Bones, Stones, and Buddhist Monks
Bones, Stones, and Buddhist Monks

Author: Gregory Schopen

Publisher: University of Hawaii Press

Published: 2021-05-25

Total Pages: 317

ISBN-13: 0824851226

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The present volume provides an essential foundation for a social history of Indian Buddhist monasticism. Challenging the popular stereotype that represented the accumulation of merit as the domain of the layperson while monks concerned themselves with more sophisticated realms of doctrine and meditation, Professor Schopen problematizes many assumptions about the lay-monastic distinction by demonstrating that monks and nuns, both the scholastic elites and the less learned, participated actively in a wide range of ritual practices and institutions that have heretofore been judged 'popular,' from the accumulation and transfer of merit; to the care of deceased relatives; to serving as sponsors and donors, rather than always the recipients, of gifts; to (possibly) the coining of counterfeit currency. Taken together, the studies contained in this volume represent the basis for a new historiography of Buddhism, not only for their critique of many the idées reçues of Buddhist Studies but for the compelling connections they draw between apparently disparate details.

Figments and Fragments of Mahayana Buddhism in India
Figments and Fragments of Mahayana Buddhism in India

Author: Gregory Schopen

Publisher: University of Hawaii Press

Published: 2005-01-01

Total Pages: 408

ISBN-13: 9780824825485

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In these articles, Gregory Schopen once again displays the erudition and originality that have contributed to a major shift in the way that Indian Buddhism is perceived, understood, and studied.

Buddhist Nuns, Monks, and Other Worldly Matters
Buddhist Nuns, Monks, and Other Worldly Matters

Author: Gregory Schopen

Publisher: University of Hawaii Press

Published: 2014-07-31

Total Pages: 482

ISBN-13: 0824838815

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Buddhist Nuns, Monks, and Other Worldly Matters: Recent Papers on Monastic Buddhism in India is the fourth in a series of collected essays by one of today’s most distinguished scholars of Indian Buddhism. In these articles Gregory Schopen once again displays the erudition and originality that have contributed to a major shift in the way that Indian Buddhism is perceived, understood, and studied.

Bones of the Master
Bones of the Master

Author: George Crane

Publisher: Bantam

Published: 2001-05-29

Total Pages: 306

ISBN-13: 0553379089

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In 1959 a young monk named Tsung Tsai (Ancestor Wisdom) escapes the Red Army troops that destroy his monastery, and flees alone three thousand miles across a China swept by chaos and famine. Knowing his fellow monks are dead, himself starving and hunted, he is sustained by his mission: to carry on the teachings of his Buddhist meditation master, who was too old to leave with his disciple. Nearly forty years later Tsung Tsai — now an old master himself — persuades his American neighbor, maverick poet George Crane, to travel with him back to his birthplace at the edge of the Gobi Desert. They are unlikely companions. Crane seeks freedom, adventure, sensation. Tsung Tsai is determined to find his master's grave and plant the seeds of a spiritual renewal in China. As their search culminates in a torturous climb to a remote mountain cave, it becomes clear that this seemingly quixotic quest may cost both men's lives.

The Ganges in Myth and History
The Ganges in Myth and History

Author: Steven G. Darian

Publisher: Motilal Banarsidass Publ.

Published: 2001

Total Pages: 252

ISBN-13: 9788120817579

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No river has kindled Man`s imagination like the Ganges. From its icy origins high in the Himalayas, this sacred river flows through the holy cities and the great plains of northern India to the Bay of Bengal. In a country where the red heat of summer inspires prayer for the coming monsoon, the life-giving waters of the Ganges have assumed legendary powers in the form of the Hindu goddess Ganga, the source of creation and abundance. Pilgrims flock to her shores to cleanse and purify themselves, to cure ailments, and to die that much closer to paradise. Steven Darian writes of the human experience and the legendary myths that surround the Ganges. While collecting material for this book, Dr. Darian lived by the Ganges, explored her shores, and was a pilgrim to the Ganga Sagar festival at Sagar Island off Calcutta where the sacred river and the ocean merge.

Introduction to the History of Indian Buddhism
Introduction to the History of Indian Buddhism

Author: Eugène Burnouf

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2010-02-15

Total Pages: 618

ISBN-13: 0226081257

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The most influential work on Buddhism to be published in the nineteenth century, Introduction à l’histoire du Buddhisme indien, by the great French scholar of Sanskrit Eugène Burnouf, set the course for the academic study of Buddhism—and Indian Buddhism in particular—for the next hundred years. First published in 1844, the masterwork was read by some of the most important thinkers of the time, including Schopenhauer and Nietzsche in Germany and Emerson and Thoreau in America. Katia Buffetrille and Donald S. Lopez Jr.’s expert English translation, Introduction to the History of Indian Buddhism, provides a clear view of how the religion was understood in the early decades of the nineteenth century. Burnouf was an impeccable scholar, and his vision, especially of the Buddha, continues to profoundly shape our modern understanding of Buddhism. In reintroducing Burnouf to a new generation of Buddhologists, Buffetrille and Lopez have revived a seminal text in the history of Orientalism.

Archaeology of Early Buddhism
Archaeology of Early Buddhism

Author: Lars Fogelin

Publisher: AltaMira Press

Published: 2006-02-09

Total Pages: 241

ISBN-13: 0759114447

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How do archaeologists explore the various dimensions of religion? Lars Fogelin uses archaeological work at Thotlakonda in Southern India as his lens in a broader examination of Buddhist monastic life. He discovers the tension between the desired isolation of the monastery and the mutual engagement with neighbors in the Early Historic Period. He also sketches how religious architectural design and use of landscape helped to shaped these relationships. Drawing on historical accounts, religious documents, and inscriptions, as well as results of his systematic archaeological survey, Fogelin is able to shed new light on the ritual and material workings of Early Buddhism in this region, and shows how archaeology can contribute to our understanding of religious practice.