Clarifying and Advancing the Play of Formulas: A Response to Bhikkhu Anālayo

This is my rejoinder to Bhikkhu An amacr;layos' c''ritical reply'' to my monograph published in late 2021, titled Visions of the Buddha: Creative Dimensions of Early Buddhist Scripture. An amacr;layo was heavily critical, but he did not really address the main argument of the book: that the early Buddhist discourses are much more than an attempt to preserve the Buddha's words, and that they are driven by a diversity of creative and literary techniques. These discourses are aimed to shape evocative, compelling and enduring visions of the Buddha and of his teachings and are no less imaginative than informative, no less innovative than conservative. While the book highlights some of the methods of Buddhist creativity, such as their literary qualities and folkloric contexts, based on thick textual analyses, An amacr;layo does not very much relate to these, but rather addresses the specific points where I address his own work, without looking at the broader picture. In order to do so, one would have to refer to the literary nature of the texts that I emphasize, which accepts the texts as literary products in a robust sense, rather than as mere narrative decorations. As part of my approach, I coin the term ``the play of formulas,'' as a method for explaining the manner of composition of at least some of the discourses, in which oral formulas-fixed textual elements-can be added to the texts and used to expand and elaborate upon them. In fact, most scholars writing on early Buddhist orality employ an idea of this sort, even if they do not give it the value that I do. They do not necessarily agree with me, however, that the formulas are the true texts of early Buddhism, an idea I explain here and show some of its potentials.