Doctrine, Practice, and Belief in Theravāda Buddhism

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Doctrine, Practice, and Belief in Theravda Buddhism

F. K. Lehman

The Journal of Asian Studies / Volume 31 / Issue 02 / February 1972, pp 373 - 380DOI: 10.2307/2052605, Published online: 23 March 2011

Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0021911800160127

How to cite this article:F. K. Lehman (1972). Doctrine, Practice, and Belief in Theravda Buddhism. The Journal ofAsian Studies, 31, pp 373-380 doi:10.2307/2052605

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D O C T R I N E , P R A C T I C E, A N D B E L I E F I N T H E R A V A D A B U D D H I S M

F . K . L E H M A N

Buddhism and Society: A Great Tradition and its Burmese Vicissitudes. BY MELFORD

E .

SPIRO.

N ew Y ork : Ha rpe r and Row , 1970. xiv, 510 pp. Ap pen dix, References,

Ind ex . $17.95.

I

T is now customary for anthropologists studying religion to pay at most lip service

to formalized religious doctrine. Such works, in a functionalist tradition, tell us a

great deal about the social and economic organization of religious action and about

the postulated social background of religious ideas. But they pay less attention to the

ideas themselves or to the question of how religious practice and practitioners, lay

and clerical, are ordered with respect to those ideas. It seems tacitly held that doctrine

as a system of ideas is the proper domain of theology or philosophy, and that in as

much as anthropology and these other disciplines have different premises, a concern

with their domains might involve anthropology in a counter-empiricist stance. There

remain several distinguished exceptions to this tendency, e.g., such German theolog-

ical ethnologists as Scharer,

1

and also exceptions to the general tendency to play down

scholarly apparatus for dealing with literate traditions and ideologies. One thinks in

this connection especially of the pronouncements of Dumont and Pocock and

Dumont 's own work

2

at the interface between anthropology and Indology, and of

the growing school of Levi-Straussian structuralism. But this school is often held

open, e.g. by Spiro, to the criticism that in devoting attention to systems of ideas it

subordinates a needed consideration of the relation between ideas and behavior,

thereby losing touch to some degree with the very empirical controls that distinguish

scientifically oriented work from brilliant and suggestive idealist speculation.

At least in the British and American anthroplogical traditions we have generally

tried to focus upon the relation between ideology and practice, and on the whole we

seem to have bound ourselves to a proposition that religious ideas arose as a super-

structure on ritual practice.

3

This of course is good pseudo-Marxism and good Durk-

heimian positivism. Ideas are supposed to reflect the irreducible collective, society in

action.

4

It is finally sound behaviorism, and while British social anthropology may

come to its position via the positivist tradition, American anthropology has long been

associated with psychological behaviorism.

Within this general tradition there have been countertendencies. Forde

5

consti-

tuted a forceful plea within British anthropology for the study of religious ideologies

F. K. Lehman is Professor of Anthropology at

s

See E. R. Leach, P olitical Systems of Highland

the University of Illinois, Urbana.

Burma,

(Cambridge: Harvard University Press,

1

H. Scharer,

Ngaju Religion

(R. Needh am, trans- 1954) pages 13-1 4.

lator), (The Hague: M.

Nijhoff

1963 ). Sec also * See Rodney Need ham 's critique in his trans-

H. Scharer, Der Toten\tdt der Ngadju Daya\ in lator's Introduction to E. Durk heim and M. Mauss,

Siid-Borneo, (The Hague: M.Nijhoff 1966). Prim itive Classification, (Chicago: University of

2

See L. Du mo nt and D. Pocock, For a sociology Chicago Press, 196 3).

of India, Contributions to Indian Sociology, 4

6

D. Forde, ed., African Worlds, (London: Ox-

(1960) 82-89, and L. Dumont, Homo Hierarchicus, ford University Press,

(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970).


