Encountering Buddhism and Islam in Premodern Central and South Asia

✍ Scribed by Blain Auer (editor), Ingo Strauch (editor)

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Year: 2019
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 234
• Series: Worlds of South and Inner Asia 9
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

This volume brings together a variety of historians, epigraphists, philologists, art historians and archaeologists to address the understanding of the encounter between Buddhist and Muslim communities in South and Central Asia during the medieval period. The articles collected here provoke a fresh look at the relevant sources. The main areas touched by this new research can be divided into five broad categories: deconstructing scholarship on Buddhist/Muslim interactions, cultural and religious exchanges, perceptions of the other, transmission of knowledge, and trade and economics. The subjects covered are wide ranging and demonstrate the vast challenges involved in dealing with historical, social, cultural and economic frameworks that span Central and South Asia of the premodern world. We hope that the results show promise for future research produced on Buddhist and Muslim encounters. The intended audience is specialists in Asian Studies, Buddhist Studies and Islamic Studies.

✦ Table of Contents

Contents
Introduction: Situating the Encounter between Buddhist and Muslim Communities in South Asia
The Power of the Islamic Sword in Narrating the Death of Indian Buddhism
Reassessing the Muslim Attacks and the Decline of Buddhist Monasteries in the Thirteenth Century Magadha
The Narratives on the Bāmiyān Buddhist Remains in the Islamic Period
Ibn Baṭṭūṭa’s Buddhists: Monuments, Memory, and the Materiality of Travel
Buddhism and Islam in Kashmir as Represented by Rājataraṅgiṇī Authors
The Avatāra in Medieval South Asian Contexts: Dynamic Translation Across Hindu, Buddhist and Islamic Traditions in the Ghaznavid Period
Buddhists, Hellenists, Muslims, and the Origin of Science
Medieval Endowment Cultures in Western India: Buddhist and Muslim Encounters – Some Preliminary Observations
List of Contributors
Index