Indianisme Et Bouddhisme: Melanges Offerts a Mgr Etienne Lamotte (Publications De L'institut Orientaliste De Louvain)

by Peeters Pub. & Booksellers

Paperback. Good. Text clean, binding sound. Wrappers sun-faded, soiled, shelf worn

Genres: Buddhism, History

376 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1976

Reviews

[Alex · Rating 4 out of 5]

Everybody wants to see the Mahayana starting as early as possible, yeah?

This book was slated to be the first in a series of histories, so it only gets to the first century CE. In getting there, though, it has to work through many sources that were written, composed, or edited in the common era, so there is some discussion about how reliable/unreliable our picture of early Buddhism is vis-a-vis the sources we have available to us. Lamotte is much more tentative and cautious than previous Buddhologists. He also displays a strong Mahayanist = laypersons bias, which is okay, given the times.

A lot more coins and political history than I expected. Some parts are more about source criticism than reconstructing history, but that's probably better anyway.

[mercy · Rating 4 out of 5]

An exceptional presentation of the details of Indian Buddhism. While Lamotte's hypotheses regarding historical events, from the unreliable historical records, may be superseded by future research, his arrangement of the various historical records remains an excellent reference of our knowledge of Indian Buddhism in this era.