My fingers tremble over the keyboard at the prospect of reviewing this amazingly sophisticated book, but there come times when somebody has to say something! My five star rating is intended only for those who are so seriously disturbed as to pay the high price for this book, and then undertake reading the densely written essays concerning the minute and numerous points of evolving Buddhist thought. The subject matter is necessarily elusive and difficult, and despite Ronkin's fine essay skills, I could handle only about ten pages per day.

At issue here are the great inconsistencies of principles that developed from the Early Buddhism of the Suttas into the highly scholasticized Abhidhamma literature. If this obscure topic interests you, I suggest you use Amazon's book search facility to explore the last chapter, "Concluding Reflections", which is a jaw dropper to ye true believers. To come to the point, those who made religion and philosophy out of the Buddha's teachings managed to reinstall revised versions of the Brahmanic essentialism and substantialism that the Buddha spent his life trying to overturn. That is the bottom line, but Ronkin traces these developments in such well reasoned detail as to provoke in the reader both amazement and agony. Her concluding idea is that principles that are valid in one philosophical category (such as epitomology) get dragged into other categories (such as ontology) where they do not belong. It is like realizing that some Biblebanger has gotten hold of The Constitution of the US and written his own stuff in to it. (My analogy, not Ronkin's, as her writing style for this book is very succinct and formal. You have to read carefully, because she won't tell you anything twice.)

The book is based on Ronkin's Oxford thesis in philosophy, and she did a thorough job of converting the thesis into a reasonably readable book, dropping in helpful hints at exactly the right places for The Great Unwashed, such as myself. Comparing various Pali writings, Ronkin relys heavily on her ability to analyze the nuances of the writer's Pali grammar and draw out the unspecified implications of his philosophical positions. Ronkin frequently resorts to Rupert Gethin and Sue Hamilton for technical support and points of reference.