The Sociology of Early Buddhism

Browse Return to Previous Page       Related Subjects All Subjects Buddhist studies Religious studies

by Greg Bailey and Ian Mabbett

Cambridge University Press

Due/Published December 2003, 308 pages, cloth

ISBN 0521831164

Early Buddhism flourished because it was able to take up the challenge represented by buoyant economic conditions and the need for cultural uniformity in the newly emergent states in north-eastern India from the fifth century BCE onwards. This book begins with the apparent inconsistency of Buddhism, a renunciant movement, surviving within a strong urban environment, and draws out the implications of this. In spite of the Buddhist ascetic imperative, the Buddha and other celebrated monks moved easily through various levels of society and fitted into the urban landscape they inhabited. The Sociology of Early Buddhism tells how and why the early monks were able to exploit the social and political conditions of mid-first millennium north-eastern India in such a way as to ensure the growth of Buddhism into a major world religion.

 Contents

Introduction
1. The problem: asceticism and urban life
Part I. Context
2. The social elite
3. Economic conditions
4. Urbanization, urbanism and the development of large-scale political structures
5. Brahmins and other competitors
6. Folk religion and cosmology: meeting of two thought worlds

Part II. Mediation
7. The holy man
8. Preparation of the monk for the mediatory role: evidence from the Sutta Nipata
9. The Dhammapada and the images of the Bhikkhu
10. The mediating role as shown in the canon
11. Exchange

Conclusion
Bibliography