A History of Buddhist Transformation¶

Volume III of Studies in Buddhist Thought. The first two volumes asked what the schools said, and whether they were right. This one asks something else: at each turning, who made the turn, and out of what.

How it came about, and what it is¶

The series was meant from the start to be a history of Buddhist thought: a teaching whose stated business is the extinction of greed, hatred, and delusion, observed as it is itself moved by them. Two pieces of groundwork proved unavoidable. To speak of transformation, one must first set out what the schools actually taught, which produced Volume I. That done, it became clear that philosophy reaches only part of the question, and that where the schools truly part company is soteriology, which produced Volume II. This volume joins the two threads and adds the external forces the earlier volumes did not treat systematically: political change, the rise and decline of rival religions, contact between civilisations, monastic economies, the composition of the sangha, and the disruptions of war and disaster.

Motives leave no archive, and imputed motives cannot be demonstrated; this volume does not pretend otherwise. It is the most speculative of the three, and the academic rein is deliberately loosened. Loosened is not the same as absent, and three rules apply here instead: conjecture is labelled as conjecture; every imputation of motive is given the circumstantial grounds it rests on, together with what would overturn it; and where a plain explanation and an imputed one both stand, the plain one is stated first.

How it is organised¶

Not by dynasty and not by school, but by joint. Each section takes up one major turning or the founding of one tributary: the first fragmentation after the Buddha's death, scholasticisation, the rise of Mahāyāna, the formation of the debate arena, the return of the true and eternal, tantricisation, the death of Indian Buddhism, the entry into China and the work of translation, the Chinese reconstruction, the surviving forms of Chinese Buddhism, the Tibetan synthesis, Japan's simplifying revolution, and modernity's rewriting. The closing section draws out the shape of transformation itself.

The chronology is already in place in the earlier volumes and is not repeated. At each joint the same four questions are put: what changed, what force pushed, who benefited, and on whom the cost fell.

State of completion¶

This volume is still being written. The sections stand at different stages, some drafted and some still in outline. Sections not yet developed are marked as such on the page.

In relation to the other volumes¶

Volume I, A History of Buddhist Philosophy, supplies the chronology and the doctrines. Volume II, A Critique of Buddhist Soteriology, supplies the verdicts and the trajectory. This volume joins them and adds the dimension of external force. Each volume stands on its own.