Dr Ambedkar and the Revival of Buddhism II

Dr Ambedkar and the Revival of Buddhism II PDF

Author: Sangharakshita

Publisher: Windhorse Publications

Published: 2021-06-09

Total Pages: 737

ISBN-13: 1911407090

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This companion to volume 9 continues the story of Dr B.R. Ambedkar and his role in the revival of Buddhism in India. It includes a celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of Dr Ambedkar’s conversion to Buddhism, a commentary on Dr Ambedkar’s article ‘Buddha and the Future of His Religion’, articles on the mass conversion in 1956, an account of Sangharakshita’s visit to Nagpur at the time of Dr Ambedkar’s death, and notes from some of the hundreds of talks Sangharakshita gave in India during the next few years, as well as later talks he gave both in India and in the West.

A Buddhist Crossroads

A Buddhist Crossroads PDF

Author: Brian Bocking

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-04-14

Total Pages: 192

ISBN-13: 1317655176

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In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Buddhism in Asia was transformed by the impact of colonial modernity and new technologies and began to spread in earnest to the West. Transnational networking among Asian Buddhists and early western converts engendered pioneering attempts to develop new kinds of Buddhism for a globalized world, in ways not controlled by any single sect or region. Drawing on new research by scholars worldwide, this book brings together some of the most extraordinary episodes and personalities of a period of almost a century from 1860-1960. Examples include Indian intellectuals who saw Buddhism as a homegrown path for a modern post-colonial future, poor whites ‘going native’ as Asian monks, a Brooklyn-born monk who sought to convert Mussolini, and the failed 1950s attempt to train British monks to establish a Thai sangha in Britain. Some of these stories represent creative failures, paths not taken, which may show us alternative possibilities for a more diverse Buddhism in a world dominated by religious nationalisms. Other pioneers paved the way for the mainstreaming of new forms of Buddhism in later decades, in time for the post-1960s takeoff of ‘global Buddhism’. This book was originally published as a special issue of Contemporary Buddhism.

Buddhism in Asia

Buddhism in Asia PDF

Author: Nayanjot Lahiri

Publisher:

Published: 2018-02-28

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9789814762069

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The birth of Buddhism goes back to the sixth century BCE and, over the centuries, there has been considerable variety as well as considerable change in its doctrines, practices and propagation across the different parts of Asia. This volume showcases the expansion in the religion's contours and popularity in Asia in modern times. Focusing on India, Sri Lanka and China, the essays in the book highlight the cross-fertilization between Buddhism and contemporary discourses which makes the phenomenon of Buddhist revival in Asia unambiguously modern. They also show how this resurgence assumed a great variety of forms depending on the specificities of the historical and cultural context, including Buddhism's encounter with other religious traditions. Continuities with the past are not absent, and revivalist movements have been characterized and propelled by a strong sense of history and yet this, in effect, involved crafting new interpretations of a distant past, and the introduction of new ideas and practices. The term reinvention seems to capture this aspect of dynamic change better than revival. At the same time, as this volume reveals, the choice of terms is not as important as tracing the trajectories of the phenomenon and the awareness that its impact extended far beyond the religious domain into many spheres, including those of cultural practice, national identity and international relations. This is a historically rich and readable volume which will interest general readers as well as students and scholars of history and of Buddhism.

Buddhist Monks and Monasteries of India

Buddhist Monks and Monasteries of India PDF

Author: Sukumar Dutt

Publisher: Motilal Banarsidass Publishe

Published: 1988

Total Pages: 432

ISBN-13: 9788120804982

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Though India is no longer a Buddhist country, Buddhism held its place among Indian faiths for nearly seventeen centuries (500 B.C.--A.D. 1200). During this long stretch of time the Buddhist monks were organized in Sanghas in most parts of the country and their activities and achievements have profoundly influenced India`s traditional culture. There are monumental remains of Buddhist monastic life scattered all over India: in the south there are about a thousand cave-monasteries, among them Ajanta, world-famous for its exquisite mural paintings; in the north, less spectacular, the ruins of monastic edifices from Taxila in the west to Paharpur in the east. A connected history of the Buddhist monks of ancient India, their activities, their monastic establishments and their contributions to Indian culture, is available for the first time in this work, which is remarkable also for its pervading human interest. In reconstructing the history of the emperors and kings who were patrons of Buddhism, the early missionaries and the illustrious monk-scholars of later times, the author has used sources in four languages--Pali, Sanskrit, Chinese and Tibetan. Contents The primitive sangha, The asoka-satavahana age 250 BC-AD 100 and its legacy, In the Gupta age (AD 300-550) and after, Eminent monk-Scholars of India, Monastic Universities, (AD 500-1200), Bib., Index.

The Buddha and the Sahibs

The Buddha and the Sahibs PDF

Author: Charles Allen

Publisher: John Murray

Published: 2015-09-24

Total Pages: 336

ISBN-13: 1473617936

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Today there are many Buddhists in the West, but for 2000 years the Buddha's teachings were unknown outside Asia. It was not until the late 18th century, when Sir William Oriental Jones, a British judge in India, broke through the Brahmin's prohibition on learning their sacred language. Sanskrit, that clues about the origins of a religion quite distinct from Hinduism began to be deciphered from inscriptions on pillars and rocks. This study tells the story of the search that followed, as evidence mounted that countries as diverse as Ceylon, Japan and Tibet shared a religion which had its origins in India yet was unknown there. British rule brought to India, Burma and Ceylon a whole band of enthusiastic Orientalist amateurs - soldiers, administrators and adventurers - intent on investigating the subcontinent's lost past. Unwittingly, these men helped lay the foundations for the revival of Buddhism in Asia during the 19th century and its spread to the West in the 20th. Charles Allen's book is a mixture of detective work and story-telling, as this acknowledged master of British Indian history pieces together early Buddhist history to bring a handful of extraoridinary characters to life.