"Karma accounts: supplementary thoughts on Theravāda, Madhyamaka, theosophy, and Protestant Buddhism", Religion 43 (2013).

This art icle was downloaded by: [ 109.102.185.1] On: 01 Oct ober 2013, At : 05: 14 Publisher: Rout ledge I nform a Lt d Regist ered in England and Wales Regist ered Num ber: 1072954 Regist ered office: Mort im er House, 37- 41 Mort im er St reet , London W1T 3JH, UK Religion Publicat ion det ails, including inst ruct ions f or aut hors and subscript ion inf ormat ion: ht t p: / / www. t andf online. com/ loi/ rrel20 Karma accounts: supplementary thoughts on Theravāda, Madhyamaka, theosophy, and Protestant Buddhism a Eugen Ciurt in a Inst it ut e f or t he Hist ory of Religions, Romanian Academy , Bucharest , Calea 13 Sept embrie nr. 13, 050711 , Bucharest , Romania To cite this article: Eugen Ciurt in (2013) Karma account s: supplement ary t hought s on Theravāda, Madhyamaka, t heosophy, and Prot est ant Buddhism, Religion, 43: 4, 487-498, DOI: 10. 1080/ 0048721X. 2013. 834213 To link to this article: ht t p: / / dx. doi. org/ 10. 1080/ 0048721X. 2013. 834213 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTI CLE Taylor & Francis m akes every effort t o ensure t he accuracy of all t he inform at ion ( t he “ Cont ent ” ) cont ained in t he publicat ions on our plat form . 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Any subst ant ial or syst em at ic reproduct ion, redist ribut ion, reselling, loan, sub- licensing, syst em at ic supply, or dist ribut ion in any form t o anyone is expressly forbidden. Term s & Condit ions of access and use can be found at ht t p: / / www.t andfonline.com / page/ t erm s- and- condit ions  Religion, 2013 Vol. 43, No. 4, 487–498, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0048721X.2013.834213 Karma accounts: supplementary thoughts on Theravāda, Madhyamaka, theosophy, and Protestant Buddhism Eugen Ciurtin* Institute for the History of Religions, Romanian Academy, Bucharest, Calea 13 Septembrie nr. 13, 050711 Bucharest, Romania Downloaded by [109.102.185.1] at 05:14 01 October 2013 A BSTRACT This article supplements Jens Schlieter’s discussion of the cognitive metaphor of a karmic bank-account, adding selected points on karma monetary/ fiscal metaphors as preserved chiefly in Pāli and Sanskrit sources. It explores various strands of the history of South Asian religions where distinct economic metaphors for karma come closer to the late ‘bank-account of karma’: i.e., the Vedic ‘three debts,’ a Hindu concept of God as accountant, the varieties of weighing the (mis)deeds, the Buddhist monastic status of debt and fiscal trans- actions, the equivalence of karma and debt as discussed by Madhyamaka thin- kers, and others. While endorsing Schlieter’s point, it also takes into account such modern Western sources as early theosophical discourse and ‘Protestant Buddhism.’ K EY W ORDS karma; fiscal/monetary metaphors; Theravāda; Madhyamaka; theosophy; Protestant Buddhism; economy of religion It is only during the last decade that grand theorists of religion and historians of Buddhism have unfolded a possible doctrinal tie between Buddhist values and the doctrinal and social configurations that money may have played in South Asia, supposedly since the 4th century BCE. Gustavo Benavides emphasizes that ‘money, as the ultimate solvent, can have liberating effects,’1 while Gregory Schopen describes ‘the Buddha as a businessman.’2 In his contribution, Jens Schli- eter adduces key data and arguments for discriminating between sources and accretions in the most relevant economic similes of karma.3 Recall that Max *Email: e.ciurtin@ihr-acad.ro 1 Benavides 2004: 29; more in Benavides 2005. 2 See Schopen 2000 and 2009, although his contributions, especially on the Vinayas’ ban of monks-money connection versus the actual situation of Buddhist communities during their first millennium, are much more copious and far-reaching. 