[Buddha-l] Query--forest tradition monks in Japan today?

[F.K. Lehman (F.K.L. Chit Hlaing)]

We need to keep it in mind that 'forest' is not quite an adequate 
translation  of the Skt/Pali words, e.g., aran~n~a. It doesn't mean 
literally forest, although the forest/jungle is maybe a sort of 
paradigm example or a prototype of  the conceptual category so 
labelled. It does, as some of these discussions here more than hint, 
mean remote from centres of [secular-social] order or power. This 
idea surfaces in Modern Indic, as Hindi, where the word jangal 
(adj.jangli), from which we get English 'jungle', refers to 
up-country, un-cosmopolitan, back-country places (the limit instance 
being the literal forest or desert or wilderness). Thus in Indian 
English, a 'jungly village' is a village of backward peasants far 
from regular contact with urban centres and so on.

There is, in this connection, a problem with Dr. Kamala's book about 
Thai 'Forest' Monks. It is easily shown (and the early book by 
Carrithers documents this nicely, you know) that the idea of an 
earl/'original' Buddhist Forest tradition is in at least good measure 
a product of European misconstrual of aran~n~avaasi; and Theravadins 
in Sri Lanka, Thailand and so on, swallowed this European 
Buddhalogical work hook, line and sinker, and 'revived' that 
tradition. It is a capital error to take prototype, or limit, 
instances of a category as definitions of the category -- 
Wittgenstein to the contrary notwithstanding.
-- 
F. K. L. Chit Hlaing
Professor
Department of Anthropology
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign