Bowing to the Buddha

Dialogue, understood as a conversation or debate between two or more individuals, is a prevalent feature of the collection of Pāli Buddhist suttas (texts) known as ‘Nikāyas’. This originally oral literature – dating from roughly the third century BCE and set down in writing around the beginning of the Common Era – represents some of the earliest evidence of Indian Buddhist thought to which scholars have access. As such, these texts provide valuable insights into the constitution, beliefs, and interactions of early Indian Buddhist communities. At the same time, we must keep in mind, as Richard Gombrich explains, that ‘the suttas are artifacts, not perfect records of actual conversations’. ² The impulse to use the Buddhist Nikāyas as historical documents is thus complicated by the fact that the texts were primarily intended to reflect a Buddhist perspective and worldview, not accurately report history. By the same token, through analysis of these texts we can still learn a great deal about how early Buddhist communities perceived rival religious groups, the debates they undertook, and their views of what was at stake in those encounters. In the following, I examine how episodes of dialogue in the Nikāyas and the representation of the rival interlocutors might elucidate facets of Buddhist social perceptions and worldviews. Throughout, then, I will be discussing two interwoven senses of dialogue. The first, and primary focus of this piece, is the operation of literary dialogue, which simply refers to the story the Buddhists recorded within the Nikāya texts themselves. The second is social dialogue, which refers to the historical interactions and realities that existed outside the world of the texts. Other chapters in this volume focusing on Buddhist texts (Black, Crothers, Appleton) also address, if only implicitly, the question of these extra-textual referents within the literary dialogues. To a great degree, the exact nature of social dialogue has been lost to history and, as noted by Gombrich, we cannot take Buddhist literary dialogues as sure evidence for the tenor and conduct of historical social dialogue. Yet, as Brian Black has noted regarding formalized debate in the Upaniṣads (brahmodya), beyond simply providing narrative frames, literary dialogues provide insight about the texture of social interaction. ³ So, too, in this volume Patton argues that even some earlier Vedic hymns can be read as commentaries on social dialogue in their own right. Thus, in addition to discussing the literary nature of dialogue in the Nikāyas, this piece will also investigate what literary dialogue – the world within the text – might suggest about Buddhist perspectives on social dialogue and interactions that are obtained outside the texts.