3 Richard Gombrich and Richard Seaford’s observations on monetization (Schlieter 2013: 476 n. 23) are more recently followed by Fynes 2011: 213–214. It may be useful for comparative scholars to note that, later on, a process similar to the Catholic indulgences (Schlieter 2013: 466 and 479) underwent the religious Hindu fellows in modern Bengal – ‘dāyika or “mortgage” [or “indebtedness”] fee, an © 2013 Taylor & Francis  488 E. Ciurtin Weber described the karma doctrine(s) in Indic religions as ‘the most consistent theodicy ever produced.’4 Schliter’s argument is a resourceful case in point which shows ubi alia the requirement to study South Asian Buddhism together with an in-depth historiography of worldwide Buddhist Studies. This appears as manda- tory especially because some of the finest past scholars of Indian religions as Sylvain Lévi (1863–1935) and Frits Staal (1930–2012), exploring the ground of such similitudes, offered attempts which would require today a rejoinder. In a public lecture on the Indic transmigration of souls, Lévi considered, immersed in the study of Mahāyāna as he was at that time, that ‘L’âme va d’abord dans l’autre monde dépenser son crédit de mérites ou solder sa dette de péchés, mais sans l’épui- ser totalement. Il subsiste un reliquat, une sorte de résidu […] La nature morale réclame sa dette avec la rigueur d’un créancier inflexible’ (Lévi 1904: 101 and 114 or 1937: 30 and 37; cp. infra). Inquiring the substitution of paradigms in early Buddhism, Staal admitted that ‘Toute cette entreprise de coopération entre marc- hands et moines illustre l’analogie entre mérite et capital en ce qui regarde accumu- Downloaded by [109.102.185.1] at 05:14 01 October 2013 lation et transfert, analogie qui, comme le dit Romila Thapar (1966: 130), “ne devrait pas être sous-estimée”. Elle reflète à son tour la similitude générale entre le mécanisme du karman et les transactions et les échanges monétaires (cf. Hara 1968–1969 (sic) [1967–1968], et 1970).’5 These and other irresistible comparisons6 may look like a citation or a demonstration – yet they are neither. Karma calculations are not regarded by the Buddhist sources themselves as morally selfish or otherwise unethical. On the contrary, this critique is a modern addition, and specifically comes also from other two traditions not addressed by Schlieter, although intermingled in the history of (studying) Buddhism outside Buddhist Asia: Theosophy and ‘Protestant Buddhism.’ We learn much from taking into account these other influences in exploring the cognitive plausibility of such metaphors. I shall briefly articulate this view, in order to explain how the constellation of meaning in this ‘bank account of karma’ is a conflation of various layers of: (1) early Buddhist doctrine of karma; (2) a prevalent sense of accumulation and loss as cognitive devices for karma in Indian religions; (3) read- ings enacted by first Protestant, and then (4) Theosophical aficionados, (5) not without re-entering mainstream Theravāda discourse mainly during the 20th century. It was this last point, as moving against the grain (pratiloman), the one responsible in spotting the stake (Schlieter 2013). Other sources, hitherto hardly acknowledged, may support this query: what is frequently labeled as ‘Protestant Buddhism,’ and the nascence of a theosophical discourse on Buddhist karma, coex- isting with the earlier days of Buddhist scholarship outside Asia. Yet before additional tax placed upon the body/house of the devotee as the “price of sin”’; see Urban 2001: 186 (and Chapter 2 passim). 4 Weber 1988: 120: ‘der konsequentesten Theodizee, welche die Geschichte je hervorgebracht hat’; cp. Potter 2001. 5 Staal 1985: 48. Even if this French article, reworked, constitutes chapter 28 in Staal 1989/1996, these very lines as well as the references cited there are absent. As for its quotation, a later avatar of it is somehow different: ‘The analogy with the common mercantile practice of the accumulation and transference of capital is striking’ (Thapar 2002: 271). 6 Liz Wilson, for instance, paraphrases a group of apsarās from the Udāna in their dialogue with the picky beggar Kassapa: ‘In other words, “We desperately need to deposit some karmic funds in your high-yield bank account […],”’ as ‘Mahākassapa is […] a higher yielding karma-depository,’ in order to also speak of a ‘karmic accountancy’ (Wilson 2003: 61 and 64).  