Commenting on Commentaries A Review of Maria Heim’s Voice of the Buddha: Buddhaghosa on the Immeasurable Words

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Fedde de Vries

Abstract

Maria Heim’s Voice of the Buddha: Buddhaghosa on the Immeasurable Words is a rare example of sustained scholarly engagement with commentarial literature. The book introduces the reader to the literary world of the Theravāda Buddhist exegete Buddhaghosa (fifth century), with the stated goal of learning to read as he did. Heim shows with a series of close readings how Buddhaghosa read scripture with a high degree of attention to context, and how he understood both the Buddhist canon and the Buddha’s knowledge to be infinitely expansive. Heim’s thorough and accessible treatment makes her presentation an approachable case study of commentarial literature.

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How to Cite
de Vries, F. (2021). Commenting on Commentaries: A Review of Maria Heim’s Voice of the Buddha: Buddhaghosa on the Immeasurable Words. Journal of World Philosophies, 6(1), 166–169. Retrieved from https://scholarworks.iu.edu/iupjournals/index.php/jwp/article/view/4551
Section
Book Reviews
Author Biography

Fedde de Vries, University of California, Berkeley

Fedde de Vries is currently a PhD student in the Group in Buddhist Studies at UC Berkeley. He holds a BA in Religious Studies from Leiden University, the Netherlands (2012), and an MA in Asian Studies from UC Berkeley (2015). Before starting his doctoral work, he spent a year at Dharma Realm Buddhist University, Ukiah, California, as resident translator. His work focuses on Buddhist intellectual history, specifically the thought of the prolific Huayan exegete Chengguan 澄觀 (738–839) in the context of  Sui-Tang Buddhist scholasticism.