3/9

374 F. K. LEH M AN

in their own right, though it skirted rather than face up to the relation between idea

and practice, a question necessarily opened up by taking ideology seriously. More

significantly, the impact of Chomskian linguistics and the rise of an empirically based

cognitive psychology has resulted in America in a structural semantic ethnographic

school overtly concerned with the description of systems of ideas in the context of

behavioral observations from the field. The trouble with this school seems to be that

it has nonetheless maintained certain behavioristic assumptions, or at least positivistic

ones,

about the task of cognitive ethnography and the whole definition of culture,

insisting

6

that an underlying system of ideas provides whatever one needs to know to

make one capable of behaving as a member of the society. Yet knowledge does not

generate behavior. It only gives it meaning and at most constrains whatever generates

actual behavior within broad limits of interpretability. This is the Chomskian dis-

tinction between competence and performance. So once again, by making a very tra-

ditional appeal to the notion that cultural ideas are normative in the sense of ideal

descriptions of action the problem has been effectually avoided, even down graded

in favor of what Spiro realizes is a fairly sterile preoccupation with ideas as simply

systems of classification desc ribing em pirical rea lity. Classification, m oreove r, of closed

bodies of fact, so that the semantic ethnographers are open to the same charge as are

the Levi-Straussians: that the cognitive saliency of their descriptions is untestable

(cf. the idea that a formal semantic description must not predict any facts other than

those initially addressed)

7

Anyhow, in modern ethnography most work on religion remains sociological, pay-

ing little attention to doctrine. Most exceptions to this are not concerned with literate

traditions and so fail to offer clear cut ways to deal with highly explicit doctrinal

elaboration, first because in such societies doctrine is frequently not sharply distin-

guishable from practice, second because there is little native scholarship to come to

grips with. Still, as we noted, so far as Hinduism is concerned we have had something

important along these lines for the Indian religious tradition. So far as Buddhism,

particularly Theravada is concerned we have until just recently had almost nothing

not strictly sociological by anthroplogists.

8

Spiro's book together with the nearly contemporary book by Tambiah

9

is a strik-

ing exception to a dismal picture. Spiro starts from the right position. He addresses

the problem of the relation between canonical Buddhist doctrine, contemporary Bur-

mesebelief and action. He recognizes that religion can be neither just a set of textual

doctrines (p. 4) nor just a social practice with ideational spin-off. Moreover, in a

sense the canon is frozen in a classical literature largely common to several different

cultures and countries (Ceylon, Thailand, Burma, Laos), each with its own interpre-

tation (s) of the canon an d different ritua l practice.

Spiro takes off from a Redfieldian distinction between Great and Little Tradi-

tions. He treats canonical Buddhism as an instance of the former and tries to take up

the question how different societies with different action systems but with the same

6

For example, W. H . Goodenough, Description Nash, Anthropological Studies in Theravada hud-

and Comparison in Cultural Anthropology, (Chi- dhism, (Yale University Southeast Asia Program,

cago:

Aldine Press, 1970 ). Cultural Report 13, 196 6).

7

For exam ple, as stated in H . W . Scheffler and S. J. Ta mb iah,

Buddhism and Spirit Cults in

F. G. Lounsbury,

A Study in Structural Semantics, North-East Thailand,

(Cambridge: Cambridge

(Englewood Cliffs: Prentice

Hall,

197 1). University

Press,

1970).

8

A good example is the collection edited by M.


4/9

THE RA VA DA BUDDHISM 375

canon come to have different actual beliefs and to ask what kind of social action

system seems to motivate and perpetuate beliefs related to the Buddhist canon. That

is,

why is the canon an institutionalized thing that recorded action systems never fol-

low closely and recorded belief systems always diverge from in some measure?

Spiro's answer follows a line taken in all his work

10

on Burma and other topics.

Discrepancies between contemporary belief and canonical doctrine are seen as

(directly?) explained, and perpetuation of belief accounted for, by the affective results

of such social action systems as those having to do with the social conditioning of

children. Spiro realizes that doctrine is normative not in the sense of providing ideal

specifications of actual behavior but in the sense of providing inputs to actual

belief.

Yet here he leaves himself in the behaviorist-positivist position: if action does not

explain belief then at least it explains the difference between canonical tradition and

belief. Moreover, he insists on equating belief with overtly expresses propositions,

thus raising several questions, not the least of which is the classical but probably

vacuous one of what we mean when we say that someone truly believes (has internal-

ized ) some thing, and ho w w e can use evidence of action to decide the m atter .

