[Buddha-l] Gandharan Buddhist Art at NY Asia Society

[Dan Lusthaus]

Richard asks:

> Just out of curiosity, you don't think the Lanka of the Lankgvatgrasxtra 
> has any connection to the geographical place called Sri Lanka do you? I 
> don't recall the demon king Rgvana being one of the kings of Sri Lanka.

First, I have to ask: What sort of encoding are using for the diacriticals? 
It doesn't seem to be unicode utf-8 -- you can see the odd manner in which 
the text appeared in my email.

As for whether I think the Lanka referred to in the title Lanka-avatara 
should be associated with geographical island known as Sri Lanka (formerly 
Ceylon), the answer is -- while I am familiar with a cantankerous literature 
that disputes that in various ways -- yes, I do. One of the readings of the 
title would be: (When Buddha) Went Down to (Sri) Lanka -- something I don't 
propose the historical Buddha ever did, but a Mahayana Buddha apparently 
made the journey.

I won't go into a long dissertation on why I accept that Lanka means Sri 
Lanka, but point to one factoid that tilts me in that direction. When 
Xuanzang was in India in the 7th c, he was informed by his Indian hosts that 
Sri Lanka was an important Yogacara center. He made several efforts to visit 
it for that reason, but some massive civil war was taking place, and people 
he encountered while still on the mainland were hastily fleeing in the 
opposite direction, warning him to go no closer, that the war was spilling 
over to the mainland and it was too dangerous to approach further. Not 
having made it there was one of the regrets of his time in India. There was 
also the suggestion that the Yogacara being done there was different in some 
ways (unspecified) from the more familiar varieties. When the tantrics 
arrived in China in the next century, they were identified in the Chinese 
literature (and continue to be) as 瑜伽 Yuqie (Yoga[-cara]).

>I don't recall the demon king Rgvana being one of the kings of Sri Lanka.

The Theravadins expunged him from the record.

Dan