The Emotionology of Anger in Early Buddhist Literature: Through the Lens of a Gāndhārī Verse Text

Abstract

This dissertation examines the early Buddhist attitude toward anger (G kros̱a, OIA krodha) through the lens of an unpublished verse text, hereafter referred to as the *Kros̱a-gas̱a, from a newly discovered collection of Buddhist texts in the Gāndhārī language and Kharoṣṭhī script. At the microscopic level I offer an edition, translation, metrical analysis, and textual notes of the manuscript with chapters on the text’s morphology, orthography, paleography, meter, and phonology, using the format and conventions of the Gandhāran Buddhist Texts series. At the telescopic level I rely on the notion of emotionology to study the collective emotional attitudes toward anger found within early Buddhist literature by looking at key passages within the *Kros̱a-gas̱a in comparison with canonical texts. These passages betray the attitudes that argued for and maintained the appropriate expression of anger and the ways in which those responsible for producing and circulating such texts encouraged their understanding of and viewpoint toward this emotion. One such passage stresses the social isolation that comes from lashing out at people in anger. A second compares anger to a deadly poison, while others echo common Buddhist tropes that being angry leads to becoming ugly in a future rebirth, or possibly being reborn as a pig. In this way I show that the *Kros̱a-gas̱a, and early Buddhist literature, characterizes anger as an absolutely negative phenomenon that one should shun even at the cost of one’s life.