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Indian Monastic Buddhism, Collected Papers on Textual, Inscriptional and Archeological Evidence
By: Gregory Schopen
Indian Monastic Buddhism, Collected Papers on Textual, Inscriptional and Archeological Evidence, Gregory Schopen, Mothal Banarsidass
 
Our Price: $40.00
Members Price: $36.00
Author: Gregory Schopen
Format: Hardcover
ISBN: 9788120834118
Publication Date: 2010


Product Code: 9788120834118
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Description
 
Until the late twentieth century, scholars of Indian Buddhism focused almost exclusively on Buddhist scriptural and commentarial sources-sources that depict Buddhism in an idealized and prescriptive fashion.

Accordingly, Buddhist monks and nuns were imagined as celibate renunciants engaged in sophisticated Philosophical debate and austere meditative practices leading to enlightenment. Little attention was paid to the kinds of textual and archaeological materials that go beyond mere prescription and shed light on the lived realities of Buddhist monastic culture.

What was life in monasteries actually like? How did monks (and nuns!) sustain themselves and administer their establishments? What kind of ritual and devotional practices did they engage in, and what were their relations with the laity ?

Gregory Schopen, in a series of seminal essais that have appeared since the 1980s, adresses precisely such questions. His many papers demonstrate that monastics, far from being reclusive practitioners living in poverty and engaging in meditation and other forms of ascetic ritual, were active members of society and participated in its economy.

Indian Monastic Buddhism, Collected Papers on Textual, Inscriptional and Archeological Evidence, Gregory Schopen, Mothal Banarsidass Publishers PVT. LTD, 425 pp, $40.00

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