Thus I Have Seen: Visualizing Faith in Early Indian Buddhism

Abstract

This book examines the ways that seeing is an integral part of Indian Buddhism, and how the practices of seeing described in Indian Buddhist narratives function as a kind of skeleton key for opening up Buddhist conceptualizations about the world and how it should be navigated. Much of what constitutes religious practice in these narratives is not reading, praying, or meditating, but visually engaging with certain kinds of objects. In trying to make sense of this connection between the religious and the visual, the book first focuses on the practices of śraddhā and prasāda—terms often, though problematically, translated as “faith.” The book analyzes how these mental states relate to practices of “seeing” (darśana) and “giving” (dāna), and what this configuration of seeing, believing, and giving can tell us about the power of images, the gift economy at the heart of Buddhist ethics, and the function of narratives in Buddhist India. The book also discusses strategies that these narratives provide for seeing the Buddha after he has passed into final nirvāṇa. By investigating the various ways of seeing and objects of sight that allow this to occur, the book considers various rationales for pilgrimage and the veneration of images, and what these may be able to tell us about early practices at Buddhist monuments and shrines.