Malcolm Waugh

Response to 'Ideas and Movements in the Age of the Mauryas With Special Reference to Pali and Ardhamagadhi Sources' (2012) by S. N. Dube. I am a 60-year-old public school Kindergarten teacher. I read this book in 2012 and have revisited it several times since. As a reader with background from one semester of Asian history in a U.S. high school, what did this book give me? Primarily a close-up moving image of Indian history (so many sects streaming so long through time!), as well as starts, disorientation, fascination, reverberations, and questions - about both content and self. If you have an interest in the history of India, and familiarity only with the popular survey histories, take a turn HERE into the scholarly literature for a rewarding hike! This guide keeps you close to the ground - the sources - so you see much you would miss in a drive-by or fly-over. The first 30 pages of chapter 8, 'Consolidation of Other Ascetic Orders', is a fascinating account of the Jainas. Try that first. Then, sure of the good place you're going, make your own chronology format of the centuries from 1500 BC on to enter events as you go - because this book ranges wider than the Mauryan age - and start from the beginning. Favorite sentence? It's in a passage about the Jaina conception of the interaction between living and non-living matter, on p. 226. 'The obfuscation of the soul is akin to the gradual clouding of a bright oily surface by specks of dust'. That is a vivid and memorable image. Thank you, Professor Dube, for being my teacher! Malcolm Waugh Berkeley, California.