Bloomsbury Academic

Bloomsbury Academic

English

For well over a century Chinese, Japanese, and Western scholars have labored over the question of how, why, and with what warrant the Yogacara and Tathagatagarbha traditions of Indian Mahayana Buddhism came to be so distinctively and consequentially intertwined in Chinese Buddhist thought. The focus of these labors has long been the inestimably influential text known as the Mahayana Awakening of Faith (Dasheng qixin lun) and its alleged association with the work of the Indian Missionary Paramartha. In this learnèd and rigorously argued study, Keng has given us a Paramartha untethered from the Awakening of Faith thereby allowing us to see him more clearly as a faithful, albeit original, exponent of Yogacara doctrine. Keng's exemplary study will surely came to be recognized as essential to all future study of the medieval development of Chinese— and Indian — Buddhist doctrine.