Kevin Trainor

Pars pro toto : On Comparing Relic Practices

This article examines some of the implications of cross-cultural and cross-tradition comparison in the study of religion as they emerge from an analysis of religious practices associated with relics. It also identifies some key comparative themes highlighted in the articles that comprise this special issue on relic practices.

The buddha's “cave of the midday rest” and buddhist relic practices in sri lanka

The dissemination, enshrinement, and veneration of the physical remains of buddhas and their enlightened followers (arahants) have played a foundational role in the spread and establishment of Buddhist communities around the world for more than two millennia. According to one fifth-century ce Theravāda Buddhist commentary (Fausbøll 1962: Vol. 4, 228), Indian Buddhists recognized three categories of shrines (cetiyas) for physically mediating the continued presence of Gotama Buddha: shrines containing corporeal relics (sārı̄rika-cetiyāni), those containing relics of use (pāribhogika-cetiyāni), and those that call the Buddha to mind by representing him symbolically (uddesika-cetiyāni). Corporeal relics include bodily remains of buddhas or arahants (bestowed while they were alive, e.g. hair relics, or collected posthumously from their cremated remains); relics of use include material objects that these individuals used (e.g. clothing, begging bowls; particular physical locations sacralized by their presence also function as relics of use, though it remains unclear if many Sri Lankan Buddhists think of them in this way); and commemorative relics include material representations of these figures such as statues or paintings. Corporeal relics and relics of use are authorized by their physical connection with powerful religious exemplars and unbroken chains of preservation and transmission; such relics are, in principle, inherently limited in quantity. Images, in contrast, may be endlessly reproduced, as long as the appropriate iconographical conventions are followed in their manufacture and they are established as appropriate objects of veneration through the proper rituals. The diversity of material objects with which South Asian Buddhists interact to access the Buddha’s powerful presence recalls Francesca Sbardella’s account (this issue) of Christian practices for “processing” and “patrimonializing” a range of objects into relics worthy of veneration. In contemporary Sri Lanka, these three classes of relics correspond to three distinct ritual centers within most Buddhist temples: the stūpa, which typically enshrines corporeal relics along with other objects (see Bentor 2003), the Bodhi tree shrine, which is venerable because of its assumed connection with the original Bodhi tree in India under which Gotama Buddha gained enlightenment, and the image house, which contains sculptural and figural representations of buddhas, arahants, and various guardian deities. These three devotional centers define the spatial organization of most Sri Lankan temple complexes and provide a focus for Buddhist ritual activity. Corporeal relics and relics of use also provide the basis for another spatial organization that spans the island of Sri Lanka as defined by the tradition of the Sixteen Great Places (sol .osmasthāna), a list of sixteen major pilgrimage sites associated with the belief that Gotama Buddha visited the island three times during his lifetime and established particular locations as relics of use through his contact with them; most of these sites later became further sacralized through the enshrinement of important corporeal relics. Themes of physical and mental purification are central to the accounts of the Buddha’s sacralization of these sites; taken together these locations constitute a moral geography, offering privileged locations for meritorious Kevin Trainor is professor of religion at the University of Vermont. His research interests include Theravāda Buddhist traditions with a focus on Sri Lanka and Buddhist material culture. His publications include: Relics, Ritual, and Representation in Buddhism: Rematerializing the Sri Lankan Theravāda Tradition (Cambridge University Press, 1997) and Embodying the Dharma: Buddhist Relic Veneration in Asia, co-edited with David Germano (State University of New York Press, 2004). He also edited Relics in Comparative Perspective, a special double issue of Numen (vol. 57, no. 3–4, 2010) devoted to crosscultural perspectives on relic practices.

Furta Sacra. Thefts of Relics in the Central Middle Ages

To obtain sacred relics, medieval monks plundered tombs, avaricious merchants raided churches, and relic-mongers scoured the Roman catacombs. In a revised edition of Furta Sacra, Patrick Geary considers the social and cultural context for these acts, asking how the relics were perceived and why the thefts met with the approval of medieval Christians.

When Is a Theft Not a Theft? Relic Theft and the Cult of the Buddha's Relics in Sri Lanka

This essay examines the phenomenon of relic theft in the Theravada Buddhist tradition of Sri Lanka. Having noted the relative paucity of scholarship on this topic, the essay first examines the canonical warrant for the practice of relic veneration in the Mahāparinibbāna-sutta, and identifies a fundamental tension that the cult of veneration poses for the tradition. Relics, as valued material objects subject to human manipulation and possession, would appear to encourage attachment. The canonical passages that deal with the cult of veneration simultaneously affirm the value of the practice, while warning of the danger that attachment to the relics poses. The essay goes on to note evidence, in the form of expanded relic lists in canonical sources, of the expansion of the relic cult and of the need to affirm the authenticity of new centers of sacrality associated with the enshrinement of particular relics. The essay then examines several accounts of relic theft in the Pali chronicle (vamsa) literature, noting that these accounts serve to simultaneously affirm the desirability of relics, and to account for the orderly movement of these valued objects from one location to another. Yet these accounts of relic theft are problematic in that they appear to endorse the practice of stealing, which is a violation of both lay and monastic Buddhist ideals. In response to this problem, the essay identifies two different models of relic theft, noting that one model is religiously affirmed, while the other is condemned. The essay concludes with a brief comparison of relic theft accounts in the Buddhist and Christian traditions.