The Sociology of Early Buddhism

The book is organized into an Introduction, two major parts, and a Conclusion. The Introduction presents the central problem of the study: the apparent tension between Buddhist asceticism and urban life, and the need to explain how a movement of renunciation became socially effective in a complex urbanizing world. Part I, “Context,” reconstructs the social world in which early Buddhism emerged. It discusses the social elite, economic conditions, urbanization, the rise of large-scale political structures, the role of Brahmins and other religious competitors, and the meeting between Buddhist thought and folk religion or cosmology. Part II, “Mediation,” develops the authors’ main argument concerning the monk’s mediating role. It examines the figure of the holy man, the preparation of the monk for mediation through evidence from the Sutta Nipāta, the imagery of the bhikkhu in the Dhammapada, the mediating role as shown in the Canon, and the logic of exchange between monks and lay society. Across these chapters, the book shows that early Buddhism grew through a strategic interaction between renunciation and society: the monk’s detachment gave him symbolic authority, while his mobility and moral status enabled him to serve as an intermediary among different social groups, political powers, economic actors, and religious cultures.