Religion 489 addressing these two issues, an additional appraisal of several early South Asian sources, belonging most notably to very different Buddhist schools and monastic lineages, is needed. 1. Comparative karma and debt in Indian religions The ascription of karma-vipāka as ‘in the nature of a penal-cum-procedure code’ (Krishan 1983: 203), or as a credit-cum-debit or other normative mode (Schlieter 2013; see Schlieter 2012: 230) cannot possibly cover the multiple and sometimes neglected7 representations of karma. In drawing attention to ‘the religious notion of primordial or “existential debts”’ (Schlieter 2013: 466), we should remember the elaborations on the ‘three debts’ (triṛṇ a), which go back to Vedic/Brahminic times and actually predate every explanation of its elements – threefold indebted- ness: to the gods, ṛsị s and Pitṛs – as karma (Malamoud 1989: 115–136/ 1996: 93–108). Moreover, the brahmans’ ‘three debts’ (study of the Vedas, begetting of sons, offer- Downloaded by [109.102.185.1] at 05:14 01 October 2013 ing of sacrifices) may be seen as antecedents transposed in the Buddhist setting, and then forgotten, as Norman (2000: 172 or Norman 2007: 93–94) claims. Schlieter argues that a karmic bookkeeping was foreign to earliest Theravāda, but nonethe- less accommodated in more recent times (2013: 467, 475, 482). Even so, and even if Judeo-Christian influences (missionary, economic, or otherwise) had prevalently shaped this cognitive metaphor, a karmic bookkeeping was not already potentially implied. Johannes Bronkhorst discusses an early verse from the Śvetāśvatara- upaniṣad (6.11): eko devaḥ sarvabhuteṣu gūḍaḥ, sarvavyāpī sarvabhūtāntarātmā | karmād- hyakṣaḥ sarvabhūtādhivāsaḥ, sākṣī cetā kevalo nirguṇ aś ca || ‘the one God, hidden in all beings, all-pervading as well as the interior self of all beings, is the supervisor of karma, the dwelling-place of all beings, the witness, the judge, isolated and free from guṇ as.’8 In light of this ‘supervisor of karma’ (karmādhyakṣa), Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika thinkers afterwards introduced ‘the notion of a creator God who acted as a kind of book-keeper of the karmic accounts of all living being’ (Bronkhorst 2000: 44; cp. Chemparathy 2004: 648–649), a God (otiosus enough to be only an) accountant.9 However, for Olivelle this seems to be less supported by the Śvetāśvatara- upaniṣad occurrence, as he renders karmādhyakṣa by ‘the overseer of the work’ (1998: 431), and indirectly obliterates a ‘karmic account’ interpretation by translat- ing the ambiguous cetā as ‘avenger.’ 7 My own suggestion of an alternative and similarly cognitive ingestion/digestion model for the workings of karma (Schlieter 2013: 471 n. 18; one may add Granoff 1998) relies mostly on a parallel study of the hierarchy of beings regarding their karma, alimentation, digestion and excreta (unpublished paper, 13th World Sanskrit Conference, Edinburgh, 2006). Thus, plants are mostly classified as stationary beings ([s]thāvara), one-facultied (ekindriya), which only consume karma (like in several Indic hells) but have no stomach and no (or minute) excreta, while animals and humans are mobile beings (t[r]asa), many-facultied, which consume and accumulate karma, having stomach and producing excreta. Besides the Vedic antecedents, there are occasional references in India to ‘eating sins,’ cp. Parry 1980, Wadley and Derr 1989. For more on the embodiments of karma (Schlieter 2013: 468) in Ciurtin 2010– 2011 [2013]. 8 Transl. Bronkhorst (after Th. Oberlies) 2000: 44 (slightly adapted). 9 Bronkhorst (2000: 45) perceptively admits there is a fuller ‘history of God as the book-keeper of karmic accounts,’ though unaddressed in his book. Bronkhorst returned twice to this question: showing that for Vaiśeṣika ‘this God is no more than an accountant’ (2011a: 62), and considering that ‘for a long time the belief in rebirth and karmic retribution was not accompanied by a belief in a God who oversees the process; this notion came later’ (2011b: 41).  