Bangalay Bauddha-Dharma review

Summary

This review assesses Nalininath Das Gupta’s Bengali work “Bāṅgālāy Bauddha‑Dharma,” which runs to 265 pages. The book’s aim is to present a connected history of Buddhism in Bengal from its inception to its disappearance. In the introduction and first chapter the author sketches the rise of Buddhism in India as a whole and assembles traditional and inscriptional evidence linking early Buddhist activity to Bengal. The second and third chapters, described as the best and longest, explore the religion’s career in Bengal during the Gupta and Pāla periods, when monastic centres such as Nālandā and Vikramaśīla flourished and when Bengal produced important Buddhist scholars. The final chapters provide an account of the monasteries that served as academic centres in Bengal and narrate the last phase of Buddhism as reflected in old Bengali literature. The reviewer commends Das Gupta for his critical examination of inscriptional evidence and archaeological finds; he notes that the author has assembled many discoveries of Buddhist images from various localities in Bengal, some published for the first time, and has drawn on these finds to illuminate the region’s religious history. The book also touches on the religious and philosophical aspects of Buddhism and supports its statements with sound evidence. Although the subject is scholarly, Das Gupta writes in Bengali and strives to make the work accessible to general readers, emphasising that it is not a technical treatise. The reviewer remarks that Buddhism and its literature have been integral to Bengal’s cultural development but that most Bengalis are poorly informed about them because of the absence of readable books. He hopes that more works of this type will be produced to enlighten the public about the cultural importance of Buddhism in Bengal.