Monday, February 18, 2013

How The Swans Came To The Lake

I'm reading How the Swans Came to the Lake.

A narrative history at times plays a little fast and loose with things. I mean you can't expect Rich Fields to be an expert on Buddhism, history, archaeology, art history and all the subjects that contribute to this book. So far Fields seems to be skating along all these specialties well. I'm reading the 3rd edition to the book and since Fields passed away in 1999 from lung cancer, he's not going to have any further editions.

The first chapter is a summary of the Buddha's life, because after all, if there's no Buddha, then Buddhism doesn't spread to the Americas.

Chapter two is about the archaeological, historical and art history evidence that Buddhist discovered America! It's circumstantial, but I'm convinced because I like to think that.

Chapter three is about William Jones, a philologist who was eventually posted in India after people in power got over his stance to let the Americans go. He was held back for about 5 years because of that unpopular in Brittan belief. He really opened up the study of Sanskrit supposedly.

So far chapters 2 and 3 have been interesting to me.

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