This volumes encompasses the research of the greatest Indologists of the West from 1923 to 1973 in a pan-Asian approach. From Sanskrit they passed into Tibetan, from kavyas to the transcendence of philosophical subtleties in the Abhisamayalankara, from Sogdian to Chinese across the deep sands of Central Asia, from Queen Ken Dedes of the Majapahit to the sublime science of Maitreya, from the mudras of the Durgati-parisodhana mandala to the Ten Stages of a Bodhisattva's meditational way in the Dasabhumika-sutra which was translated into Chinese in AD 297 by Dharmaraksa the great Yueh-chih master who spoke thirty-six languages of the Central Asian kingdoms.
Translation of the lost cantos 15-28 of the Buddhacarita of Asvaghosa from Tibetan, analysis of the Five Treatises of Maitreya and of Abhisamayalankara, Sogdian Vajracchedika, the deification of the Javanese Queen Gayatri as Prajnaparamita, the term Mahayana in early texts, Central Asian documents, Asoka's Rock Edict XIII and the five Hellenistic kings, Vajrapani-Indra, mudras of the Durgati-parisodhana mandala, Bonpo chronological tables of Tibetan history, Khotanese itinerary to Kashmir, and Aryan vestiges in the Near East in hte second millenium BC are some of the themes covered in the volume. |
