Caste and Buddhist Philosophy: Continuity of Some Buddhist Arguments against the Realist Interpretation of Social Denominations
Eltschinger, Vincent
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PRODUCT DETAILS
Book ID : 40460
ISBN-10 : 81-208-3559-X / 812083559X
ISBN-13 : 978-81-208-3559-7 / 9788120835597
Place
of Publication :
Delhi
Year
of Publication :
2015
Edition : (Reprint)
Language : English
Translated from French to English by Raynald Prevereau.
(First Edition pub. in 2012) xxi, 235p., Abb., Bib., Index, 23 cm. (Buddhist Tradition Series, Vol. 60)
CONTENTS
DESCRIPTION
From the sixth to the eighth century CE, the Buddhist philosophers paid considerable attention to the issue of the caste-classes. Far from seeking to reform the non-Buddhist social environment, they endeavoured to undermine theoretical attempts at "naturalizing" the social statuses, especially Kumarila's doctrine of the perceptibility of jati. Significant parts of their critique is strongly indebted to earlier, mainly canonical arguments shaped in order to neutralize the Brahmins' pride in caste. But closer scrutiny also reveals the innovations that were made possible by the renewal of Buddhist semantics around the so-called apoha ("exclusion") theory. Eltschinger's study presents the gist of the early Buddhist arguments, the modalities of their appropriation by later philosophers as well as the new developments induced by the epistemologists.
