As mentioned in the category “feedback”, here a bibliography on the dating of the historical Buddha. The list contains some 24 items (papers, reviews and miscellanea), which is far from being exhaustive and is intended to be enlarged in due course. It is fashioned in accordance with the Modern Language Association (MLA) format and style guide, a guide for the humanities, in which Buddhist studies have their home. Could such categorized bibliographies find their way into s-c?
Mettā
Bibliography on the Dating of the Budhha:
Essays:
Falk, Harry: “The Diverse Degrees of Authenticity of Aśokan Texts.” Asoka: In History and Historcical Memory, 2009, pp. 6—17 (?)
Narain Prasad, R.G.: “The Date of Buddha’s Mahāparinirvāna.” Annals of the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, vol. 67, no. 1/4, 1986, pp. 77—88
Latham, R.G.: “On the Date and Personality of Priyadarsi.” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, vol. 17, 1860, pp. 273—285
Oskar von Hinueber: “Did Hellenistic Kings Send Letters to Asoka?” Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. 130, no. 2 (April-June 2010), pp. 261—266
Peter Skilling and Oskar von Hinueber: “Two Buddhist Inscriptions from Deorkothar.” Annual Report of the International Research Institute for Advanced Buddhology, vol. 16, 2013, pp. 13—27
Prebish, Charles S.: “Cooking the Buddhist Books: The Implications of the New Dating of the Buddha for the History of Early Indian Buddhism.” Journal of Buddhist Ethics, vol. 15, 2008, pp. 1—21
Richard Salomon and Joseph Marino: “Observations on the Deorkothar Inscriptions and their Significance for the Evaluation of Buddhist Historical Traditions.” Annual Report of the International Research Institute for Advanced Buddhology, vol. 17, 2014, pp. 27—39
Tieken, Herman: “The Role of the So-called Aśoka Inscriptions in the Attempts to Date the Buddha.” Rivista di Studi Sudasiatici, vol. 1, 2006, 69—88
Reviews:
Cousins, Lance: Review of Symposien zur Buddhismusforschung IV, 1/2 – The Dating of the Historical Buddha, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, Third Series, vol. 6, no. 1, 1996, pp. 57—63
De Jong, J.W.: Review of Symposien zur Buddhismusforschung IV, 1 – The Dating of the Historical Buddha, Indo-Iranian Journal, vol. 37, no. 1, 1994, pp. 66—71
De Jong, J.W.: Review of Symposien zur Buddhismusforschung IV, 2 – The Dating of the Historical Buddha, Indo-Iranian Journal, vol. 38, no. 2, 1995, pp. 167—169
De Jong, J.W.: Review of Symposien zur Buddhismusforschung IV, 3 – The Dating of the Historical Buddha, Indo-Iranian Journal, vol. 42, no. 3,1999, pp. 280—282
Ehrhard, Franz-Karl: Review of Symposien zur Buddhismusforschung IV, 3 – The Dating of the Historical Buddha, The Tibet Journal, vol. 25, no. 3, 2000, pp. 70—71
Golzio, Karl-Heinz: Review of Symposien zur Buddhismusforschung IV, 1 – The Dating of the Historical Buddha, Central Asiatic Journal, vol. 37, no. 1-2, 1993, pp. 161—164
Golzio, Karl-Heinz: Review of Symposien zur Buddhismusforschung IV, 2 – The Dating of the Historical Buddha, Central Asiatic Journal, vol. 38, no. 1, 1994, pp. 108—111
Guruge, Ananda W.P.: Review of Reimagining Asoka: Memory and History, Religions of South Asia, vol. 7, no. 1-3, 2013, pp. 277—280
Seyfort Ruegg, David: Review of A New Publication on the Date and Historiography of the Buddha’s Decease (“nirvāṇa”), Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, vol. 62, no. 1, 1999, pp. 82—87
Miscellanea:
Bechert, Heinz (ed.): Symposien zur Buddhismusforschung IV/1 – The Dating of the Historical Buddha, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1988
Bechert, Heinz (ed.): Symposien zur Buddhismusforschung IV/2 – The Dating of the Historical Buddha, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1992
Bechert, Heinz (ed.): Symposien zur Buddhismusforschung IV/3 – The Dating of the Historical Buddha, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1997
Bechert, Heinz (ed.): When Did the Buddha Live? Sri Satguru Publications, 1996
Narain, A.K. (ed.): The Date of the Historical Sakyamuni Buddha, BR Publishing Corporation, 2008
Patrick Olivelle, Janice Leoshko und Himanshu Prabha Ray (eds.): Reimagining Asoka: Memory and History, Oxford University Press, 2012
Seneviratna, Anuradha (ed.): King Asoka and Buddhism: Historical and Literary Studies, Buddhist Publication Society, 1994
Excellent, thanks. I have a much better idea of what you were getting at now. There’s a bunch of things here that I wasn’t aware of, so thank you. And also, damn you, now my morning’s work is impossible!
A couple of minor points.
We should ensure such structured lists use proper heading structure, which is very easy to do in markdown:
Top level heading has a single hash;
# Top level heading has a single hash
Avoid this, as it is used for the topic title.
Subheading has two hashes
## Subheading has two hashes
Subsubheading has three hashes
### Subsubheading has three hashes
And so on.
I would suggest using unordered (bulleted) list rather than numbered list, as numbered lists should be used only in cases where the numbering is meaningful. Here the list may well change, so numbering is just confusing. Again, this is simple in markdown:
- Item 1
- Item 2
- Another item
We could consider whether to include links. On the one hand, they are useful; on the other hand, they break. In some ways, it’s more reliable in the long term to simply google the details and hope for the best.
My apologies … But also thanks for taking the time. Likewise I deviate a bit, if that helps.
I am a complete novice in things like programming language and the like (if that’s what it is referring to), but I researched a bit, perhaps on the right track … So there is a markdown editor (or several ones) – in this (these) I had to enter using the format given by you? Or may I simply use that format and post it here again, without any editor? I don’t know really if there is a difference …
Very well.
One could give the information as to the date of access, so the frustration, if a link doesn’t work, is reduced. But I think it is very easy to find via google and suggest that this suffices therefore.
Discourse is Markdown, you are using it already. Now you can just use it a little bit better. You can use the formatting bar or just write the symbols in (the best way!). So just put two hashes and a space at the start of a line, and voila, it becomes a second-level heading!
I think I will do it now, or at least try, doesn’t look very difficult, but please see also below.
Just to avoid confusion about the original intent of the feedback: With categorized bibliographies I was actually referring to the broad and rather universal topics as such (‘The Dating of the Buddha’, ‘Early Buddhism’, ‘Comparative Studies’, ‘Buddhist Sects’, etc.), not the subcategories within the topic (‘books’, ‘essays’, etc.). The feedback was actually aimed at a potential new structure of the bibliography at sutta-central as such. So that one would be, when clicking on ‘bibliography’ at the bottom of the page, directed not to the bibliography as it stands now, but to a listed table of contents, showing different bibliography themes. My humble list I offered in this spirit initially, but anything else, including the wiki-page, is of course fine as well.
On reflection, I think we’d be better off developing these bibiographies here, and keep the SC bibliography for its original intent, a record of the sources used for SC.
I’d suggest putting them under the “essay” category, and using a tag “bibliography”.