That belief can provide meaningful expression for affective tensions generated by

conditioning within an action system does not strictly imply motivation or explana-

tion ofbelief. Belief operates upon affect, action, doctrinal tradition and other inputs,

and gives them interpretation, generating therewith, as it were, its own perpetuation

and orderly change. We have to understand what cognitive representations are, not

reduce them to total or partial functions of affect. And cognition represents a problem

in neurophysiology; until that can be solved, cognitive theory must be developed on

more or less its own terms. I have noted that affect is given expression by, through

and in terms of beliefs and concepts, which have their basis in all sorts of behavioral

facts including previously learned ideas. Doctrine, after all, is not itself composed of

ideas but of often very indirectexpressions of underlying cognitions. The distinction is

approximately that between a cliche and a deeper analysis of something, and we can

usefully avoid confusion inherent in the structuralist tradition, such as Levi-Strauss's

characterization of jural propositions as native cultural models and Leach's argu-

ments

11

against jural as compared with statistical observations as accounts of social

structure, by thinking of verbal expressions as behavioral cliches rather than as ideas.

Spiro is no help here . H e fails to appreciate that Burmese doc trine however

much it differs from the canon is still cliche rather than belief. This is why the

Great Tradition/Little Tradition dichotomy is unusable. Little Tradition is not belief

but input to belief much as is Great Tradition. The Buddhist canon does this as

Great Tradition for a very widespread social system in which Burmese society inter-

acts with India and with the other Theravada countries; Burmese Buddhist doc-

trine does it for Burmese society. And Spiro forgets that there are culture-bearing

social systems above the level of the individual society.

12

All this is obscured for us

by Spiro's injecting personality as a supposedly explanatory entity into ethnographic

theory Actually, child raising practices if not in part conditioned by belief are at least

1 0

Se especially his book , Burmese Supernatu- gories in Burm a and the theory of social systems,

ralism,

(Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 196 7). chapter 2 of volume 2 in P. Kunstadter, ed.,

South-

1 1

In E. R. Leach,

Pul Eliya: A Village in Ceylon, east Asian Tribes, Minorities and Nations,

(Prince-

(Cam bridge : Cambridge University Press, 1961) . ton: Princeton University Press,

1967.

1 2

See especially F . K. Lehma n, Ethnic cate-


5/9

376 F. K. LE HM AN

given meaning by it, and affect is highlighted, even given differential emphasis by,

beliefs and ideas. Hence it is questionable whether we can legitimately invoke person-

ality as a factor independent of the idea system.

13

Pointing this out is by no means

the same as talk ing vaguely about feedback between the personality-and-action

system and the idea system, since the latter is to avoid the issue. Thus we may assume

that nearly any behavior system, say cultural conditioning system, may provide quite

a range of affective consequences in the individual, and that any idea system will be

likely to find some affective basis in nearly any society. This is as good an assumption

at least as Spiro's, which postulates an independently defined affective bias as a moti-

vational foundation for ideas. It is also probably the m ore parsimon ious assum ption.

It does not deny the relation between affect and idea or that idea systems have a

profound affective referent. It rather relegates the affective referent of ideas to the level

of universals in a theory of ethnographic descriptions. It assumes that these things do

not help us explain cultural differences and particulars. It asks us to suppose that ideas

can indeed impart selective emphasis to affective traces of childhood conditioning.

14

Therefore, to show in terms of psychological theory the affective component expressed

in a culture is a proper and essential part of ethnography. Spiro is right in explaining

that, e.g., certain discontinuities in emotional relations between many Burman parents

and their children, and certain differences in the treatment of the sexes in childhood

and afterward, create personal tensions reflected and expressed in the idiom of Bur-

mese witchcraft and possession. But this is not cause and effect, requires no invoking

of personality as a construct, and must not distract us from the problem of the rela-

tion between interpretative idea and action. Here Tambiah's work is to be preferred

to Spiro's on account of the former's greater methodological parsimony while address-

ing as does Spiro the anthropological problem of the connections between canonical

Buddhism, local ideas and social action.

We need not ask why we believe but rather what, in the action system, ideas organ-

ize and give m ean ing to. T ha t in giv ing m ean ing to action belief also interprets affect

changes nothing of this. It is certain that without a previous set of traditions a given

affective system of action offers us no way of predicting current belief though this is

no reason to retreat into historicism; both these courses make the mistake of thinking

that explanation is something radically different from description. It is at least ques-

tionable that a given affective tension need have quite the same prominence in two

societies with very different cultural traditions. What is wanted is replacement of a

behaviorist paradigm of learning-as-conditioning with a Chomskian-cognitivist one,

16

in which, from a fairly small input of affect, action and precept observed, the human

organism actively, even if unselfconsciously, constructs a conceptual representation of

the world and of itself. And one has to make the additional assumption that a society

is more likely than not to produce a fair range of affective material in its members,

because everything we know about human and cultural variability and plasticity in

evolution and in direct observation demands this assumption.

