IRB 2 #2: Revered Wisdom - Buddhism

This entire section was about “The Development and Spread of Buddhism”. It talked about how the Brahmans (which were the people in the highest caste in India) thought themselves to be the creators and developers of Indian religion. However, they stated that their influence wasn’t alive when the religions like Jainism and Buddhism were created. So, there was no specific start of the religion; they only know that Buddha and Mahavira (the found of Jainism) – the two people who created two of the first religions in India – learned what they know from people before their time. This section was also about all of the Buddhist beliefs that developed throughout the years. They mentioned the more publicized ones, like reincarnation, superhuman teachers, karma and nirvana, but they also went into more detail on the more unknown factors of this religion. Some beliefs they discussed were: metempsychosis and transmigration. Metempsychosis is the reincarnation after the death of a human being into an animal state (because of the belief that even water, animals and inanimate objects have souls). Transmigration is basically just another word for reincarnation: the passing of the human soul into another body after death. The book also mentions that not all derivatives of Buddhism believe in all of these beliefs, for example, specific countries that hone Buddhism may not believe that humans can be reincarnated to humans, to animals, or even at all!
This author’s writing is extremely complex because of the high formality of the diction as well as the structure of the sentences (syntax). Even though it was very complex, it was very effective because it did not use rhetoric to persuade you, but it used solely for the audiences’ understanding. First, I’ll discuss the syntax of this section. I found many examples of parallel structure and one is when they said, “They rather imply that increasing complexity involves the increase of evil as well as of good.” I’m not sure if its parallel structure is correct, however. I could not find a specific rhetoric device for this next example, but I believe that they used litotes and rhetorical analogies all throughout the section. A litote is a forceful negative statement against a positive to prove a point and an analogy is comparing two things so one appears more important or better or worse. Here is an example of a litote/analogy combined: “In Nepal it had not the same defense, it has preserved a good deal of Sanskrit…but has become little more than a sect of Hinduism.” I also could see much of the complexity when I could recognize the prevalent use of “the latter” in the entire piece.
As for the diction of the piece, I previously stated that it was extremely multidimensional. A lot of the complex dictions were religious terminologies for example: ascetic, asceticism, charlatanism, metempsychosis, and transmigration. I defined the latter above however; asceticism is a way of life that says to rid of materialistic wants in order to achieve a higher spiritual state. Charlatanism is basically quackery. There were also a lot of appositives in order to help the audience understand some repeated terminology. For example, “The full acceptance of metempsychosis – the animistic belief that plants, particle of earth, and water have souls – and the materialistic phraseology agree…” (39).