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Taking Dongshan Liangjie's reference to a 'chicken-scaring rhinoceros' as a starting point, this paper explores the cultural and literary significance of the rhinoceros with special attention to Buddhism. I argue [...]

When the Europeans first came to Asia, they met with the multiform presence of Buddhism. They gradually came to understand that a common religious tradition connected the different brands of [...]

This paper examines the emergence of a distinctly 'modern' style of history and some of its uses as applied to Buddhism by Buddhist scholars within the early Meiji Period (late nineteenth century) in Japan. After a discussion of the importance of 'area studies' in the formation of conceptions germane to history as practiced in Japan, the paper proposes a new category of the 'non-modern' as a means to counter the historiographical dominance of modern categories in the formation of the historical discipline, especially as formulated in Japanese studies. As a case study, the emergence of the discourse dealing with the quest for the historical Buddha is examined. By showing the methods and accomplishments of modernist historians, and the concomitant slippage of non-modern categories in their work, this paper sketches a method of analysis particularly applicable to the intersection of religion and history.

With the aim of investigating the relationship between Liang Wudi a Chinese King Asoka, and Buddhism, a Buddhist palace chapel installed within Wudi's palace complex and various politico-religious activities held there are focused on. Extreme tensions between different sociopolitical and religious forces of that period are illuminated and while identifying a common paradigm underlying the dharma-assemblies, the pancavarsika's impact on Empress Wu is studied.

This paper argues against the current view that the apsidal form was Buddhist in origin and that apsidal Hindu temples are essentially Buddhist shrines subsequently converted to Hinduism. It also counters the linear view of religious change, which suggests that the Hindu temple came into its own after the decline of Buddhism in the fourth-fifth centuries AD. Instead, the paper establishes that the apsidal form was part of a common architectural vocabulary widely used from the second century BC onwards not only for the Buddhist shrine, but also for the Hindu temple and several local and regional cults. The historical development of the apsidal shrine is traced at three levels. One is at the macro-level of the Indian subcontinent from the second century BC to the nineteenth century AD. Second is the location of the apsidal form in the religious landscape of a particular site, viz. that of Nagarjunakonda in the lower Krishna valley in Andhra. Finally, the paper highlights the archaeological excavations conducted at the apsidal temple of Gudimallam also in Andhra to trace the history of the religious site from the second century BC to the twelfth century AD, the objective being to highlight the changing nature of the Hindu temple. The paper thus makes a case for plurality of religious beliefs and practices in ancient South Asia as against the prevailing view that these local and regional cults were gradually subsumed under the mantle of Sanskritization starting from the fourth-fifth centuries onwards. Keywords Hinduism; Buddhism; Nagarjunakonda; Gudimallam; Sanskritization.

This essay attempts a paradigmatic comparison between the fourfold worldview of Hua-yen Buddhism and the postmodern philosophy of Jean-Francois Lyotard. Employing a tension between centripetal and centrifugal forces as a structural underpinning of these two philosophies, the essay illuminates the liberating nature of Hua-yen Buddhism and postmodern thought together with the shadow of skepticism involved in endorsing a vision for a poly-lingual existence. Despite human beings' desire for a totalitarian vision hidden in every aspect of our discourse, Hua-yen Buddhism and postmodern thought demand us to envision the world of the 'inconceivable' in which the diversity of existence raises its own voice beyond the regulating force of our society., Since the popularity of Derridean deconstruction in the 1970s and 1980s, logocentrism, or centrism to use a generic term, seems to have become a handy tool to criticise a science's [...]

Islam came into being and evolved as an integral element of far larger structures of human thought and action. From the very beginning of their history, Muslims defined themselves largely in contrast to the peoples among whom, or next to whom, they lived while in the following centuries they redefined themselves, their beliefs and cultural attributes, their social structures and patterns of behavior through a long process of interaction and expansion with all the societies of Eurasia.

Mu Soeng, director of the Barre Center for Buddist Studies, clarifies that the notion of Buddha nature is not a fundamental Pali tradition but emanates later as part of the Tibetan tradition. He explains that the illusory nature of the world is actually a projection of human longing.

This dissertation examines the representations of nuns in Indian Buddhist and Jain monastic commentaries from the sixth and seventh centuries C.E. Although these texts comment extensively on the rules for [...]

The statue of a bodhisattva (Buddhist saint) that was deliberately beheaded and broken in half is an artifact from the time of Buddhist persecution in China. Emperor Wudi ordered tens of thousands of Buddhist temples destroyed in A.D. 574 during the second of three waves of religious persecution in China.