Spiro's book is divided into five parts. Part I, a single chapter, sets out Theravada

1 3

Sec especially D. Pocock, Psychological ap- University of Chicago Press, 195 3), for the effect

proaches and judgements of reality, Contributions of ideas about the father role on perceptions of

to Indian Sociology, (1961) 44- 96. fathers in pre-War Germany.

1 4

Sec especially M. Mead and R. Mftrau x, eds.,

X6

Chomsky, N . A., Aspects of a Theory of

The Study of Culture at a Distance.

(Chicago:

Syntax,

(Cambridge: M.I.T. Press, 1965).


6/9


doctrine as an anthropological problem. In part II, four chapters on Buddhist doc-

trine, Spiro tries to explain doctrinal variation in terms of a distinction between Bud-

dhism as a religion concerned with ultimate salvation (Nibbanic), a religion con-

cerned with proximate salvation (Kammic) and with attaining a more useful rebirth,

a religion concerned with providing magical protection in this life (Apotropaic), and

one concerned with achieving chiliastic-millenarian changes in the world through

ritual action (Esoteric). This fourfold distinction is illuminating up to a point, but it

imposes a Weberian strait jacket on synthetic description. Furthermore, it is obvi-

ously motivated by Spiro's psychological framework. This obscures in an unfortunate

way the complex web of interconnections among all these aspects of the doctrine,

especially the fact that a desire for improved rebirths is directly justified in terms of

ultimate salvation. For although Spiro notes that his informants mentioned this, he

discounts it by citing evidence that they find difficulty in identifying emotionally

with the idea of Nibbana as a goal. Yet they also worry about not feeling they want it,

and the canonical doctrine predicts that few persons can truly desire it. So it is impor-

tant that doctrine gives them a way of postponing attempts at ultimate salvation and

even justifies this on the grounds that one almost never knows where one is in the

round of births, hence whether reaching Nibbana from the present life if even pos-

sible. Spiro cites Kin g'sA Thousand Lives Away

1

wit h approval in several places, but

seems here not to have understood the mea ning of the title.

Section III is about Buddhism as a ritual system. It is divided into four chapters:

one on the theory of ritual action and a synopsis of Buddhist ritual forms and objects

that is long on texts and short on symbolic paraphernalia, one on calendrical rituals,

and on life cycle rites and one on crisis rites. IV treats the monastic system in seven

chapters, in many ways not only the longest but the best part of the book. For once we

are given som ething m ore about m onks and temples than a sociological analysis of w ho

become monks, who does and does not attend services and whether or not the mon-

astery is a focal institution in village life. We get rather a thorough and insightful pic-

ture of the monk in relation to religious thought. If the monk's average intellectual

motivations and attainments are low, his intellectual setting is shown to be a concern

with the categories of doctrine. Moreover the layman is portrayed as equally, often

more directly, involved with these matters. We also learn about what kind of persons

become monks, although I am doubtful that we can be as sure as Spiro is that the

relatively poor canonical knowledge of contemporary monks was also characteristic of

the monarchical period. Spiro, in any case, is careful to point out that given the almost

inevitably rural personal background of monks and given the other psychological

facts about persons who choose a celibate, reclusive life, their general intellectual

level is no indicator of the degree to which concern with and knowledge of canoni-

cal doctrine is important to Burmese Buddhist religious life. And because he goes

into these facts, Spiro is able to improve upon previous analyses of the action system

between monks and laymen. He shows how the ambivalence toward monks and the

unevenness of lay participation in institutionalized church activities is determined by

the layman's assessment of monk and monastery in the light of his knowledge and

understanding of Buddhist canonical doctrine.

