A Manual of Buddhism

The book is organized into sixteen chapters that move from the discovery of Buddhism by Western scholarship to the interpretation of its earliest message and later historical expansion. Chapter I, “How and When We Came to Know,” surveys early European knowledge of Buddhism, Ceylon, Pāli manuscripts, Aśokan inscriptions, and the rise of Pāli studies. Chapter II, “What It Is We Can Know,” examines Pāli and Sanskrit scriptures, commentaries, Mahāyāna sūtras, Tibetan scriptures, and Chinese pilgrims’ diaries. Chapter III, “The ‘Buddha’: Who Was He?” studies Gotama’s historicity, legends, date, home, renunciation, teachers, meditation, Māra narratives, and the development of the causal series. Chapters IV–VI, “The New Word,” analyze the source, meaning, and later transformation of Gotama’s distinctive teaching, especially the Middle Way and its relation to becoming, salvation, and the Eightfold Path. Chapter VII, “The Wayfarer,” discusses self, mind, man, rūpa, nāma, and the problem of spiritual identity. Chapter VIII, “The Wayfarer’s Guide,” explains dharma as guide, conscience, and the urge toward right conduct. Chapter IX, “The Way in the Worlds,” treats saṃsāra, nirvāṇa, devas, jhāna, and cosmology. Chapter X, “The First Missioners and Their Teaching,” summarizes the early message, ethical discipline, brahmavihāras, disciples, and women followers. Chapter XI studies parables and similes, while Chapter XII presents the living and dying of the first missioners. Chapter XIII examines later disciples, councils, Vinaya, women, and doctrinal discrepancies. Chapter XIV discusses writing, oral transmission, variants, and historic truth. Chapter XV presents Buddhism as an everyman’s gospel, with special attention to Aśoka and lay life. Chapter XVI concludes with the eastward expansion, missions, Bodhisattva developments, and the broader movement of Buddhist ideas beyond India.