The Philosophy of Buddhism

This translation, first published in 1956, opens up a classic introduction to Buddhist thought to a broader English language readership. The book covers the period of early canonical literature with examples of its philosophically relevant ideas, followed by the principal philosophical concepts of systematic Sravakayana-Buddhism.

In the main part of the book, Frauwallner presents the first survey of the development of the philosophical systems of Mahμayμana-Buddhism. He was well aware of the limitations in presenting only the Buddhist philosophy of the “classical†, i.e., the systematic period, and does not seem to have been ready to add the philoso-phically creative new post-systematic tradition of Buddhist epistemology and logic, a major subject of his research in subse-quent years.

Frauwallner’s way of translating was straight- forward: to remain as close as possible to the original text. For technical terms in the source materials he maintained a single translation even when various meanings were suggested. For clarity regarding such variations of meaning he relied on the context and his explanation.

The same approach was taken by the translator of the present book. However, he has inserted helpful additional headlines into the text and considerably enlarged the index. All other additions by the translator are given within square brackets.