490 E. Ciurtin There was some conflation of two or more financial-cum-economic metaphors, as in Baudhāyana’s legal code, which goes so far as to advocate weighing in a balance the very moneylenders for their fiscal misconduct.10 The antiquity and procedures of weighing (mostly kings) against gold (not exclusively) normally fit into the same family of metaphors (Schlieter 2013: 471, 477 n. 35; add chiefly Schmiedchen 2003 and 2006). As ‘Hindu’ and then Mughal as this may seem (and was, at least for Western witnesses like Sir Thomas Roe during Akbar’s reign), there is at least one reference in one of the oldest Pāli canonical texts. In the Therīgāthā (v. 153), the nun Anopamā (‘Unsurpassed’), daughter of a wealthy merchant, is courted by princes and proposed by merchants for eight times her weight (Masset 2005: 52, ‘huit fois l’équivalent en or et pierres précieuses!’; and Pruitt 1998: 179–180, ‘what she weighs as measured by those who know marks’). With Nāgārjuna’s karma-as-imperishable-debt metaphor we enter the best Bud- dhist alternative to Theravāda fiscal metaphors. The Madhyamaka elaborations not only prove a Buddhist sensitivity to acknowledge the relevance of money and debts Downloaded by [109.102.185.1] at 05:14 01 October 2013 (or loans) as karmic comparanda, but offer moreover a suitable context of proto- banking, which in turn reflects the attested practice in early Indian urban system. The problematic nature, function, and varieties of this metaphor are in fact known since the foundational work, one century ago, of the Belgian masters Louis de La Vallée-Poussin (1869–1938) and Étienne Lamotte (1903–83).11 Nāgārju- na’s Mūlamadhyamakakārikā not only seems to prefer (XVII.15) a debt-sheet (ṛṇ a-pat [t]ra) metaphor, but twice rejects by proxy12 – referring to an unspecified voice – the karma metaphor (kalpanā) of seeds and sprouts, allegedly preferred by the Mahā- sāṅ ghika and which would turn out to be fecund for the Yogācāra, as inappropriate as model, adducing instead other example from the Nikāya/Āgama. If ‘[h]ere karma and a debt and karma are compared to an imperishable promissory note’ (Kalupahana 1986: 250), such avipraṇ āśa signalizes the stupendous flexibleness of karma similes in Buddhist and Indic contexts.13 Accordingly, in another work 10 Baudhāyana-dharmasūtra 1.10.21-23: ‘Usury and abortion were once weighed in a balance. The abortion- ist rose to the top, while the usurer trembled’ (transl. Olivelle 2000: 216–217 and 579). 11 The fuller Sanskrit, Chinese, and Tibetan references I will not reiterate here migrated from La Vallée- Poussin’s edition of Nāgārjuna cum Candrakīrti (1903–1913) up to Lamotte 1958: 674–675 or 1988: 609. Their best treatment, including the Sanskrit edition and English translation of Candrakīrti, is now Kragh 2006: 209 sq. Lamotte might have been the first to query the relevance of a Judeo-Christian par- allel, as he referred to the Epistle to the Colossians 2:14 and Origen (Lamotte [1935–1936] 1987, 106–107). 12 See Walser 2005: 229, 245. In Pāli iṇ a (and iṇ a-paṇ ṇ a, lit. ‘debt-sheet,’ or any other compounds with iṇ a, mostly in the Jātaka) is rather rare, and has a lesser conducive force than in Nāgārjuna. These, already noted by C. A. F. Rhys Davids (1901: 879–880), ‘have been simply registrations as between borrower and lender and their respective heirs.’ Incidentally, the use of iṇ a-paṇ ṇ āni received a cognitive avatar from the eminent scholar of Indian religions P. S. Jaini: ‘the karmas, like a giant computer, take note of each and every passion and action and work out their consequences for each individual in strict accordance with the law of moral retribution without the aid or the supervision of a conscious being like a God’ (Jaini 2001 [1970]: 68). The Critical Pāli Dictionary notes Buddhaghosa’s stock formula kāma-cchanda-iṇ a as ‘the debt which is desire for the objects of sensual pleasure,’ a contracted unwholesome debt through sensual desire (Sumaṅ galavilāsinī 213,3 and 471,6; Papañcasūdanī II 179,8; Samantapāsādikā 962,30). On the (para)canonical use of the adjective anaṇ a, see Pruitt 1988: 14–15, 142, 342; the fullest outlines are Hara 1996 and Norman 2000/2007. 