Studies in the Buddhistic Culture of India by Lal Mani Joshi

Description

It is a pioneer attempt of its kind to study Indian Buddhism in its entirety as a system of rational philosophy, profound faith, and as a historical matrix of creative human culture and civilized institutions -during the 7th and 8th centuries A.D., the brilliant epoch of the University of Nalanda, the mere name of which spells the great wonder that was Buddhism in Ancient India.

Here is an authoritative and systematic record, based on a close study of contemporary Buddhist, Brahmanical and secular literary texts and epigraphic and monumental antiquities of India together with the Chinese and Tibetan documents bearing on the period, and it presents a living picture of Buddhist faith, worship, monachism, moral culture, art, education, literature, scholasticism, esoteric mysticism, sectarian controversies, metaphysical and epistemological theories, rapprochement with Brahmanism, and its tendencies towards decline and transformation in India. A chapter on the contribution of Buddhism to Indian Civilization has also been added. The treatment of the subject is critical and integral though not traditional.