Section V, Buddhism and the World, has two chapters dealing with the Weberian

1 0

W. L. King, A Thousand Lives Away: Bud- 1964).

dhism in Contemporary Burma London: Cassircr,


7/9

378 F. K. LE HM AN

question whether Buddhism serves in the modern world as a bar to economic develop-

ment and political consciousness, and related questions, such as whether Buddhism

is a possible means to collective social action. Spiro is to be congratulated on making

clear that a religion such as Buddhism is shot through with paradox, and therefore is

a rich source of motivation or at least rationalization for all sorts of things, often con-

tradictory things. Thus if Buddhism in its Nibbanic (transcendental) aspect is ulti-

mately focused on negation of the world and detachment from it, it also teaches that

to reach Nibbana one has to achieve a good rebirth through meritorious action; and

good rebirths are explicitly identified with prosperity and well-being in Burma and in

the canon . Also, if doctrine and practice identify m erit mak ing with uneco nom ical

depletion of one's resources, the practitioner is allowed to look on this as a form of

saving, on the assumption of transmigration. Nash

1 7

makes the point metaphorically,

Spiro comprehensively.

Unfortunately, nowhere more than in these final chapters are the limitations of a

Weberian framework more apparent. The division of Buddhism into four religious

systems does not, in my view, aid in pointing up the sense of paradox. Rather it hides

paradox. Moreover, it leads Spiro, as it did Weber, to over rate the transcendental

as against the cosmological-sociological-political aspects of Buddhism as an ideology

(p . 437) having regard to their effects on social action. This is too bad because in

general Spiro is good at making us see, as few social scientists writing on Buddhism

have,

the futility and scholarly oversimplification of equating canonical doctrine

wi th a few soteriological cliches. T o do so is to see Th erav ada in Bu rm a a nd Southeast

Asia as the proverbial thin veneer over a foundation of native animism. It is becom-

ing increasingly clear that there is no historical basis for this view, since the rapid

spread of the Indianized polity during the early centuries of our era could not have

taken place without a deep commitment by the general population to just the doctrine

that gave meaning to the ritual symbols of the court. The pervasive stories of early

Buddhist missionary activity in Southeast Asia should not be discounted. Spiro, as

well as Men delson (see references in the book und er re vie w), finally makes us see that

in the modern world too the people of these countries are deeply involved with the

Buddhist canon.

Yet Spiro, unlike Mendelson, cannot quite avoid dividing Burmese religion into

a Bu ddh ist and a non-B uddh ist part (e.g., p. 12 and Spiro 1967)

18

very like the layers

of the veneer theory except for admitting that both are very important to the people.

T h e W eberia n fram ework seems at fault here as well as the psychological theory. Th at

is, Spiro argues from a plurality of affect to a mixed ideology, and from people's

obvious confusion about how to rationalize paradoxes verbally to underlying cog-

nitive dissonance in belief itself. This is again to confuse belief with cliche. Paradox

is not out and out dissonance, but is frequently reflected in doctrinal proposi-

tions that contradict each other on one level of interpretation but not on all. The

examp le cited earlier of wh ether informa nts have intern alize d the idea of Nib ban a

is a case in point. Similarly (1967), Spiro notices that the

nat

(spirit) cult requires

one to act in ways that are sometimes counter to canonical precepts, e.g., to propitiate

beings with alcohol and meat. He also finds that many informants notice and worry

about this. So, if they continue it, he argues that they serve two conflicting religions.

1 7

M. Nash.

The Golden Road to Modernity,

1 8

Op. cit.

(New York: Wiley, 1965).


8/9


Yet he also notices that the can on itself defines the do m ain of spirits. W h a t Sp iro fails

to observe is that the matter is complicated beyond the capacity of his framework to

describe. Thus, e.g., the canon not only defines spirits, it also requires of a Buddhist

society (monarchy), as a necessary condition of the religion's social survival, that the

spirits of the country be converted or subverted by the doctrine. The paradigm, as

Tambiah

1 9

understands, is the ]ata\a stories of Gotama's conquest of and preaching

to the host of Mara and various demons who tried to keep him from reaching en-

lightenment. Yet the doctrine cannot say what spirits one may encounter or what their

character may require one to do to overcome and convert them. Therein lies the para-

dox. Mendelson sees this and avoids the two religions theory.

This is a very important and satisfactory book, and I trust that the foregoing crit-

icisms do not hide this fact. Its use of the scholarly literature on Buddhism and on

Burma is exemplary. I think Tambiah does a bit better on the texts by integrating the

implicit doctrine of the ]dta\a and related cosmological and mythological parts of the

canon, but Spiro comes out ahead in respect of theology and philosophy. There are

remarkably few typographical errors, and the few I caught casually, e.g.Sutta Nip ta

for Sutta Nipata, on page xiii, are not bothersome.

