines the concept's semantic and conceptual scope in the theories of meaning and fundamental works of the Nyaya and Mimamsa schools, and in the school of grammatical analysis (focusing on Bhartrhari's Vakyapadiya). The second part (chapters III-V) examines the understanding of the term in some Yogacara sastras and sutras against the background of their broader Buddhist context. It looks at such texts as the Tattvarthapatalam chapter of the Bodhisattvabhumi and the Viniscayasamgrahani, both ascribed to Asanga; Vasubandhu's Trimsika and its commentary by Sthiramati; the Abhidharmakosabhasya and its commentary by Sthiramati; Dignaga's Pramanasamuccaya; and the Lankavatarasutra. This analysis reveals a Yogacara account of upacara that, because of its underlying referential mechanism, understands the term above all as diagnostic of a breach between language and reality and therefore as marking the demise of a correspondence theory of truth. Moreover, it is shown that some Yogacara thinkers developed this theme into a sophisticated theory of meaning that enabled the school both to insist on this lack of grounding for language and, at the same time, to uphold a hierarchy of truth claims, as required by the school's philosophical soteriological discourse. It is argued that a common feature of all these accounts is their understanding of metaphors not just as content carriers (that is, as informative) but also as performative - actively manifesting and invoking the groundlessness of language through the fact of their proliferation.

Univ., Diss.--Detroit. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 337-358) and index. Originally presented as the author's thesis (Ph.D.--University of Michigan).