13 Cp. Bugault 2002: 215–217 on ‘comparaison comptable’ and ‘dette,’ but Lévi had once again ‘arriéré de karman’ (1911: 28), insofar it expresses the rest of corporeal life of an arhat; see also Ruegg 1989: 141–147 on ‘the giving up of activity and karman’ in Āryadeva, Candrakīrti, Kamalaśīla. On ‘dette karmique,’ see also Masset 2005: 106–107. For puṇ ya and the ‘field-of-merit’ metaphor, add Filliozat 1980.  Religion 491 attributed to Nāgārjuna, giving does not perish even after uncountable lifetimes, precisely because ‘it is like a debt (ṛṇ a).’14 Up to now, avipraṇ āśa-like karma received a more articulate attention from both Buddhist authors and modern scholars than ‘karma-as-debt;’ those origins are unclear. It belongs most possibly to the Sāṃ mi- tīya [Sāṃ matīya] school, but the Vaibhāṣikas cannot be completely excluded.15 From Nāgārjuna, this metaphorical equation of karma migrated in Vasubandhu (Abhidharmakośa 4.59cd) and, from Buddhapālita, Bhā[va]viveka, Candrakīrti, and Avalokitavrata, to Tsongkhapa. Candrakīrti’s Prasannapadā 317.3–318.5 has the typical phrasing yathā patram … iva ṛṇ am ‘as a title-deed … as a debt.’ Karma as avipraṇ āśa is more often discussed in several most influential Mahāyānasūtras,16- while karma as (written on) ṛṇ a(patra) seems to derive from Nāgārjuna. Previous researches of all these highly sophisticated works and authors have sufficiently documented a remarkably vivid and coherent trope, surviving for a long period the refutation of the karma doctrine it underscores as well as the extinction of the scholastic lineage which first proposed it. Furthermore, Kragh claims: ‘This Downloaded by [109.102.185.1] at 05:14 01 October 2013 comparison also has a canonical basis. In the Chinese translation of the *Siṃ hacan- drajātaka (T176, shih-tzu-yüeh fu-pen-sheng-ching 師子月佛本生經), an arhant com- pares action to a shadow that always follows one’s body’ and adds ‘the following verse: “Action can adorn the body; it follows one from here or there into any course of rebirth. The non-perishing phenomenon is like a title deed; action is like a creditor”’ (2006: 309). In fact, there is even an Iṇ a-sutta, ‘sutra on debt,’ among the ‘sixes’ of the Aṅ gut- tara-nikāya.17Moreover, offerings may be conceived, when received by monks, explains the Aṅ guttara-aṭtḥ akathā, in a fourfold proto-fiscal system: as theft, debt, inheritance, or property, according to the monk’s own level of training (Manoratha- pūraṇ ī ad loc.). As Norman shows, the usage of anaṇ a covers debts as money or ser- vices and, ethically taken, as defilement (kilesa). Paul Griffiths discusses one of the ‘rarely quoted parables’ from the Visuddhimagga (14.4–5), where ‘[w]isdom is like a money-changer (heraññika) who knows all that the child and villager know but can also tell by looking at the coins, weighing, smelling, and tasting them, exactly which coins are counterfeit and which genuine, precisely where each of them was made, and by whom, and what the value of each is’ (Griffiths 1981: 612 or Grif- fiths 2005: 161; Ñāṇ amoli [1956] 1991/1999: 436; Maës 2002: 480 has ‘changeur’). Paying down and thus absolving bad kamma is not unusual in the Theravāda 14 Lamotte 1944–1980: 5.2250. ‘Les actes longtemps accumulés (upacita) poursuivent leur auteur à la façon d’un créancier poursuivant son débiteur sans le lâcher,’ Lamotte 1944–1980: 1.347. Cp. also the references to ṛṇ apatra (1.347-348 n. 2, 2.665 n. 2), ṛṇ a (3.1401, 3.1440) as well as ṛṇ āyika ‘debtor’ (Lamotte 1944-1980: 3.1533) 15 Thus Lamotte 1935–1936: 230 or 1987: 87–88, 106–107 n. 57, to be corroborated with Tsong-kha-pa’s commentary (cp. Schlieter, 473 n. 25) on Candrakīrti’s Madhyamakāvatāra about the efficiency of karma, as noted by Wayman: ‘Certain Vaibhāṣikas (non-Kashmirian), as the commentator Avalokitav- rata explained, take it to be like a debt-document, two acts that have different meaning; not saying it is “not wasted,” they believe it a saṃ skāra’ (1997: 253). Much less convincing is the Derrida-styled essay on ṛṇ a by Berger, who furthermore naively thinks this would be ‘Nāgārjuna’s own trope’ (2007: 35–43, here 42). 