The most influential work on Buddhism to be published in the nineteenth century, "Introduction a l'histoire du Buddhisme indien", by the great French scholar of Sanskrit Eugene Burnouf, set the course for the academic study of Buddhism – and Indian B...

At its heart, Buddhism blossoms from one source: the words and life of Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha. Chad Mercree, a lifetime student of Buddhist philosophy and meditation, reveals in simple language how Buddhism can yield personal growth in the mo...

Anagarika Dharmapala is one of the most galvanizing figures in Sri Lanka's recent turbulent history. He is widely regarded as the nationalist hero who saved the Sinhala people from cultural collapse and whose "protestant" reformation of Buddhism drov...

Is it possible to capture the spirit of Buddhist meditation, which depends so much upon silence and unspoken wisdom? Can this spirit be found after two millennia? This wise and reassuring book reminds us that the Buddhist meditative tradition, geared...

This lavishly illustrated book investigates an outstanding eighteenth-century example of a samut khoi, a type of beautiful folding book found in Southeast Asia, which became particularly popular as a repository for the Buddha's teachings. Written in...

"A Monastery in Time" is the first book to describe the life of a Mongolian Buddhist monastery – the Mergen Monastery in Inner Mongolia – from inside its walls. From the Qing occupation of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries through the Cultural...

Taking two early Tibetan texts as his starting point, Jacob Dalton explores the ways in which violence has been integral to the development of Tibetan Buddhism. Paying particular attention to the so-called age of fragmentation, Tibet's dark age that...

This book tells the story of the Scientific Buddha, "born" in Europe in the 1800s but commonly confused with the Buddha born in India 2,500 years ago. The Scientific Buddha was sent into battle against Christian missionaries, who were proclaiming acr...

Throughout its long history, Japan had no concept of what we call "religion". There was no corresponding Japanese word, nor anything close to its meaning. But when American warships appeared off the coast of Japan in 1853 and forced the Japanese gove...

Recent events – from strife in Tibet and the rapid growth of Christianity in China to the spectacular expansion of Chinese Buddhist organizations around the globe – vividly demonstrate that one cannot understand the modern Chinese world without atten...