Stephen Collins

In the first part of the paper, I argue against the idée reçue that rūpakāya is a Pali phrase referring to relics and images of a Buddha after his nirvana. It does not: it refers either to any human body, or to the Buddha's body while alive. In the second part I argue that appreciating how the dhammakāya is actually instantiated through time requires us to abandon the interpretive dichotomy which sets it as an ‘immaterial’, ‘spiritual’ object against ‘material objects’ such as relics, images, and amulets. As instantiated in writing and speech-events it functions in the same ways. It too is an embodied object of ritual pūjā.

The _Vessantara Jataka_ is one of the most popular and influential Theravada Buddhist texts and the final and longest scripture in the Pali Canon. It tells the story of Prince Vessantara, who attained the Perfection of Giving by giving away his fortune, his children, and his wife. Prince Vessantara was the penultimate rebirth as a human of the future Gotama Buddha, and his extreme charity is frequently portrayed in the sermons, rituals, and art of South and Southeast Asia. This anthology features sophisticated literary and anthropological analyses of the ethics of giving, understanding of attachment and nonattachment, depiction of the trickster, and unique performative qualities of the _Vessantara Jataka_. Contributors to the volume include well-respected anthropologists, textual scholars in religious and Buddhist studies, and art historians who unravel from multiple perspectives the text's morality, religion, and place in contemporary academic debates. These experts show the _Vessantara Jataka_ to be as brilliantly layered as a Homerian epic or Shakespearean play, with aspects of tragedy, comedy, melodrama, and utopian fantasy intertwined to problematize and scrutinize Buddhism's cherished virtues. Unusual for its disciplinary range, this collection helps recast Buddhism as a human tradition rich in ethical and aesthetic complexity. It also features an introduction describing the work's main themes and styles, a character glossary, and a bibliography.