This chapter provides an introductory thematic overview and contextualisation of the Pali-language sources available for early Indian Buddhist statement concerning the moral evaluation of killing, its prohibition in the first precept, and the larger normative context of non-violence in which these emerge. Such statement is founded, as is much normative Buddhist discourse, on the canonical record of the Nikāyas, or discourses of the Buddha, the Vinaya or legal code of the monastic order, and on the philosophical elaboration of the Abhidhamma, or so-called higher teaching. Representing the core of early Indian Buddhist normative and ethical teaching, these statements are developed in commentarial traditions, in multiple linguistic and cultural contexts (including Sanskrit and classical Chinese, and then Tibetan sources, among others). For purposes of exegesis, the Theravāda commentarial tradition, especially that of Buddhaghosa, is prominent for sourcing later Pali Buddhist discourse on killing (reflected also in roughly contemporaneous Sanskrit-language sources such as theAbhidharmakośa of Vasubandhu, considered in subsequent chapters). The Indian Buddhist record on killing is rounded out by a brief survey of the Mahāyāna discussion of the moral exemplarity of the bodhisattva, the high soteriological value of which introduces exceptions to the norm prohibiting killing evident in the early Buddhist record.

1. 1.

   Bodhi writes, “Though the precept's wording prohibits the killing of living beings, in terms of its underlying purpose it can also be understood to prohibit injuring, maiming, and torturing as well.” (1994, unpag).

2. 2.

   AN I 201–202; 134–135; III 338–3; D I 3–4; M III 203; SN V 394; Sn. 766–975.

3. 3.

   See MN I 285–288; 313–31 5; III 203; AN I 211; II 226; 253; III 35; 204; 275–276; 432; IV 251–255; V 264–268; 283.

4. 4.

   The second of three main baskets (piṭaka) of canonical Buddhist teachings originating from the Buddha’s guidance to the monastic order concerning its legal rules, but including also hagiographic and narrative episodes.

5. 5.

   Gethin (2004a) argues this theme in a study of the Abhidhamma and Pāli commentarial sources on the norm against killing. See Chaps.4 and6 for discussion.

6. 6.

   Mahāsatipaṭṭhāna Sutta (DN II.306–307; in Walshe 1995, 344).

7. 7.

   Cf. Schmithausen (2000, 35) for a similar expression of this basic value.

8. 8.

   Schlieter sees this accord between early Buddhist criteria and Cassell’s as “less fitting” inasmuch as “the intactness of the person” is not a desideratum in the Buddhist case because “According to the Buddhist concept of personhood, the very idea of a substantial “self” is a prominent source for suffering” (2014, 311). But person (puggala) and self (attā) are distinct ontological concepts, and Schlieter appears to mistake the legitimate conventional existence of the former with the non-existence of the latter. Otherwise, the supposed Buddhist devalorisation of the person would have to justify the precept against killing (especially) persons in terms that contradict the sense of the individualas a conscious sentient being possessing ontological and moral-psychological integrity (or intactness).

9. 9.

   See AN IV 246. See also Goodman (2009) for a broad consequentialist elaboration of this foundational claim; also Keown (1996b).

10. 10.

    Kamma is the Pāli term,karman the Sanskrit, andkarma the non-technical word (derived usually from Hindu contexts) that has now entered the lexicon of English and other modern languages to signify notions only tenuously related to its Buddhist use. In what follows I maintain the Pālikamma, unless the Sanskrit form is required for the Mahāyāna context. (On other occasions,karma might appear in the secondary scholarship, where it refers only to Buddhist senses of the term.).

11. 11.

    Cousins (1996) and Harvey (2018) survey the canonical and commentarial contextualisation ofkusala andkamma more generally. Keown notes that “In the sermons [suttanta] of the Buddha, belief in karma is presupposed, although not articulated as a formal doctrine.” (1996b, 335).

12. 12.

    Schmithausen (2000, 40) also identifieskamma in relation to the mitigation of suffering as a primary doctrinal basis for the first precept.

13. 13.

    Established around the Lankan Mahāvihāra monastery and its teaching tradition flourishing in the fifth century CE (see Heim 2014, 9ff.).

14. 14.

    A significant pre-emption of this is in the canonical cases of Arhat suicide in which (in three reported cases at least) any moral fault appears to be exonerated by the Buddha. Suicide in general, especially of a typical or pathological kind, is considered in terms of the discussion of Chap.11; Arhat autothanasia and religious-altruistic suicide in Mahāyāna contexts are addressed in-depth in Kovan (2013, 2014, 2018).

15. 15.

    This kind of reasoning is explicit, for example, in Asaṅga’sBodhisattva-bhūmi (in Tatz 1986, 70–71) and the oft-citedMahābodhisattva-Upāya-kauśalya Sūtra, noted in Chap.5. Other Mahāyāna references to compassionate killing will be noted where thematically relevant.

16. 16.

    This is arguably even more true of the Vajrayāna record concerning either literal or symbolic homicide (for an overview see Jerryson 2016, 159–63; also references given above). That context is thematically specific enough to require its own analysis, under a religious studies rubric, so not included here in a focus on the philosophical ethics undergirding a generically normative Buddhist ethics. It can though be plausibly held that Tantric praxiological extensions of Mahāyānist ‘auspicious killing’ are broadly predicated on the philosophical features of the Indian Mahāyāna examined in Chap.5.

Authors and Affiliations

1. Sydney, NSW, Australia

   Martin Kovan

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