16 Studied by Kragh 2006: 309–324 together with the Madhyamaka philosophical lineage of strict com- mentators. Kragh 2009: 17–21 analyses the ‘omnipresent exegetical parallel’ of the karma botanic analogy in five Madhyamaka commentaries. 17 AN III.351-354, transl. in Bodhi [2012]: 914–917, with grammar elucidations by Norman 2000/2007.  492 E. Ciurtin legal system of Southeast Asia: ‘If dhammathats [legal codes written in Pāli] are to encourage compensatory damages, they should explicitly describe the payment thereof as kamma-cancelling. One of the recently published North Thai Mangraisat documents (assumed to date from the 15th century) takes this approach: […] “He who acts wrongly but then pays compensation has his demerit cured”’ (Huxley 1990: 80).18 2. Protestant Buddhism Before examining some bank-account and other financial metaphors associated with karma, mainly in the 19th-century West, let us recall that monetary metaphors and fiscal similes were not only projections onto the other, but also critical self-pro- jections, which ‘gained wide currency’ in, for example, Lessing, Goethe, Kierke- gaard, and Nietzsche.19 Conversely, the Catholics discovered as early as 1714 that Indian fiscal interests, in a classification certainly tinted here by the systematics Downloaded by [109.102.185.1] at 05:14 01 October 2013 of karma, were threefold: ‘some interests are virtuous, others are sinful, and again some are neither. These are the expressions they use,’ as the Jesuit father Jean Venant Boucher (1655–1732) wrote from Pondicherry for Lettres édifiantes et cur- ieuses (transl. in Rocher [1984] 2012, 686). In an unnoticed leap backwards from the extraordinarily accurate work of Eugène Burnouf (1801–52), Barthélemy Saint-Hilaire’s remarks (Schlieter 2013: 467) belong to a typical group of pre-scien- tific phantasms, championed in his writings as almost none did it in a period yet full of rickety reading of Buddhist texts. In a compendious work, Unitarian J. F. Clarke considered Buddhism ‘the Protestantism of the East,’ but also writes that ‘Buddhism, in its Forms, resembles Romanism; in its Spirit, Protestantism,’ adding that ‘the notion of rewards, substituted for that of the infinite beauty, has perverted everything in his system’ (Clarke 1871: 139 and 166). In 1872, Lord Amberley affirmed that ‘[i]t is our Karma that determines the character of our suc- cessive existences [...] The balance, either on the credit or debit side of our account must always be paid – to us or by us, as the case may be’ (Amberley 1872: 316, cited in Almond 1988: 88). The transfer of karma imagery to the West was in that period often obscured by scarce knowledge of the vast Pāli canonical and commentarial body of works. This hampered the first accurate evaluations of karma in the writings of scholars like Daniel John Gogerly, Reginald Copleston, and Thomas William Rhys Davids (Harris 2006: 135–136 and passim). When, in 1846, Wesleyan Methodist missionary Gogerly translated from the Pāli the Cūḷakammavibhaṅ ga-sutta (MN 135; Schlieter 2013: 471), he chose it in order to polemically prove the ‘selfishness’ of indivisible transmigration and the absence of a Buddhist ‘forgiveness’ in regard to karma (Harris 2010: 183). This absence is implicit to a certain extent in every bank- account metaphor: indeed, only the lack of a forgiving agency may validate the modern financial worldview. John Eitel, who regarded the Buddha as ‘the 18 For South Asian Hindu compared with sophisticated Buddhist Mūlasarvāstivādin casuistry, as Schopen notes, ‘The idea that a debtor ends up in hell even found its way into inscriptions’ (2001: 113 or 2004 [2010]: 135). Monetary regulations of different Buddhist schools are studied anew by Juo- hsüeh 2008. 19 See Tabarasi-Hoffmann 2011, mostly on Kierkegaard’s 1843–1844 Opbyggelige Taler / Upbuilding dis- courses, alarmed by the ‘bankruptcy’ and ‘inflation’ of Christian theological truth.  