Haunting the Buddha: Indian Popular Religions and the Formation of Buddhism

Rating:
Summary: Asceticism vs. Spirituality in Buddhism
Review: From reading the first chapter one might believe that this is a book about rectifying literary sources vs. art in the exploration of some of the fundamental aspects of Buddhism in the Indus Valley where Buddhism was born to it's migration to other parts of Asia. However, this book leads the reader to a deeper understanding of why an ascetic religion involved with overcoming the physical and spiritual world produced so much art which incorporated local deities and spirits. Prof. DeCaroli provides some very interesting examples including some great stories about the monastic order's adoption of local paranormal entities into the fold in order to sustain the religion and to make the religion accessible to the local populations. The book also provides some great insight into how a religion affects and becomes affected by the beliefs of the laity.

While the first section is titled "Coming to terms" and intends to bring the reader up to date on some of the confusion locked in the anthropological study of Buddhism, the casual reader not educated in Sanskrit or Hindi might be better served with a glossary of terms to aid them with some of the esoteric terms.

For the academic, this is a fantastic book that is extremely well written and provides an interesting perspective of the evolution of Buddhism.