The Experience of Buddhism: Sources and Interpretations.

• Author: Guenther, Herbert V.

This book, intended as a companion volume to The Buddhist Religion: A Historical Introduction, by Richard Robinson, as revised by Willard Johnson, contains a well-written account of the main tenets, belief systems, rituals, and practices in daily life within the vast sociocultural field that goes by the name of Buddhism, from the time of the historical Buddha up to the present. It is divided in two parts: "The Experience of Buddhism in South Asia," comprising five sections with several subsections, and "The Development of Buddhism Outside Asia," comprising four sections with several subsections. For each topic in the various sections, the author has included a selection from a relevant text in a very readable English translation that will readily appeal to the modern reader. The selected passages are taken from important classical texts as well as from hitherto neglected treatises. Sanskrit and Pali passages have been newly translated by the author himself and reveal his competence and understanding. Where he relies on older translations within the Sanskrit tradition, too many misinterpretations of technical terms due to the translators' inability to distinguish between ontology and epistemology, as well as the unavowed fore-structure of their thinking, are simply repeated. This statement is not meant as a blur on the overall competence of the author, but is meant to highlight the low level of linguistic (formerly called philological) studies in the field of Indic studies. Since one person is hardly proficient in all the languages in which Buddhist texts have been written, the author had to rely on scholarly works dealing with...