History of Buddhism

A report on the situation of the Buddhism in 1990 in the Buryat, Kalmyk and Tuva Republics of the USSR.

The Umayyad Caliphate (661–750 CE) was the first Arab empire in the Middle East. It was the first Muslim empire to interact with Buddhists in parts of Central Asia and the western regions of the Indian subcontinent.

As of 1995, there were no books on Buddhism in the colloquial Mongolian language, hardly anyone who could make such translations and no money to print such books, even if they were made. Thus, young people and intellectuals were being drawn to Christianity, which they now...

Shantideva was born in the eighth century as the son of the king of a land in the Bengal region of East India. When he was about to ascend to the throne, he had a dream of Manjushri, who said, “The throne is not for you.” Heeding Manjushri’s advice, he renounced the throne and...

The first women ordained as nuns were Buddha’s maternal aunt and 500 female followers. They were given additional vows to those given to the monks in order to avoid suspicion of this mixed-gender celibate order from society at that time.

The early period of the Abbasid Caliphate (750–840 CE) saw the translation of Buddhist texts into not only the languages of East Turkistan, but also into Turkic languages and even some into Arabic, as Islam slowly spread into West Turkistan.

At the beginning of the 19th century, the Eighth Dalai Lama sent Gyelse Dorjechang from his own Namgyal Monastery to establish the main Kalachakra Monastery of Mongolia, Dechen Kalawa. Kalachakra practice was spread throughout Mongolia by the Fourth and Fifth Bogdo Gegens.

A short introduction to how Buddhism spread from its beginnings in northern India to become the major belief system across much of Asia.

A survey of the political interaction of Buddhist and Bon factions in Tibet from the earliest time to the 11th-century revival of Buddhism.

The Theravada monastic ordinations reached Sri Lanka and Myanmar in the 3rd century BCE. Over the centuries, it was re-established in Sri Lanka from Myanmar after a short repression, was spread from Sri Lanka to Thailand, and then from Thailand to Cambodia and from Cambodia to...