Religion 493 Martin Luther of a sect which existed perhaps for centuries before him’ (Schlieter 2013: 466), criticized Buddhism for converting morality ‘into a vast scheme of profit and loss.’20 Similarly, colonial Buddhist scholars from Gogerly to Rhys Davids variously tried to accommodate Christian ideas of providence, grace, for- giveness, and sin with karma (present in some early-modern missionary accounts as well). In adding the Christian idea of God, they shared an insoluble problem with Hindu philosophers such as Udayana, Vācaspatimiśra, or Sureśvara (on which see Chemparathy 2004: 646 n. 6), though these were not very accessible at the time. In a 1920 encyclopedia article with the Eurocentric title, ‘Sin (Buddhism),’ T. W. and C. A. F. Rhys Davids rightfully admitted: ‘No one holding the doctrine of karma [...] could accept the doctrine of sin’ (also Harvey 2001: 26–27). This was written at a time when this quasi incompatibility,21 which once had been a mission- ary topic of condemnation, became prevailingly scrutinized in a rather neutral, if not sympathetic mode. Nonetheless, some of the ‘Protestant presuppositions’ overlap with the systematic and lasting objections raised against a unified theory Downloaded by [109.102.185.1] at 05:14 01 October 2013 of karma (Potter 2001: 231–232). Ultimately, the same Protestant presuppositions have paradoxically produced contrary results at distinct moments. For Schopen (1991/1997/2010: 7) and his followers, ‘[t]extuality overrides actuality’ (i.e., the epi- graphic and archaeological record; specifically on karma, Schopen 1991/1997/2010: 5–7). For Schlieter, actuality (i.e., the function of karma’s cognitive metaphor) over- rides textuality (read: canonical sources). 3. Theosophy This also happened with some help from the early Theosophical movement in India. Colonel Olcott arrived in (then) Ceylon in 1880, and his Buddhist Catechism – a designation analogous to ‘Protestant Buddhism’ – appeared in revised forms in 1881, reaming influential for several generations. One Q&A (171) reads: ‘No good deed or bad deed, however trifling, and however secretly committed, escapes the evenly-balanced scales of Karma’ (Olcott 1903: 171). Such computation would be from now on familiar to Theosophical writers of all sorts (Franklin 2008/ 2009: 85–86 and 167–168), starting with Blavatsky, Besant, or Leadbeater, and broadly expanded. One indigenous author discussed prārabda-karma by giving not only his approval to the bank-account metaphor, but astutely improving it: ‘[t]his [prārabdha-karma] is commonly compared to the money which is kept idle in a bank, and out of which an amount necessary for circulation may be drawn when the ready cash in current use (prárabda [sic]) is all exhausted; this is like the profit derived from by the use to which the ready money is put’ (Sundaram Pillai 1887: 613 n. 2). H. P. Blavatsky spoke freely about a ‘balance of National Karma’ (Blavatsky 1889: 205). Similarly, Annie Besant variously mentioned karma (individual and collective, as she once wrote about ‘England’s Karma’) in 20 Cited in Almond 1988: 74 and 88. In an otherwise informative article, Spandri borrows Almond’s phrase: ‘Eitel sostiene che il karman converte la moralità in un sistema di profitti e guadagni, accusa mossa sovente all’utilitarismo’ (Spandri 2009: 37). 21 See however Harvey 2001: 31–37, adducing some instances which really depart from ordinary under- standing of the ‘unforgiving’ law of karma. Such explorations (on karma and regret, guilt, and self-loath- ing) are incipient, see e. g., Heim 2009.  494 E. Ciurtin terms of debt or payment (‘receive or pay karmic debts,’ Besant 1917: 78, 128, 149 and passim; Besant 1898: 95, etc.). An interwar comment by a lesser-known Indian Theosophist may illustrate the 19th-century metaphorical linkage of karma and bank accounts or Theosophical karma and money: The beliefs of the members [of the Theosophical Society] in the law of Karma, in Reincarnation, in the Masters and the Path, etc., is only superficial, and that is why it produces no effect in their actual lives. I shall give you a simple illustration to show how hollow is our belief in these things. A person believes that if he puts a hundred rupees in the Imperial Bank he will get one hundred and fifty after ten years, and he invests