Relics of the Buddha Motilal Banarsidass and partly because

and partly because

which was an indigenous growth

Written with the understanding that we are not mere mortals with wishful aspirations to divine status: we are spiritual beings with virtually unlimited capacities and functional abilities which are to be acknowledged

scholarly and ground-breaking

Relics of the Buddha Motilal Banarsidass and partly becauseBuddhism is popularly seen as a religion stressing the truth of impermanence. How, then, to account for the long standing veneration, in Asian Buddhist communities, of bone fragments, hair, teeth and other bodily bits said to come from the historic Buddha? Early European and American scholars of religion, influenced by a characteristic Protestant bias against relic worship, declared such practices to be superstitious and fraudulent, and far from the