Despite the rapid spread of Buddhism, the historical origins of Buddhist thought and practice remain obscure. This ground breaking work describes the genesis of the Tantric movement in early medieval India. Drawing on primary documents, many translated for the first time, from Sanskrit, Pakrit, Tibetan, Bengali and Chinese, the author shows the many changes in medieval India society.

Indian Esoteric Buddhism: A Social History of the Tantric Movement

This book examines catalysts for Buddhist formation in ancient South Asia and expansion throughout and beyond the northwestern Indian subcontinent to Central Asia by investigating symbiotic relationships between networks of religious mobility and trade.

Early Buddhist Transmission and Trade Networks: Mobility and Exchange Within and Beyond the Northwestern Borderlands of South Asia

Burial ‘ad sanctos’ and the physical presence of the Buddha in early Indian Buddhism: A study in the archeology of religions

This book gives a concise account of one of the most vibrant episodes in the history of ancient Indian thought, the development of Buddhist philosophy from the composition of the Abhidharma works before the beginning of the Common Era up to the time of Dharmakīrti in the sixth century CE. This period was characterized by the development of a variety of Buddhist philosophical schools and approaches that have shaped Buddhist thought up to the present day: the scholasticism of the Abhidharma, the Madhyamaka’s theory of emptiness, Yogācāra idealism, and the logical and epistemological works of Diṅnāga and Dharmakīrti. The book attempts to describe the historical development of these schools in their intellectual context, with particular emphasis on three factors that shaped the development of Buddhist philosophical thought: the need to spell out the contents of canonical texts, the discourses of the historical Buddha and the Mahāyāna sutras; the desire to defend their positions by sophisticated arguments against criticisms from fellow Buddhists and from non-Buddhist thinkers of classical Indian philosophy; and the need to account for insights gained through the application of specific meditative techniques. While the main emphasis of our presentation is the period up the the sixth century CE, we will we also discuss some important selected figures who influenced Buddhist thought between this time and the decline of Buddhist scholastic philosophy in India at the beginning of the thirteenth century.

The Golden Age of Indian Buddhist Philosophy

"A Precious Raft to Save the World" The Interaction of Scriptural Traditions and Printing in a Chinese Morality Book

The phrase ‘sa p$\underset{\raise0.3em\hbox{$\smash{\scriptscriptstyle\cdot}$}}{r}$thivīpradeśaś caityabhūto bhavet’ in the Vajracchedikā: Notes on the cult of the book in Mahāyāna

Gregory Schopen

Papers

The phrase ‘sa p\(\underset{\raise0.3em\hbox{$\smash{\scriptscriptstyle\cdot}$}}{r}\)thivīpradeśaś caityabhūto bhavet’ in the Vajracchedikā: Notes on the cult of the book in Mahāyāna

The phrase ‘sa pthivīpradeśaś caityabhūto bhavet' in the Vajracchedikā: Notes on the cult of the book in Mahāyāna

Mahāyāna in Indian inscriptions

Sukhāvatī as a generalized religious goal in sanskrit mahāyāna sūtra literature