How Buddhism Began: The Conditioned Genesis of the Early Teachings

How Buddhism Began: The Conditioned Genesis of the Early Teachings. By Richard F. Gombrich. London: Athlone Press, 1996. Pp. 180.

While the number of books on Buddhism has grown rapidly in the past decade, both popular and scholarly interest in the earliest Buddhist traditions has lagged far behind. The scant attention scholars have given to early Buddhism-by which I mean the Pali Canon and the developments of early Buddhist scholasticism-has produced several useful historical and anthropological studies, but few indeed have attempted a critical study of the philosophical and religious ideas proffered by the earliest Buddhists. How Buddhism Began, authored by Richard Gombrich (Boden Professor of Sanskrit at Oxford and President of the Pali Text Society), is an excellent small book that begins to fill this lamentable void in Buddhist studies. The five chapters of the book were adapted from a lecture and four seminar papers given by Gombrich in 1994 as the Jordan Lectures in Comparative Religion. As Gombrich himself notes in the introduction, chapter 1 is a slightly revised version of the public lecture meant to be accessible to a wider audience, whereas the four seminar papers (chapters 2-5) were intended for those who have a scholarly interest in early Buddhism.

As much as addressing some important issues in the development of early doctrines, How Buddhism Began sets a research agenda for further scholarship. Gombrich not only poses many important questions about early Buddhism that need the attention of scholars, but he also demonstrates in two important ways the critical methodology that scholars should use in addressing such questions.

First, Gombrich rejects the view fashionable with many historians and anthropologists of religion that the late date of the oldest manuscript evidence (fifth century C.E.) permits no extrapolation about the earliest Buddhist traditions. He holds a middle way regarding the attribution of ideas...