[Buddha-l] Bangladesh Muslim lovefest

[Richard Hayes]

On Oct 3, 2012, at 11:57 , Dan Lusthaus <vasubandhu at earthlink.net> wrote:

> As for the revisionist label, I classified the group of historians which Eaton is part of, as revisionist. He is a moderate member of that group, one whose agenda has undergone modification over time.

The "revisionist" label can be merely descriptive, although it is often used pejoratively and dismissively. I have never quite understood why it has become a pejorative term. Indeed, I should hope that almost anyone who publishes anything is revising the state of scholarship to some extent, perhaps even to a great extent. Dan's work on Yogācāra is revisionist in that he argues that the standard interpretation of that school that has prevailed for the past thousand years or so is basically wrong. My work on Dignāga is revisionist in that I argue that reading him through the commentaries of Dharmakīrti as was standard practice for a long time warps our understanding of what Dignāga was about. I suppose even my work on Nāgārjuna could be considered revisionist insofar as I see him as one of the most overrated authors in Indian Buddhism (second only to Dharmkīrti). 

In areas of religious history, the need for revision is pretty much constant, since the history of any particular religious movement is often told either by apologists or detractors of that movement. Every historian necessarily selects from the full richness of the historical record, and all selection leads to a kind of simplificiation, and simplification of any complex situation is necessarily distortion. Some distortions, of course, are deliberately pernicious, other's abundantly pious. When it comes to work on Islam it seems to be particularly difficult to find the middle path. In that respect, it has seems to share features with the study of economics in the United States. Passionate partisanship abounds.

May I suggest we wrap up these long-winded digressions on Islam and try to focus on the topic of this list, which, if my memory serves me right, is Buddhism.

Richard Hayes