Lecture: "Nuns, Monks, Soldiers, and Kings: Buddhist Monastics and the Rule of Law in the Mūlasarvāstivāda Vinaya"
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Presented in collaboration with the department's 50th anniversary year DSR Lecture Series
In a now well-known debate in the Journal of Indian Philosophy in 1996 between two late greats of Buddhist studies, Andrew Huxley and Steven Collins, the question of whether social contract theory was present in two suttas evolved into a deliberation on the role of Buddhist monks and nuns vis-à-vis kingship, with Collins suggesting that they fulfilled the role of a court jester, able to challenge the king without a real threat to the legitimacy of his role. In this paper, we revive this debate and transpose it to the storyworld of the Mūlasarvāstivāda Vinaya, a narratively rich monastic legal code that contains many stories about how monks and nuns interacted with kings and their soldiers. What specific limitations on royal power, to borrow a question posed by Huxley, do these Vinaya stories propose? Do these stories add any nuance to the question of whether and when Buddhist nuns and monks may have engaged in any form of subversive critique with regard to kingship, or any particular king? Drawing narratives from across newly translated portions of the Bhikṣuṇīvinayavibhaṅga, the [Bhikṣu-]Vibhaṅga, and the Uttaragrantha, this paper explores how monastic legal jurists imagined Buddhist monastics navigating the bounds of newly formed laws, encounters with armed authorities, and appeals to royal power.
About the speaker
Annie Heckman is an Associate Translator for 84000: Translating the Words of the Buddha. Heckman’s recent research focuses on stories about nuns in the Mūlasarvāstivāda Vinaya, with an emphasis on fourteenth-century Tibetan editorial and digesting practices. She holds MA and PhD degrees from the University of Toronto’s Department for the Study of Religion and Book History and Print Culture collaborative program, as well as a BFA from the University of Illinois at Chicago and an MFA from New York University in Studio Arts. She studied Tibetan language and literature at the University of Chicago Graham School prior to pursuing graduate work in Buddhist studies. She has taught at DePaul University, contributed to Bird of Paradise Press in Virginia, and worked as a reviewer of unhuang manuscripts at McMaster University, where she was an Ontario Visiting Graduate Student (2017–2019). Her current book project is a translation and study of Butön Rinchen Drub’s digest of vinaya narratives involving nuns. In addition to her translation and editorial work, Heckman is currently teaching courses on Sanskrit, Buddhism, and meditation at Washington & Lee University in Lexington, Virginia.
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