[Buddha-l] Schopen lauded

[Franz Metcalf]

Piya et al.,

Thanks for that great link <http://www.international.ucla.edu/article.asp?parentid=105374 
 >. I'll try to attend the lecture (it being just 30 minutes from my  
house). But I was truly SHOCKED to read that Gregory Schopen has NEVER  
BEEN TO INDIA.

Help, I've fallen into a cognitive dissonance and I can't get up! How  
can the man really truly understand the days and ways of a physical  
place without ever being in that physical place? And yet Schopen's  
insights into the way ancient Indian society, including its Buddhists,  
worked, are profound. Perhaps it just doesn't matter to go there. It's  
not as if, going to India, we go to *ancient* India. And yet, and  
yet... I somehow feel Schopen's contributions would be even that much  
greater if we went there soon.

Not that going to India seems to have done much for *my* scholarship.  
Ah well. Let Schopen be Schopen, and let us be grateful.

Franz