Professor Richard F. Gombrich gave a series of lectures in 1994. These in turn were turned into a slim volume entitled, “How Buddhism Began; The Conditioned Genesis of the Early Teachings,” which was published in 1996 by the School of Oriental and African Studies in London.

Here’s the publisher’s introduction:

This book takes a fresh look at the earliest Buddhist texts and offers various suggestions how the teachings in them had developed. Two themes predominate, firstly, it argues that we cannot understand the Buddha unless we understand that he was debating with other religious teachers, notably brahmins. For example, he denied the existence of a “soul”; but what exactly was he denying? Another chapter suggests that the canonical story of the Buddha’s encounter with a brigand who wore a garland of his victims’ fingers probably reflects an encounter with a form of ecstatic religion.

The other main theme concerns metaphor, allegory and literalism. By taking the words of the texts literally—despite the Buddha’s warning not to—successive generations of his disciples created distinctions and developed doctrines far beyond his original intention. One chapter shows how this led to a scholastic categorization of meditation. Failure to understand a basic metaphor also gave rise to the later argument between the Mahayana and the older tradition. Perhaps most important of all, a combination of literalism with ignorance of the Buddha’s allusions to Brahminism led Buddhists to forget that the Buddha had preached that love, like Christian charity, could itself be directly salvific.

Richard F. Gombrich was the Boden Professor of Sanskrit at Oxford University. He has written numerous books and articles on Buddhism, in which include The World of Buddhism: Buddhist Monks and Nuns in Society and Culture (1991) and Buddhist Percept and Practise (1991 ). He was the President of the Pali Text Society and was honoured with Sri Lanka Ranjana award in 1994 and the SC Chakrabarty medal from the Asiatic Society, Kolkata.

The 164 pages offer little that I feel I need to copy here, but I found a couple of his concepts worth noting.

For example, he argues, in effect, that Buddhism is Empty – there is no fixed, unchanging essence that is Buddhism.

Buddhists readily accept … that Buddhism as we can now witness it is in decline; they might even accept such labels as ‘corrupt’ and ‘syncretistic.’ They should have no trouble in accepting the proposition on which these lectures are based: that Buddhism as a human phenomenon has no unchanging essence but must have begun to change from the moment of its inception.

This seems, however, to worry some modem scholars. Not long ago I attended a meeting of the British historians of Indian religions at which there was a discussion not, I am glad to say, about the definition of religion, but about the definition of Buddhism. I do not think that most of the participants approached the question in an essentialist spirit: they were ready to accept that Buddhism could be adequately defined, in a nominalist manner, as the religion of those who claim to be Buddhists. But they asked whether the various forms of Buddhism which gave those people their religious identity had any common features. They failed to find any, and reached the rather despairing conclusion that Buddhism was therefore not a useful concept at all.

I think this is to go too far. True, it is not prima facie obvious that there are features common to the religions of a traditional Theravādin rice-farmer, a Japanese Pure Land Buddhist, and a member of the UK branch of the Soka Gakkai International. This may not bother the Buddhists themselves, secure within their own traditions, and I am not aware that they have seriously discussed the problem. But I suggest that the Buddha’s teaching again offers a solution through the doctrine of causation, conditioned genesis. For the Buddha and his followers, things they focused mainly on – living beings – exist not as adamantine essences but as dynamic processes. These processes are not random (adhiccasamuppanna) but causally determined. Any empirical phenomenon is seen as a causal sequence, and that applies to the sāsana too. ‘One thing leads to another,’ as the English idiom has it. Whether or not we can see features common to the religion of Richard Causton, the late leader of the UK branch of Soka Gakkai International, and that of Nāgārjuna, or of the Buddha himself, there is a train of human events which causally connects them. Buddhism is not an inert object: it is a chain of events.

How Buddhism Began, p6-7

I also appreciated Gombrich warning about literalism, having myself admitted to a preference for the literal words of the Lotus Sutra.

