Mārga: Paths to Liberation in South Asian Buddhist Traditions: Papers from an international symposium held at the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna, December 17 – 18, 2015

The Path to attain liberation (marga), a central notion of Buddhist praxis and thought, designates specific patterns of behaviour and methods of practice connected with transformative powers and soteriological goals. This volume shows the plurality and complexity of Buddhist views on the Path found in Buddhist doctrinal, narrative and philosophical literature, epigraphic sources and iconographic programmes from South Asia. Through new analyses-rather than general pictures-of different kinds of sources, this volume examines how the Path was interpreted, discussed and represented in Buddhist traditions of South Asia. It traces the contours of ideologies of the Path that have variously influenced the formation and development of Buddhist identities in the religious and intellectual landscape of premodern South Asia and contributes to revisiting modern descriptions of the Buddhist Path. Contents 6 Foreword 8 I. Schemes of the Buddhist Path in the Nikāyas and Āgamas • Rupert Gethin 12 II. The Story of the Path: Indian Jātaka Literature and the Way to Buddhahood • Naomi Appleton 86 III. The “dhyāna-Master” Aśvaghoṣa on the Path, Mindfulness, and Concentration • Vincent Eltschinger 106 IV. Stairway to Heaven and the Path to Buddhahood: Donors and Their Aspirations in Fifth- and Sixth-Century Ajanta • Vincent Tournier 184 V. Ālayavijñāna in a Meditative Context • Nobuyoshi Yamabe 256 VI. Map Becomes Territory: Knowledge and Modes of Existence in Middle Period Buddhist Meditation Practice • Daniel M. Stuart 284 VII. The Poetics of the Path: Bhāviveka’s Tattvāmṛtāvatāra (“Introduction to the Ambrosia of Reality”) • Malcolm David Eckel 310 VIII. Concepts of the Spiritual Path in the *Sūtrālaṃkāravṛttibhāṣya (Part II): The Eighteen manaskāras and the adhimukticaryābhūmi • Jowita Kramer 336 IX. The Road Not to Be Taken: An Introduction to Two Ninth-Century Works Against Buddhist Antinomian Practice • Péter-Dániel Szántó 370 X. Visual Embodiments of the Buddhist mārga: Space, Place and Artistry in Ancient Swat/Uḍḍiyāna • Anna Filigenzi 388 Index 422