Sino-Platonic Papers has rereleased for free Life and Light, the Infinite: A Historical and Philological Analysis of the Amida Cult (2.2 MB PDF), by Soho Machida.

Here’s a bit of borrowed biographical information about the author:

Soho Machida spent twenty years as a Zen monk at Daitokuji monastery, Kyoto, before moving to the United States, where he received a master’s degree in theological studies from Harvard University and a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania. He has taught at Princeton University and the National University of Singapore, and is now a professor at the Tokyo University of Foreign Studies. He has written extensively on religion and ethics.

And here’s the table of contents of the work.

1. Two Names of Amida Buddha
2. Amida, Amita, or Amrta?
3. Amida Buddha and Indian Mythology
4. Which came first, Amitayus or Amitabha?
5. The Idea of Luminosity in Mahayana Thought
6. The Encounter of Buddhism and Zoroastrianism
7. Luminosity and the Cult of Mithra
8. Parallel Features with Iranian Religion
9. The Old Religion of the Indo-Iranians
10. Conclusion
11. Endnotes
12. Bibliography

This was originally published in December 1988 as issue no. 9 of Sino-Platonic Papers.