Search

3 results

5 - Buddha in the Ring of Fire
from Part I - Classical Foundations
- By Stephen Jenkins
Edited by Margo Kitts, Hawai'i Pacific University, Honolulu
Book:

The Cambridge Companion to Religion and War

Published online:

04 May 2023

Print publication:

11 May 2023, pp 114-140
- Chapter
- - Get access
    
    Check if you have access via personal or institutional login
    
    Log in Register
- Export citation
Summary

This chapter dispels the guiding misconception of Buddhist pacifism, historically and textually, with reference to its origins in the early transmission of Buddhism to the West and the influence of mistranslations of ahiṃsā in the distorting modern discourse of “nonviolence” versus violence. At the same time, it highlights the Buddhist ideal of nonharm and the nuanced ways in which Buddhists applied compassionate values to the avoidance of armed conflict, the effective and ethical conduct of warfare, and postwar reconciliation.

Edited by Margo Kitts
Published online:

04 May 2023

Print publication:

11 May 2023
- Book
- - Get access
    
    Buy a print copy
    
    Check if you have access via personal or institutional login
    
    Log in Register
- Export citation
This Companion offers a global, comparative history of the interplay between religion and war from ancient times to the present. Moving beyond sensationalist theories that seek to explain why 'religion causes war,' the volume takes a thoughtful look at the connection between religion and war through a variety of lenses - historical, literary, and sociological-as well as the particular features of religious war. The twenty-three carefully nuanced and historically grounded chapters comprehensively examine the religious foundations for war, classical just war doctrines, sociological accounts of religious nationalism, and featured conflicts that illustrate interdisciplinary expressions of the intertwining of religion and war. Written by a distinguished, international team of scholars, whose essays were specially commissioned for this volume, The Cambridge Companion to Religion and War will be an indispensable resource for students and scholars of the history and sociology of religion and war, as well as other disciplines.

Was Aśoka really a secularist avant-la-lettre? Ancient Indian pluralism and toleration in historical perspective
Robert A. Yelle
Journal:

Modern Asian Studies / Volume 56 / Issue 3 / May 2022

Published online by Cambridge University Press:

08 April 2022, pp. 749-775

Print publication:

May 2022
- Article
- - You have access
  - Open access
- PDF
- HTML
- Export citation
Focusing on Rajeev Bhargava's claim that Aśoka was a secularist avant-la-lettre, I dispute the common understanding of secularism as the separation of religion and politics, and argue instead that such separation, to the extent that it existed, was characteristic of traditional religious societies. I then offer an alternative history of secularism as the demise of the traditional balance of power between church and state, and the rise of a unitary state which incorporated a civil religion that excluded competing forms of religiosity within its domain. This model of secularism, exemplified by the seventeenth-century English philosopher Thomas Hobbes, fits Aśoka's Dhamma better than the separationist model does.