[Buddha-l] Pali canon is filled with caricatures

[Richard Hayes]

On Monday 30 October 2006 08:11, Phra Achan Dhammarato, Buikkh wrote:

> Please be more specific.

About what?

>   A few specific examples will do for a start, to show any evidence at all.

Sorry, but I don't have time now to dig them all up. Again, I suggest you do 
your own homework. If you cannot see signs of parody and caricatures in the 
way Brahmins and non-Buddhist samanas are portrayed in the Pali canon, and in 
the names given to them (such as Kutadanta, Snaggle-tooth), then perhaps you 
have no sense of humour.

>   Please understand this is not a challange, Just wishing to find why you
> would hold shch a view.

I have a well-developed sense of satire, parody and caricature, so I can spot 
writing that bears the characeteristics of irony. And I just cannot believe 
that anyone as clever as the Buddha would present some of the myths he 
presents in the Digha-nikaya and the Sutta-nipata with a straight face.

-- 
Richard P. Hayes
Department of Philosophy
University of New Mexico
http://www.unm.edu/~rhayes