his money without the least hesitation. The same person professes to believe that if he spends a hundred rupees in charity, the money will be returned to him in one form or another with compound interest in this or a future life. But his belief in the law of Karma is so superficial that he will trust the Imperial Bank in preference to the Bank of Providence. (Taimni 1932: 289) Downloaded by [109.102.185.1] at 05:14 01 October 2013 Early Theosophists have from time to time indulged in reading the chief Western Buddhist scholars – others were both Pāli scholars and Theosophists, as Woodward (Schlieter 2013: 485, Harris 2006: 215–216) – in order to shape an image of Bud- dhism from such works, supplementing it with the supposed antiquity of a karmic bank-account. In the oldest extant Buddhist sources, as C. A. F. Rhys Davids wrote in 1901, ‘[t]here is no evidence of the use either of fiduciary currency or of collective banking’ (1901: 881). In one way or another, projecting a ‘Bank of Providence’ depends on an imperial (colonial, missionary, etc.) one. The disputed existence of a 19th-century metaphor of karma as ‘stored in a bank account,’ together with any other tentative illustration of its workings as monetary or financial, clearly belongs to what Ann M. Blackburn refers to as ‘incompatible Buddhisms’ (2010: 106), here positioned at the juncture of hybridizing Theravāda and theosophy for the eyes of reciprocal, yet antithetic audiences. Nonetheless, col- liding understandings of karma did have long-lasting blended results: in a recent Theravāda context, ‘[o]ne monk illustrated this [working of karma] with a simile: the dying thought is like an air ticket to a nice place, but without money (i.e., suffi- ciently good kamma) one will not be able to stay there for very long’ (Langer 2007: 16). Without having a sufficiently strong canonical background, such fusion of doc- trinal reminiscences and actual practice are met in modern Southeast-Asian Thera- vāda, and the scholars have recognized their economic relevance with or without implying the observers’assumptions: ‘A layman performing any act with ethical con- notations is operating within a merit economy. He is either increasing or decreasing his store of merit. I use the economic metaphor advisedly, since lay Buddhists often keep a “merit account book” in which they enter their kammic credits and debits’ (Huxley 1990: 78). In straightforward connection with Theravāda and Western var- ieties, as Wood aptly documents recently, the conflation of ledger accountancy, mon- astic gifts, morality and autobiography is well represented in 19th-century Tibetan literature, possibly echoing here the other, Madhyamaka trope.22 22 Thus Blo gsal bstan skyong kept a ‘highly detailed records describing the protagonist’s receipt and use of monastic donations […] in each story, narratives of financial transactions constitute (external) testa- ments to protagonists’ (internal) soteriological advancement’ (Wood 2013: 37–38).  Religion 495 The cognitive metaphors used for expressing the agency of karma are much more numerous than presently suggested, the imagery of verbs is extensive, although sometimes they, as the worlds they project, are contradictory or discrete. Yet other ways of understanding karma cut against this grain: exhaustion, according to the desiderata of both early and classical Buddhism and Jainism23 (and of the Ājī- vikas), is distinctively advantageous. As the fabric of saṃ sāra uninterruptedly secretes karma through innumerable beings and ways of agency, only exhaustion or even annihilation (nijjarā / nirjarā) of karma is beneficial for absolute liberation. Finally, the metaphor of a bank account of karma may not be as heavenly as suggested, nor as cognitive as implied. It might have been at times – and indeed has become so in many disparate contexts (qualified by Schlieter’s argument) – a mere ‘mistaken mental construction’ (mithyā vikalpita) much reverberated by mental, vocal, and bodily proliferations (prapañca). They are likewise erroneous in Buddhism and in its scholarship. 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