Eliade On Buddhism

Although it concentrates on a single volume (Eliade’s Yoga: Immortality and Freedom ), Richard Gombrich’s more studied and cautious criticisms of Eliade’s textual and linguistic knowledge appears much more well-founded and less ideologically motivated than the preceding criticism by Edmund Leach. Gombrich reveals some significant failings in Eliade’s expertise and in the bases of his analyses. To what extent this undermines the broader foundations and utility of Eliade’s understanding of religious phenomena is not immediately conclusive. Published in Religious Studies 10 (1974): 225–31. All rights reserved. Copyright © 1974 by Cambridge University Press. Reprinted by permission of Cambridge University Press and the author.