BARABUDUR – SKETCH OF A HISTORY OF BUDDHISM BASED ON ARCHAEOLOGICAL CRITICISM OF THE TEXTS

PAUL MUS

Translated from the French by ALEXANDER W. MACDONALD

1998, xxix+354 pp., col. and b&w plates, index ISBN: 81-207-1784-8, Rs. 700 (HB)

The work presents a profound and far-reaching analysis of the ideas, religious aspirations and building techniques which contributed to the creation of one of the largest Buddhist edifices in the world. This book is not a history of the famous Javanese monument nor is it a history of Buddhism. It is the English translation of the foreword to a work – loosely focused on the Barabuḍur – which was published in Hanoi in French (1935). Besides, it is a survey of the Buddhist religious and philosophical concepts in the background of earlier religious and metaphysical traditions in India, as revealed in the Vedic and Upaniṣadic texts.