Richard Gombrich - Early Work

Early Work

Gombrich's first major contribution in the field of Buddhist Studies was an anthropological study of contemporary Sinhalese Buddhism entitled Precept and Practice: Traditional Buddhism in the Rural Highlands of Ceylon (1971). This study emphasized the compatibility between the normative Buddhism advocated in canonical texts and the contemporary religious practices of Sinhalese Buddhists. Contemporary Sinhalese religious practices often include such elements as sorcery and the worship of yakshas and Hindu gods; previous scholars of Buddhist Studies had interpreted these practices as contradictory to or corruptions of the orthodox Buddhism of the Pali Canon. Gombrich argues in Precepts and Practice that, rather than being the mark of later corruptions of Theravada Buddhism, these practices can be traced to early periods in Buddhist history. Furthermore, since the worship of deities and rituals involving sorcery are never explicitly forbidden to lay people in the Pali Canon, Gombrich argues against viewing such practices as contradictory to orthodox Buddhism. It is also in Precept and Practice that Gombrich lays out his distinction between Buddhism at the cognitive level and Buddhism at the affective level. At the cognitive level, Sinhalese Buddhists will attest to believing in such normative doctrines as anatta, while, at the same time, their actions indicate a supposed affective acceptance of, for example, a transmigrating soul. Gombrich's notion of a cognitive/affective divide in Sinhalese Buddhism has since come under criticism, perhaps most famously by Stanley Tambiah, who considered it simplistic and insupportable.