How did ancient Buddhists read and interpret the Buddha's words? In Voice of the Buddha, Maria Heim reads the early Buddhist scriptures with Buddhaghosa, the principal commentator, editor, and translator of the Theravada intellectual tradition. Buddhaghosa considers the Buddha to be omniscient and his words "oceanic." Every word, passage, bookindeed, the corpus as a wholeis taken to be "endless and immeasurable." Commentarial practice thus requires disciplined methods of expansion, drawing out the endless possibilities for meaning and application. Heim considers Buddhagohsa's theories of scripture and follows his practices of exegesis to yield fresh insight into all three collections of the early Pali texts: Vinaya, the Suttas, and the Abhidhamma.
