John C. Holt

Maitreya's Advent

Recently, the quality and sophistication of volumes containing collected essays resulting from conferences attended by scholars of related academic disciplines have improved markedly. Maitreya: The Future Buddha is a book in which the insights of historians of religions, philologists, buddhologists, art historians, and historians have been skillfully coordinated to comprise a compelling study of the continuity and variation of the bodhisattvas cult, especially as it has been articulated in East Asian cultures. The volume has been divided into two parts: the first contains two essays, one by Joseph Kitagawa providing an effective thematic overview of issues explored by previous scholars studying Maitreya within South and East Asian cultural contexts, and the second by Jan Nattier, who proposes a useful interpretive fourfold typology of Maitreya cults based upon locative and temporal considerations of religious experience; the second part consists of ten well-focused essays further subdivided into three sections centering on aspects of the cult of Maitreya, first in South Asia, then in China, Korea, and Vietnam, and finally in Japan. Each part and each section is intelligently introduced by keying the reader to specific social, political, or symbolic significance. An epilogue charts possible areas for future research and