From Stone to Flesh

“From Stone to Flesh is a welcome contribution to our understanding of how Buddhism became known in the West. The vaguest of notions and sheer ignorance were in a relatively short time replaced by an ever clearer picture of the Buddha as a historical and religious figure, known in a wealth of detail that even now we have yet fully to digest. Donald S. Lopez Jr. tells the story very well and at the same time recollects the West’s own struggle to rethink history and religion in the eighteenth and nineteenthcenturies. Theologians too will appreciate From Stone to Flesh as we seek out the roots of the consciousness of religious diversity that so vividly marks our era.”

“Thoroughly researched and highly readable, From Stone to Flesh tells of a Buddha born of the Western mind—a Buddha created in our own image and trapped in our own preconceptions. A must read for those who think they know who the Buddha really was.”

"The highly regarded and prolific Donald S. Lopez Jr. examines the West’s evolving understanding of the Buddha from antiquity to the mid-19th century. In approximately equal parts excerpts from historical writings and erudite commentary, which alternate, Lopez presents reports of European travelers who found what they considered merely pagan idols, later accounts from Catholic missionaries who continued to grapple with a plethora of images, and the 17th-century chronicles by soldiers and bureaucrats of Western empires who began to understand that the many deities represented but one human religious leader. . . . Highly recommended."

"Donald S. Lopez Jr. offers an expertly crafted history of the Buddha that has been left by the wayside and forgotten. Lopez masterfully stitches together obscure and esoteric texts from missionaries, diplomats, travelers, and others, giving them room to breathe and speak for themselves, instead of overwhelming his readers with historical analysis. There is a profound satisfaction in accompanying Lopez in his journey to find the historical Buddha, whom Westerners first denounced as an idolater and demon and, much later, came to praise his teachings. This is an exceptional and even riveting account of Western civilization’s attempts to reconcile a foreign religion with its own beliefs, as well as an insightful view into how historical development has shaped Western knowledge of the world."

“From Stone to Flesh tells a complicated tale. It is, like the author’s many previous works, fascinating, erudite, and engagingly written. Readers will come away enriched by it, often astonished, and occasionally exasperated. The book is not a biography of the Buddha in the usual sense, although it does recount many wonderfully varied biographies of the Buddha. Nor is it a history of Buddhism either, exactly, although readers will be enchanted by intriguing and little-known facts about the history of Buddhist ideas, texts, and societies. Rather, it is more properly a history of the Buddha himself, specifically of how we have come to know—or at least think we know—the historical founder of a world religion called Buddhism.”

"Lopez is a lively scholar, always worth reading."