Brill's Encyclopedia of Buddhism Online

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Brill’s Encyclopedia of Buddhism, published both in print and online, is the first comprehensive academic reference work devoted to the plurality of Buddhist traditions across Asia, offering readers a balanced and detailed treatment of this complex phenomenon in seven thematically arranged volumes: Literature and Languages (I, publ. 2015), Lives (II, publ. 2019), Thought (III, forthcoming 2024), History: South Asia, IV-1 (forthcoming 2023), History: Central and East Asia, IV-2 (2023) Life and Practice, V (forthcoming 2026), index and remaining issues VI (forthcoming 2027).


Each volume contains substantial original essays by many of the world’s foremost scholars, essays which not only cover basic information and well-known issues but which also venture into areas as yet untouched by modern scholarship. An essential tool for anyone interested in Buddhism, the online resource will provide easy access to the encyclopedia’s ever-growing corpus of information.
The online edition of History: Central and East Asia, IV-2, has been published online in November 2023 with further volumes following after their original publication in print.


Brill’s Encyclopedia of Buddhism is under the general editorial control of Jonathan Silk (Leiden University, editor-in-chief). Each volume has a dedicated board of specialist editors and in later volumes also a volume editor; in the series so far this includes Richard Bowring (University of Cambridge), Vincent Eltschinger (École Pratique des Hautes Études, Paris), Oskar von Hinuber (Albert-Ludwigs University of Freiburg) and Michael Radich (Heidelberg University).



More information: Brill.com

Commentary: Overview

(6,785 words)

Author(s): Stefan Baums
The writing of commentaries has been and continues to be one of the fundamental literary activities of Buddhists everywhere. For more than two thousand years, going back to the earliest days of the tradition, commentaries have been used to learn and teach the words of the Buddha, to transmit their form and content faithfully, and to systematize and develop Buddhist doctrine.A commentary can be defined as a sustained textual mediation of the meaning and form of a culturally significant root text, or more simply the “continuous explication of text” (Guthmü…
Source: Brill's Encyclopedia of Buddhism Online

Contributors

(14,268 words)

Acri, Andrea, (PhD Leiden University, 2011) is Maître de conférences/Assistant Professor in Tantric Studies at the École Pratique des Hautes Études, Paris, since 2016. Prior to that he has held research and teaching positions in India, Singapore, Australia, and the Netherlands. His work focuses on Śaiva and Buddhist Tantric traditions in South and Southeast Asia, as illuminated by Sanskrit and Old Javanese texts. Besides several articles in academic journals, his publications include the monograph Dharma Pātañjala (2011; 2nd edition 2017), and the edited volumes From Laṅkā East…
Source: Brill's Encyclopedia of Buddhism Online

Contributors

(2,501 words)

Barrett, T.H., is Professor Emeritus of East Asian History at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, having earlier taught at Cambridge. He has published primarily on the history of Chinese religion, especially during the Tang period, but also on the development of a knowledge of China in Europe, primarily Britain. His most recent edited book, with Lawrence Wang-chi Wong, is Crossing Borders: Sinology in Translation Studies (2022). Benn, James A., is Professor of Buddhism and East Asian Religions at McMaster University. He studies Buddhism …
Source: Brill's Encyclopedia of Buddhism Online
Date: 2023-10-01