Dear Editor
Dear Editor Judgment Call Daniel Schorr ("Congress in Confusion," NL, September 7-21) is right to remind us that the U.S. once boasted a pure strain of heroes, and that we often excused...
...of these 100 belong to Jainism, 200 to Brahmanism and the remaining to Buddhism...
...Boston...
...In Roger Draper's column entitled "A Dialogue with Islam" (NL...
...To help clarify matters, allow me to quote the following observations of a noted British archeologist, Sir Mortimer Wheeler: "It cannot be denied that during the seven centuries between 250 BC and AD 450 most of the surviving The New Leader welcomes comment and criticism on any of its features, but letters should not exceed 300 words...
...So the substance of his complaint is my use of the word "offshoots...
...I did treat Buddhism as part and parcel of Indian civilization, a judgment Mr...
...May 4-18), he speaks of "Buddhist offshoots" of Hinduism...
...Nor, of course, does this minimize their importance or distinctiveness...
...But it appears to me that Mr...
...into the glory that was ancient India...
...William H. Roker Buddhist Offshoots We are writing this letter to let you know of your ignorance of the Asian religions (Buddhists consider Judaism...
...sculpture of the highest quality in Lidia was associated with Buddhism, and it was, above all, Buddhism that during the same period (and particularly the latter part of it) spread Indian art and idiom through the highways and byways of Asia...
...This raises two questions: First, is it historically accurate to think of Buddhism as an offshoot of Hinduism and, second, is this characterization, as Mr...
...once boasted a pure strain of heroes, and that we often excused their judgement: Lindbergh, as Schorr says, was "soft on Hitler...
...At no point did I write or imply that Buddhism was a "'heterodox' episode in the history of 'Hindu civilization...
...Mass...
...If a Buddhist told you the Holocaust did not occur, you would take him to be ignorant of history...
...I used the plural because there are many distinct varieties of Buddhism...
...Jayasuriya notes, I referred in my review to the "Buddhist offshoots" of Hinduism...
...Deshappriya Jayasuriya Secretary for North America, Buddhist International Roger Draper replies: As Mr...
...Christianity and Islam to be African religions, part of the Greater African civilization...
...We feel the same way about the author's misinformation...
...This three-fourths of Indian rockcut architecture, or the unequaled masterpieces of Buddhist paintings at Ajanta, cannot have been due to a 'heresy.' In all fields of the culture and civilization of ancient India, viz., art, literature, language, ethics, mysticism, philosophy, epistemologa logic, psychology, and social thought, the manifestations of Buddhism, in contradistinction to Brahmanism, were so great, so profound, so lasting, and so varied that we are not justified in treating it as a 'heterodox' episode in the history of 'Hindu civilization.1 "It would not be far from the truth to say that the history of ancient Indian culture and civilization would not have been worth writing or reading had there been only the Indo-Aryan ideals of the Vedic Samhitas and no Buddhism to transform them into the glory that was ancient India...
...Archeologically, at least, we cannot treat Buddhism merely as a heresy against a prevailing Brahmanical orthodoxy, however little its tenets may have affected the routine of village life...
...The fact that Buddhism was largely a reaction against Hinduism (or Brahmanism, to use Wheeler s term) does not make it any less an offshoot of the older religion, much as the fact that Christianity and Islam rejected the ethnic particularism of Judaism does not make them any less its offshoots...
...John F. Kennedy's foibles will ever be the stuff of tabloids—to biographers it is precisely his judgment that counts...
...Jayasuriya seems very much to accept...
...Edison, N.J...
...But in contrasting this with the human weaknesses of politicians he overlooks the fact that for them the opposite obtains...
...There are about 1,200 rock-cut monuments (caves, monasteries, sanctuaries, temples) of ancient India...
...I would not have been surprised if my piece had provoked angry letters from Hindus, since I openly disparaged their faith...
...Jayasuriya himself admits this when he quotes Sir Mortimer Wheeler to the effect that Buddhism transformed "the Indo-Aryan ideals of the Vedic Samhitas...
...Jayasuriya appears to think, a demeaning one...
...About the facts there can be no doubt at all, and Mr...
...Jayasuriya, for all his anger at my alleged ignorance of Asian religions, implicitly disparages it too, since he quotes with approval Wheeler's view that in itself it produced nothing worth writing or reading...
Vol. 81 • November 1998 • No. 12
