1042 richard k. payne
initiatory sequence includes three sets of vows: the basic pan-Buddhist
set, the Mahāyāna bodhisattva vows, and specifically tantric vows. The
Shingon school, however, has given this system its own context by
placing the tantric vows first, followed by the bodhisattva vows, and
concluding with the śrāvaka vows.^5
Methodologically, the study of ritual entails at least four distinct
approaches—textual, archeological, material culture and art historical,
and ethnographic. Textual studies, which to date have largely been
seen to serve doctrinal questions, can also be applied to questions
regarding practice generally and ritual in particular. Indeed, it seems
that what we find in the tantras is more like an instruction manual
than a doctrinal exposition. The common Western presumption of the
priority of thought to action has tended to carry over to a similar pre-
sumption that religious doctrine has priority over practice.^6
On a more metaphorical level, rituals can be subject to the same kind
of closely detailed studies as texts. Just as different versions of a text,
such as for example the eight versions of the Suvarṇaprabhāsottama
sūtra, can be closely analyzed for textual affinities and the historical
implications of such affinities, so also can ritual practices be studied
in their different versions. While the analogy may not be perfect—
for example, we may not be able to establish ritual affinities in the
same manner or detail as textual ones—this approach may reveal other
aspects of the history of Buddhism otherwise invisible to us.
Archeology tends to be an area to which Buddhist studies have given
little attention, due no doubt to the preference for textual studies. Epi-
graphic studies have begun to change this (e.g., those by Schopen and
Davidson), but even more broadly archeological findings can inform
us of the organization of the physical settings of ritual practice. Atten-
tion to ritual practice may also lead to (re)considering the meaning
of archeological information. The archeological reports of Taxila, for
relations between, for example, the ritual corpus of Shingon Buddhism in Japan and
the ritual corpus of East Asian Mahāyāna.
(^5) When and why the order was converted from what might be considered the more
“natural” sequence of śrāvaka, bodhisattva, tantrika is in need of further research.
On Shingon understandings of the vinaya, see Klaus Pinte, “Shingon Risshū: Eso-
teric Buddhism and Vinaya Orthodoxy in Japan” in this volume, and Shayne Clarke
- 6
This presumption is seen, for example, in the rationale for only translating the
first chapter of the Mahāvairocana sūtra, which is the chapter with doctrinal content,
all the rest having to do with ritual practice (see Tajima 1936, 12; Wilhelm K. Muller
1976, 2).