The Buddha seems to have had a lively awareness of the dangers of literalism. A short text, AN Il, 135, classifies people who hear his teachings into four types; the terms are explained at Puggala-paññatti IV, 5 (= p. 41). As commonly, the list is hierarchic, the best type being listed first. The first type (ugghatita-ññu) understands the teaching as soon as it is uttered; the second (vipacita-ññu) understands on mature reflection; the third (neyya) is ‘leadable’: he understands it when he has worked at it, thought about it and cultivated wise friends. The fourth is called pada-parama, ‘putting the words first’; he is defined as one who though he hears much, preaches much, remembers much and recites much does not come within this life to understand the teaching. One could hardly ask for a clearer condemnation of literalism. As throughout this lecture, I am merely pointing out that Buddhism provides the best tools for its own exegesis.

In fact there is an extremely famous text in the Pali Canon in which the Buddha criticizes literalism. But I see a great irony here, for the words of the text have been too literally interpreted, so that its point has been missed. I am referring to the simile of the raft in Alagaddūpama Sutta (MN sutta 22), the sermon with the simile of the water snake.

How Buddhism Began, p22

More problematic for me is Gombrich’s discussion of Merit Transfer. As a Nichiren Buddhist, I am quite comfortable with the idea that I can transfer, through my prayers, merit I’ve earned through my practice.

To begin with, it is very difficult to keep reading when Gombrich starts by saying he is discussing “The transfer of kama – in particular of good karma, merit… ” and then describes this “a process” being transferred. I must assume Gombrich is speaking in shorthand. It is too far-fetched to imagine that he actually confuses the actions – good and bad – with the results &ndash merit. Here’s the pertinent quote:

The transfer of kama – in particular of good karma, merit – is a vast topic; much has been written about it and there is no room here for a long digression. However, I cannot resist the opportunity to make three points. First: Buddhologists have tended to ignore the importance of such transfers in Brahminical texts, where they are documented from a very early period. As Professor Hara has pointed out (Hara, 1994), the Mahābhārata, for example, envisages transfer not only of good and bad karma but of such things as long life and dishonor. So the idea that many properties we are accustomed to thinking of as nontransferable can in fact be transferred was probably part of a widespread popular belief, and in partly accepting it Buddhism was moving towards the general norm.

However, too easy acceptance of such transferability would have shaken the foundations of Buddhism as a doctrine of moral responsibility. So far from reifying merit, Buddhist orthodoxy even resisted the reification of the individual, the moral agent. How could a process transfer an aspect of itself to another process? The Sarvāstivāda, showing a tendency to multiply entities, argued that the process which we conventionally talk of as a person was connected to its properties (including karma) by something called prāpti ‘possession’ (in a verbal sense). The Theravāda came to accept the transfer of merit, but apparently tried to evade the problematic notion of transferring a process, karma, by taking over this piece of Sarvāstivādin terminology. This is my second point; I am not aware that it has been noticed before. In Pali, therefore, what is said to be given is not merit but ‘possession’ (of merit) – patti-dāna. Though all Theravādins use the term patti (= Sanskrit prāpti), I suspect that hardly any of them know just what it means (as distinct from what it refers to), since it was borrowed from another school.

It has always been my understanding that my prayers transfer my “possession” of merit to my ancestors.

Even more problematic is Gombrich’s conclusion to his discussion of merit transference:

In early Buddhism, the Buddha was a savior only in the sense that he taught the way to salvation. In the Mahāyāna, both Buddhas and bodhisattvas saved more directly, by transferring merit. My third point is that this transfer of a reified karma seems to me to be what is crucial in turning Buddhism into a religion in which one could be saved by others. It is thus the transfer of merit which takes the place in Buddhism which divine grace occupies in Christianity.

How Buddhism Began, p56-57

I strongly object to – this transfer of a reified karma seems to me to be what is crucial in turning Buddhism into a religion in which one could be saved by others.

In the Lotus Sutra’s Parable of the Burning House, the Buddha explains: “Śāriputra! The rich man did not save his children by his muscular power although he was strong enough. He saved them from the burning house with a skillful expedient and later gave them each a large cart of treasures.”

The Buddha and the Bodhisattvas remain saviors only in the sense that they teach the way to salvation. The merit transfer that I offer to my ancestors, to my family and to all beings should never be confused with salvation. That’s not what I’m offering.