History Of Researches On Indian Buddhism

This comprehensive and detailed survey of the first six centuries of Indian Buddhism sums up the results of a lifetime of research and reflection by one of Japan's most renowned scholars of Buddhism.

This book contains indispensable information concerning the history of Buddhist studies in Europe and the United States and presents the readers with a survey that ranges from 300 b.c. up to modern times. This is an essential reference work for students of Buddhism, who not only will benefit from the overview it gives of previous scholarly work, but also may find in it indicators of the paths their own future research might take. Includes an extensive and detailed bibliography and two indices.

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.

""Examines Indian Buddhism from its origins in c. 500 BCE, through its ascendance in the first millennium CE and subsequent decline in mainland South Asia by c. 1400 CE"--Provided by publisher"--