TEXTO COMO MAṆḌALA: A ESTRATIGRAFIA DISCURSIVA NO GUṆAKĀRAṆḌAVYŪHASŪTRA¹

ABSTRACT

This paper presents and discusses some results from a research conducted on a Buddhist Sanskrit manuscript containing the Guṇakāraṇḍavyūhasūtra, which was investigated by means of an interdisciplinary approach to understand the social and religious strategies, which permeated its narrative genesis in the new milieu. Results point to a narrative monumentalization of the original Indian Mahāyāna text - the Kāraṇḍavyūhasūtra - while it's being transposed into the Buddhist esoteric context in Nepal. Through an increasing number of framing devices, the chronological and soteriological rhetoric of the sūtra has acquired a discursive transcendence which transformed it into a textual maṇḍala, i.e., it presents a structural dimension directly associated with the sacred cosmograms which pervade different contexts of this region.

Keywords
Buddhism; India; Nepal; sūtra; maṇḍala