Listening to the Dharmabhanaka: The Buddhist Preacher in and of the Sutra of Utmost Golden Radiance

The self-referential discourse that characterizes the subgenre to which the Sutra of Utmost Golden Radiance (Suvarna-(pra)bhasottama Sutra) belongs has led scholars to posit a "cult of the book" focused on the written sutra as potent object. While Buddhists in various times and places have certainly revered the material text, the central role many such sutras accord to the dharmabhanaka (the Buddhist preacher) demands that greater attention be paid to the role of oral performance in the actualization of the sutra's self-proclaimed transformative potential. Through an examination of both what the sutra has to say about its preacher, and how the preacher's performance changes the meaning of the text, this article argues for the centrality of oral performance and aural reception in the sutra's normative vision, and for the importance of deriving an interpretive methodology from that normative vision.