113bC4l

introduction: a plethora of premises ⁄ 21
cal epistemology, a proposal with which postmodernist authors like Dirlik can
agree. 51 Our Florentine predecessors had the good sense to identify four primary
sources of evidence: first, we must consider documents, primary and secondary,
and assess as required the nature of their manuscript and printing histories.
Engaged as we are in the study of a religious tradition, it is insufficient
to limit ourselves to the documents internal to the Indian, Chinese, or Tibetan
Buddhist traditions, for these are internal documents. We must also consider
the evidence that might accrue from external sources not recognized as legitimate
within the religion, but authentic nonetheless. With the unbelievable
wealth of documents at our disposal, of course, a degree of circumspect limitation
is necessary, and herein lies the value of our accepting the counsel of
both traditional and modern scholarship on essential or important texts. 52
Second, we must consider the epigraphic remains of the period, again acknowledging
the plethora of epigraphs and the reality that many are unobtainable,
either because they remain unpublished or because the sources in
which they were originally published have been irretrievably lost, and the original
stones broken or the plates sold. Third, the archaeology of important finds
should be considered, even though many of the most important sites have had
the misfortune of their excavators’ indolence, so excavation reports have frequently
never been filed. Indeed, many is the time that Indian historians have
lectured members of the Archaeological Survey of India on the necessity for
excavation reports, with less than complete success. Fourth, the coins from the
period may be of assistance, although, as we shall see, there is a paucity of
coinage in Indian Buddhist areas during the early medieval period.
To these four sources already identified during the Renaissance, we might
add a source specific to India—the sealings from the monasteries, imperial
personages, and important merchants that provide so much excellent data.
Finally, Petrarch and his followers did not have to investigate the modern
culture of Italy to understand Rome, for they were Italians. Since the time of
Herodotus’ description of the Skythians in his Histories, however, participant-observer
data have proved of extraordinary value in assessing foreign
cultures, whether accrued by the historian, by anthropologists, or both, as in
the case of this book. We cannot underestimate the value to the historian of
learning the colloquial languages of these cultures, living in villages, or (in
our case) in Buddhist monasteries. Indeed, many Indologists would affirm
that they did not truly understand much of this complex society until they
had lived and worked there among the descendants of those very people under
investigation.