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Women and Monastic Buddhism in Early South Asia

Author: Garima Kaushik

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-02-12

Total Pages: 298

ISBN-13: 1317329384

This book uses gender as a framework to offer unique insights into the socio-cultural foundations of Buddhism. Moving away from dominant discourses that discuss women as a single monolithic, homogenous category—thus rendering them invisible within the broader religious discourse—this monograph examines their sustained role in the larger context of South Asian Buddhism and reaffirms their agency. It highlights the multiple roles played by women as patrons, practitioners, lay and monastic members, etc. within Buddhism. The volume also investigates the individual experiences of the members, and their equations and relationships at different levels—with the Samgha at large, with their own respective Bhikşu or Bhikşunī Sangha, with the laity, and with members of the same gender (both lay and monastic). It rereads, reconfigures and reassesses historical data in order to arrive at a new understanding of Buddhism and the social matrix within which it developed and flourished. Bringing together archaeological, epigraphic, art historical, literary as well as ethnographic data, this volume will be of interest to researchers and scholars of Buddhism, gender studies, ancient Indian history, religion, and South Asian studies.

Women and Monastic Buddhism in Early South Asia

Author: Garima Kaushik

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-02-12

Total Pages: 299

ISBN-13: 1317329392

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Women in Early Indian Buddhism

Author: Alice Collett

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2014

Total Pages: 289

ISBN-13: 0199326045

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This volume is a broad-ranging comparative study with translations of texts, sections of texts and textual fragments that are concerned with women in early Indian Buddhism, including study of texts in Gandhari, Sanskrit, Pali, Chinese, Tibetan and Sinhala.

South Asian Buddhism

Author: Stephen C. Berkwitz

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2012-12-06

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 1135689830

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South Asian Buddhism presents a comprehensive historical survey of the full range of Buddhist traditions throughout South Asia from the beginnings of the religion up to the present. Starting with narratives on the Buddha’s life and foundational teachings from ancient India, the book proceeds to discuss the rise of Buddhist monastic organizations and texts among the early Mainstream Buddhist schools. It considers the origins and development of Mahayana Buddhism in South Asia, surveys the development of Buddhist Tantra in South Asia and outlines developments in Buddhism as found in Sri Lanka and Nepal following the decline of the religion in India. Berkwitz also importantly considers the effects of colonialism and modernity on the revivals of Buddhism across South Asia in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. South Asian Buddhism offers a broad, yet detailed perspective on the history, culture, and thought of the various Buddhist traditions that developed in South Asia. Incorporating findings from the latest research on Buddhist texts and culture, this work provides a critical, historically based survey of South Asian Buddhism that will be useful for students, scholars, and general readers.

Buddhist Monastic Life

Author: Môhan Wijayaratna

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1990-11-30

Total Pages: 220

ISBN-13: 9780521367080

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This 1991 book provides a brief yet detailed account of the ideal way of life prescribed for Buddhist monks and nuns in the Pali texts of the Theravada school of Buddhism. The author describes the way in which the Buddha's disciples institutionalized his teachings about such things as food, dress, money, chastity, solitude and discipleship. This tradition represents an ideal of religious life that has been followed in South and Southeast Asia for over two thousand years. In previous writing on the early period of Buddhist monasticism, scholars have usually tried to give an historical account of the evolution of the monastic order, and so have seen the extant Vinaya texts as coming from distinct historical periods. This book takes a different approach by presenting a synchronic account, which allows the author to show that sources are in fact predominantly consistent and coherent.

The Winds of Change

Author: Himanshu Prabha Ray

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 1994

Total Pages: 264

ISBN-13:

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On maritime trade and seafaring in the early historical period with reference to support provided by Buddhist monastic establishments during that period.

Encountering Buddhism and Islam in Premodern Central and South Asia

Author: Blain Auer

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2019-08-19

Total Pages: 308

ISBN-13: 3110629860

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This volume brings together a variety of historians, epigraphists, philologists, art historians and archaeologists to address the understanding of the encounter between Buddhist and Muslim communities in South and Central Asia during the medieval period. The articles collected here provoke a fresh look at the relevant sources. The main areas touched by this new research can be divided into five broad categories: deconstructing scholarship on Buddhist/Muslim interactions, cultural and religious exchanges, perceptions of the other, transmission of knowledge, and trade and economics. The subjects covered are wide ranging and demonstrate the vast challenges involved in dealing with historical, social, cultural and economic frameworks that span Central and South Asia of the premodern world. We hope that the results show promise for future research produced on Buddhist and Muslim encounters. The intended audience is specialists in Asian Studies, Buddhist Studies and Islamic Studies.

