[Buddha-l] Morality tale

[Richard Hayes]

On Wed, 2008-08-27 at 10:25 -0700, Katherine Masis wrote:

> Sure, the Ananda-Gotama-Devadatta story is a morality tale, but a tale
> based on at least some historical facts and the social customs of the
> times.  

I guess my point is that in the absence of knowing what the Buddha's
times were, we are not in much of a position to know what the social
customs of his times were. The risks of anachronism loom large here.

> Hocart’s point is that those social customs included friendly and
> ceremonial bantering between cross-cousins or cross-brothers.

All one has to do is read buddha-l to realize that friendly and
ceremonial bantering requires no kinship ties at all. Good heavens, if
the Buddha can't call a fellow monk, with whom he has been living the
good life for forty years and with whom he has social equality, a
lick-spittle and a living corpse, it's a sad testimonial indeed to the
quality of Buddhist friendship.

-- 
Richard Hayes
Department of Philosophy
University of New Mexico