The Language of the Sutras

The Language of the Sūtras explores the narrative strategies of Buddhist sūtras, as well as ways of reading them that reveal their transformative dimensions. By attending to the language of the sūtras and how they are told, the essays gathered in this volume open new fields of study for individual sūtras, while developing more general approaches to reading these texts for a scholarly audience.

Edited by Natalie Gummer, whose own work on the performative and ritual enactment of sūtra texts informs many of the contributions to this volume, The Language of the Sūtras honors the enduring legacy of Luis Gómez as teacher and interpreter of Buddhist texts. Essays by renowned scholars and former students of Gómez follow his example of close reading. In addition to a characteristically original essay by Gummer herself, the volume contains contributions from Eviatar Shulman, Richard Nance, Bruno Galasek-Hul, David Fiordalis, Xi He, Shenghai Li, and Alan Cole, along with a preface by Charles Hallisey.