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Chapter 4 of the book endeavors to readdress and redress a dimension of Indian Buddhist soteriology that has been overlooked or ignored by those figures—such as I. B. Horner, Mr. and Mrs. Rhys-Davids, Colonel Olcott, Madame Blavatsky, other members of the Pāli Text and Theosophical societies, the authors of Protestant Buddhism, and traditional exponents such as Walpola Rahula—who have been interested in presenting such a rationalist vision of Buddhism. Chapter 4 will again use the framework of the noble persons, in this case that of the chaḷabhiñño (“one possessing six superknowledges”), to show how one’s understanding of Indian Buddhist soteriological, epistemological, and pedagogical concerns cannot be complete until one considers the central place that acquisition of extraordinary powers such as extrasensory aural and visual perception, mind reading, and recollection of past lives occupied in the path schemes of many Buddhist adepts. Chapter 4 presents an analysis of the role of the abhiññās in Theravāda Buddhism, in terms of the noble person’s path to liberation that centers on attaining all of them. Along the way, investigation of the chaḷabhiñño provides even more—and even some of the most compelling—evidence for my thesis that in some early Buddhist circles, paths centering on samatha and vipassanā practice were conceived of as distinct, if not separate, approaches to nibbāna.
The implications of the findings from the Pāli canon that are set out in part 1 of this study are further explored in part 2’s two chapters, which examine how the diversities and tensions established at a very early stage in the tradition are played out when they resurface at different points in the history of the Theravāda. Another major hypothesis followed throughout much of this part of this study is that when certain important philosophical and social shifts have taken place in Buddhist history, corresponding changes in the tradition’s meditative-soteriological project, as seen in its scheme of personal ideal types, can also be detected on theoretical and practical levels. In chapter 5, then, this study turns to a consideration of later developments in the history of Theravāda Buddhism, focusing on the particular representative