The World of Buddhism: Buddhist Monks and Nuns in Society and Culture

Description

Half a millennium before Jesus, more than a millennium before Mohammed, the Buddha found Enlightenment. Today the number of his followers far exceeds the number of Christians and Muslims added together. Here, the fortunes of Buddhism are traced through time and space, from the founding of the world's largest monastic Order in north-eastern India 2,500 years ago to contemporary Europe and America. This volume, the result of years of painstaking and imaginative research and preparation, presents the whole of that contribution to Asiatic civilization in a vivid and authoritative manner. World-renowned scholars provide the eleven chapters, accompanied by illustrations drawn from the astonishing wealth of Buddhist art.

Richard Gombrich is an Indologist and scholar of Sanskrit, Pali, and Buddhist Studies. He was the Boden Professor of Sanskrit at the University of Oxford from 1976 to 2004. He is currently Founder-President of the Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies. He is a past President of the Pali Text Society (1994-2002) and General Editor Emeritus of the Clay Sanskrit Library. Heinz Bechert (1932 - 2005) was a German indologist and buddhologist.

'The range is impressive; its historical depth ... and geographical breadth make it a useful reference for specialists and general readers alike' - Times Literary Supplement