A semiannual journal publishing accessible, new contributions to Buddhist Studies in English.

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The way the denizens of the ancient Indian pantheon appear in early Buddhist texts exemplifies a mode of thought that scholars have called “inclusivism”.

Buddhist literature offers us the only narratives from this period that feature to any great extent the nautical or maritime traveller as hero.

This article proposes to “decode” the twin miracle and the miracle to convert Aṅgulimāla as coded repudiations of rival karma theories, and to examine their relevance to the modern world.

… independence was perceived as an opportunity for a particular ethnic group

The tale is best understood in the light of the need of the early Buddhist tradition to demarcate its position in the ancient Indian context vis-à-vis ascetic practices and ideology.

I am able to show that the four phrases exemplified by “form is emptiness” were once a reference to the well-known simile, “Form is like an illusion”. As the Prajnāpāramitā corpus expanded, the simile became a metaphor, “form is illusion”. It was then deliberately altered by exchanging “illusion” for “emptiness”, leading to the familiar phrases.

… this self-effacing, almost anonymous commentator’s proneness to being loved or hated, exalted or reviled, is certainly one of the least expected outcomes of Buddhist history.