UC Berkeley

This dissertation is a study of a third/fourth-century Buddhist Sanskrit text, the Saddharmasmrtyupasthana(sutra), which reveals a unique literary culture at an important transitional moment in the religious and philosophical life of early Northwest Indian Buddhists. The study argues that meditative practice, rhetoric, and philosophy were intimately tied to one another when the Saddharmasmrtyupasthana(sutra) was redacted, and that the text serves as an important yet unnoticed historical touchstone for an understanding of the development of a Buddhist mind-centered metaphysics. The study suggests that such philosophical developments grew organically out of specific meditation practices rooted in the early canonical Buddhist tradition, and that the Saddharmasmrtyupasthana(sutra) offers perhaps the clearest evidence available attesting to this process. Further, the text evidences an emergent historical ideology of cosmic power, one that ties ethical conduct, contemplative knowledge, and literary practice to a spiritual goal of selfless cosmographical sovereignty. This development is historically significant because it marks a major shift in Indian Buddhist religious practice, which conditioned the emergence of fully developed Mahayana path schemes and power-oriented tantric ritual traditions in the centuries that followed the text's compilation. As part of this study, the second chapter of the Saddharmasmrtyupasthana(sutra) is critically edited and translated based on a recently discovered codex unicus.