There are several Burmanological matters that one might quarrel with, but it is a

measure of Spiro's scholarship that my cavils are at a fairly esoteric level of detail. For

instance, (p. 18) Spiro claims, citing Coedes, that there is no clear evidence for the pres-

ence of Bud dhism in Burm a prior to the fifth century Pyu evidence. T he w ord clear

is certainly equivocal, but he might have mentioned evidence

20

that the earliest in-

scriptions in Mon, being already fully evolved, betoken a considerable history of local

development in the Indian tradition prior to the inscriptions themselves. At the same

place, in order to make the point that after the eleventh century

A.D.

Theravada has

always been predominant in Burma, Spiro glosses over the subtle survival of non-

Thera vada currents in Burmese Bu ddhism ; not just the problematical artmonks .

21

This sort of thing is especially apparent in Spiro's occasional oversimplification

in glossing a Burmese word. For example, at pages 62-63

n e

overemphasizes the dis-

parity between the Mahayana idea of the Bodhisattva as a future Buddha currently

serving as an intercessor, and the Theravada idea of the coming Buddha that is called

in Burmese hpaya: laung:, who will, if we can be alive when he comes, preach us

to salvation. He says that although the Burmese translate the term Bodhisattva in the

]ata\a with hpaya: laung:, the latter means Em bryo Bud dha. But while hpaya:,

in this usage, means Lord (Buddha), laung: means to bring someone or something

into an immanent state, and this implies that he has brought himself to this condition

and will now await the day when his coming is required by the predicted disap-

pearance of Gotam a's teaching. This is not all that different from the Bodhisattva ideal,

even though a hpaya: laung: cannot actively intercede. The coming Buddha, Ari-

metaya, is in fact adverted to in prayer and sermon as a saint at least in the sense of

of an exemplary being who has held off his own salvation for man's benefit. Further-

more, it would have been useful, in connection with his section on Esoteric Buddhism,

for Spiro to have gone , as at page 171, into the close relation ship betwee n hpaya:

1 9

Op. cit.

culture,

Journal of the Siam Society,

53 :2 / (1965)

2 0

See for example G. H .

Luce,

Rice and

139-152.

religion: A study of old Mon-Khmer evolution and

2 1

See N. R. Ray,

Sanscrit Buddhism in Burma,

(Amsterdam:H. J. Paris, 1936).


9/9

380 F. K. LEH M AN

hung:

and

min laung:

or immanent (wheel-turning) monarch; for one cannot

understand the ideal of the immanent Buddha without also understanding the fact

that Buddhas and ideal monarchs are equally necessary to the religion as, respectively,

sacred and secular representatives of

dhamma,

the universal law . In fact they are,

as in Gotama's own life story, largely interchangeable, as Mendelson has clearly com-

prehended in his work.

Again, at page 311, the word hpoung:ji: (Gre ater Glory, or M erit ) is poorly dealt

wi th. Spiro cites Cochrane to the effect that this became a general word for m on k only

after the end of the monarchy. But we know it was used this way at least as long ago

as the time of Syme's mission of 1795.

22

T ^

e

problem is that a m on k does not accumu-

late merit. Properly, the title was that of the king, secondarily that of an abbot incum-

bent of a monastery, and by extension it is used for all monks. Spiro ought to have

asked why the usage arose. It is, roughly, that the king is pre-eminently patron of the

religion and of the

samgha,

the monastic order. As such, he is the great accumulator

of me rit, since if mon ks are the field of m erit for laymen , m ak ing it possible for

everyone to gain m erit by suppor ting them , they are above all the king 's field of

m eri t, an d tha t is the source of their title of hpoung: ji:.

But all these are mere quibbles and do not detract from the value of this book that

for once combines explicit and up to date anthropological theory and me thod w ith

a rich and scholarly corpus of detail, and thus contributes not only to the relatively

sterile domain of methodology but also, illuminatingly, to our knowledge about

Burma.

2 2

Michael Symes, An Account of an Embassy to edition (Westmead, Hants., England : Gregg In-

thc Court of Avo

(17 95, a reprin t of the 1800 ternational Publishers, 196 9).

Doctrine, Practice, and Belief in Theravāda Buddhism

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