The History of Buddhist Thought c5.3

c5.3

The earliest period has also received new attention. This period, according to Mrs. Rhys Davids, was so different from the picture that we find in our earliest records that she prefers to call it not Buddhism but Sakya. “Put away, for your origins, the word ‘Buddhism’ and think of your subject as ‘Sakya’.”¹ This is really a religious question, and the interest that Buddhism still rouses from this point of view can be seen from Bishop Gore’s Gifford Lectures, *The Philosophy of the Good Life*, and the Bampton Lectures of Canon Streeter, *The Buddha and the Christ*. It is Buddhism as we find it actually recorded, not a hypothetical primitive system, which still forms a challenge to other religions.