Publisher's Synopsis
From the Preface.
THIS booklet needs no preface for him who is familiar with the sacred books of Buddhism, which have been made accessible to the Western world by the indefatigable zeal and industry of scholars like Burnouf, Hodgson, Bigandet, Buhler, Foucaux, Senart, Weber, Fausboll, Alexander Csoma, Wassiljew, Rhys Davids, F. Max Muller, Childers, Oldenberg, Schiefner, Eitel, Beal, and Spence Hardy. To those not familiar with the subject it may be stated that the bulk of its contents is derived from the old Buddhist canon. Many passages, and indeed the most important ones, are literally copied from the translations of the original texts. Some are rendered rather freely in order to make them intelligible to the present generation. Others have been rearranged; still others are abbreviated. Besides the three introductory and the three concluding chapters there are only a few purely original additions, which, however, are neither mere literary embellishments nor deviations from Buddhist doctrines. They contain nothing but ideas for which prototypes can be found somewhere among the traditions of Buddhism, and have been added as elucidations of its main principles. For those who want to trace the Buddhism of this book to its fountainhead a table of reference has been added, which indicates as briefly as possible the main sources of the various chapters and points out the parallelisms with Western thought, especially in the Christian Gospels.
