Historical approaches to Buddhist history

Type :

Term papers

Pages :

7 pages

Format :

.doc

Published date :

04/22/2009

Category :

History & geography

Sub category :

Modern history

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Summary :

Introduction
Scholarly interpretations
1. Horner
2. Schuster Barnes
3. Sponberg
Historical analysis
Conclusion
Biliography

Abstract

In the past three decades Buddhism has become increasingly popular in the West and has had a major impact on Western religious thought and practice. That tradition, however, comes with baggage about the roles and position of women that is reminiscent of the baggage in other the major traditions already established in the West, such as Christianity and Judaism.The response of Western buddhist scholars has been to apply some of the historical techniques used in recent decades to evaluate biblical history to study the authenticity and nature of buddhist scriptures. Use of these techniques in both contexts tends to run up against a particular bias. If the scholars are themselves practitioners and have assumptions about the "goodness" of the founder, whether Jesus, Buddha, Moses, or some other, then the scholars may make the mistake of projecting their own ideas about "goodness" on the historical figure, instead of relying on an objective historical analysis to evaluate texts.This paper will look at how leading buddhist scholars have exposed this kind of bias when studying the authenticity of buddhist sayings about the nature and practice of women.