Abstract

In the study of the Buddhist practice of scriptural interpretation, an inevitable subject of inquiry, apart from the content of interpretation, is the act of interpretation itself. Such an inquiry may naturally go in two different directions, looking at either the theories of interpretation or the theories about interpretation. The theories of interpretation guide the understanding and retrieval of meaning, and the theories about interpretation explore instead the nature or, more specifically, the role of interpretation in the transmission of truth. In other words, of these two directions the former asks how one interprets and the latter what it means to interpret.In Western studies of Buddhism over the past few ..