Santipada

The found­a­tions of mod­ern under­stand­ing of Buddhist his­tory have been chal­lenged by skep­tical schol­ars like Gregory Schopen, who allege that the meth­ods of the ‘higher cri­ti­cism’ are so dubi­ous as to be worth­less. How­ever, Schopen’s cri­tique badly mis­rep­res­ents how text crti­cism has been used, and his influ­ence has led to a wor­ry­ing decline in schol­ar­ship of early Buddhism.