Achim Bayer
Faculty of Buddhist Studies, Dongguk University, Korea
The core work of a philologist often resembles that of a natural scientist: clearly identifiable facts are isolated, listed, compared, and only then is an inductive conclusion presented. When constructing a stemmatic table, comparing different translations, or spotting the first occurrence of a doctrine, it is often possible to reach a level of certainty equalling that of simple experiments in the natural sciences. Furthermore, when dealing with various genres, it is especially the śāstra genre that tends to assist the researcher in providing lists of doctrinal elements, classifications of doctrines and sometimes even reflections on the history of thought. Narrative literature, in contrast, starts from a less proto-scientific approach and is normally less concerned with classification, coherence or rational comprehensability. Accordingly, academic writing about narrative literature often follows a rather essayistic style. Even though such a method can yield excellent results, attempts have also been made at identifying the smallest units in a narration, similar to the elements that have been defined in natural sciences. Those are for example standard characters, topoi or plot elements, which are identified for the sake of comparablity, therefore ideally fulfilling one of the basic requirements of empirical science: another researcher applying the same method should eventually come to the same conclusions.
In this paper I would like to analyze a Tibetan version of the Māndhātṛ story, which depicts the interaction between the Buddhist order and the worldly ruler as one of its underlying themes, and apply two analytical methods to it: the abstraction of central narrative elements and a classification of semantic contents.
(Presented in the International Conference – Buddhist Narrative in Asia and Beyond, 9-11 August 2010, Imperial Queen's Park Hotel, Bangkok, organized by Institute of Thai Studies, Chulalongkorn University with support from The Thailand Research Fund (TRF), in co-operation with Faculty of Arts, Faculty of Fine and Applied Arts, Institute of Asian Studies, The Confucius Institute, Chulalongkorn University and l’École française d'Extrême-Orient (EFEO))