Religious motivation and the origins of Buddhism

"Why did North Indian people from the fifth century BC choose to leave the world and join the sect of the Buddha? Were there common themes in the religious motivation of these early Buddhists? Is it possible to illuminate motivational themes using social psychology?" "This is the first book to apply the insights of social psychology in order to understand the religious motivation of the people who constituted the early Buddhist community. It also addresses the more general and theoretically controversial question of how world religions came into being, by focusing on the conversion process of the individual believer."--BOOK JACKET.