Katia Buffetrille is research scholar at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes in Paris. She is the author, editor, or coeditor of several books, including Authenticating Tibet: Answers to China's 100 Questions and Revisiting Rituals in a Changing Tibetan World Donald S. Lopez Jr. is the Arthur E. Link Distinguished University Professor of Buddhist and Tibetan Studies in the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Michigan. He is the author, editor, or translator of many books, including, most recently. From Stone to Flesh: A Short History of the Buddha and Grains of Gold: Tales of a Cosmopolitan Traveler, both also published by the University of Chicago Press.
To a considerable extent, Burnouf was responsible for first articulating the master narrative of Indian Buddhism, which retains a potent hold on our understanding of Buddhism today. . . . The translators deserve our gratitude for providing the occasion for reflecting on the foundations of this narrative, by bringing Burnouf's great work of early Buddhist scholarship to our attention and making it more broadly accessible. --John Strong, Bates College H-Asia At last, after 165 years, a translation of Eugene Burnouf's magnum opus! Katia Buffetrille and Donald Lopez make available to English readers a work from the infancy of Buddhist scholarship, and enable us to discover its remarkable precociousness, and how much we still have to learn from it. --John Strong, Bates College