Women in Buddhist Traditions

Author: Karma Lekshe Tsomo

Publisher: NYU Press

Published: 2020-12-22

Total Pages: 232

ISBN-13: 1479803413

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A new history of Buddhism that highlights the insights and experiences of women from diverse communities and traditions around the world Buddhist traditions have developed over a period of twenty-five centuries in Asia, and recent decades have seen an unprecedented spread of Buddhism globally. From India to Japan, Sri Lanka to Russia, Buddhist traditions around the world have their own rich and diverse histories, cultures, religious lives, and roles for women. Wherever Buddhism has taken root, it has interacted with indigenous cultures and existing religious traditions. These traditions have inevitably influenced the ways in which Buddhist ideas and practices have been understood and adapted. Tracing the branches and fruits of these culturally specific transmissions and adaptations is as challenging as it is fascinating. Women in Buddhist Traditions chronicles pivotal moments in the story of Buddhist women, from the beginning of Buddhist history until today. The book highlights the unique contributions of Buddhist women from a variety of backgrounds and the strategies they have developed to challenge patriarchy in the process of creating an enlightened society. Women in Buddhist Traditions offers a groundbreaking and insightful introduction to the lives of Buddhist women worldwide.

Birth in Buddhism

Author: Amy Paris Langenberg

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-06-26

Total Pages: 210

ISBN-13: 1315512513

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Recent decades have seen a groundswell in the Buddhist world, a transnational agitation for better opportunities for Buddhist women. Many of the main players in the transnational nuns movement self-identify as feminists but other participants in this movement may not know or use the language of feminism. In fact, many ordained Buddhist women say they seek higher ordination so that they might be better Buddhist practitioners, not for the sake of gender equality. Eschewing the backward projection of secular liberal feminist categories, this book describes the basic features of the Buddhist discourse of the female body, held more or less in common across sectarian lines, and still pertinent to ordained Buddhist women today. The textual focus of the study is an early-first-millennium Sanskrit Buddhist work, "Descent into the Womb scripture" or Garbhāvakrānti-sūtra. Drawing out the implications of this text, the author offers innovative arguments about the significance of childbirth and fertility in Buddhism, namely that birth is a master metaphor in Indian Buddhism; that Buddhist gender constructions are centrally shaped by Buddhist birth discourse; and that, by undermining the religious importance of female fertility, the Buddhist construction of an inauspicious, chronically impure, and disgusting femininity constituted a portal to a new, liberated, feminine life for Buddhist monastic women. Thus, this study of the Buddhist discourse of birth is also a genealogy of gender in middle period Indian Buddhism. Offering a new critical perspective on the issues of gender, bodies and suffering, this book will be of interest to an interdisciplinary audience, including researchers in the field of Buddhism, South Asian history and religion, gender and religion, theory and method in the study of religion, and Buddhist medicine.

Archaeology and Buddhism in South Asia

Author: Himanshu Prabha Ray

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2017-08-31

Total Pages: 197

ISBN-13: 1351394320

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This book traces the archaeological trajectory of the expansion of Buddhism and its regional variations in South Asia. Focusing on the multireligious context of the subcontinent in the first millennium BCE, the volume breaks from conventional studies that pose Buddhism as a counter to the Vedic tradition to understanding the religion more integrally in terms of dhamma (teachings of the Buddha), dāna (practice of cultivating generosity) and the engagement with the written word. The work underlines that relic and image worship were important features in the spread of Buddhism in the region and were instrumental in bringing the monastics and the laity together. Further, the author examines the significance of the histories of monastic complexes (viharas, stupas, caityas) and also religious travel and pilgrimage that provided connections across the subcontinent and the seas. An interdisciplinary study, this book will be of great interest to students and scholars in South Asian studies, religion, especially Buddhist studies, history and archaeology.