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With a frontispiece, 58 figures and 15 plates
By providing an annotated translation of, and applying the methods of literary criticism to, a first-century account of the life of the saint Purna, this study introduces the reader to the richness and complexity of an essential Buddhist genre.
Will Tuladhar-Douglas sheds new light on an important branch of Mahayana Buddhism and establishes the existence, character and causes of a renaissance of Buddhism in the fifteenth century in the Kathmandu Valley of Nepal. He provides the basis for the historical study of Newar Buddhism as one distinct tradition among the many that comprise Indic Buddhism. Through a thorough study of the relevant texts in the classical Himalayan languages (Sanskrit, Newari, Tibetan and Nepali), the book puts forward a new thesis about how the Newars legitimated and reinvented their tradition by devising new concepts of canonicity, as such it will appeal to scholars of the history and philology of Buddhism.
New identifications of the 460 bas-reliefs of Borobudur illustrating the Gandavy?ha, based upon a comparison with the contents of three early Chinese translations of Sanskrit manuscripts of the text of Central Asian or Indian provenance.
Recognizing the seemingly universal notion of a grammatical cosmos, this volume addresses the question of how grammar and culturally encoded sounds and signs provide cognitive maps of reality in a variety of great civilizations.
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What about Buddha's wife? We all know that Prince Siddhartha left his wife and infant son to begin his journey to enlightenment. The Pali canon does not mention the woman he left behind. Yasodharā enters the commentarial tradition around the first century CE and lives on in the folk tradition, growing from a shadowy figure to a nun and arahat (an Enlightened One), even gaining magical powers. In this book, Ranjini Obeyesekere offers a translation of two works from Sri Lanka on this intriguing figure. The Yasodharāvata (The Story of Yasodharā) is a folk poem, whose best-known verses are Yasodharā's lament over the departure of her husband. The Yasodharāpadānaya (The Sacred Biography of Yasodharā) is an account of Yasodharā as a nun capable of miracles, who has traveled through saṃsāra with the Bodhisattva, and who is praised by him. Obeyesekere places these works within their historical and literary context and provides a glossary of Buddhist terms.
The present volume, comprising ninteen articles by renowned scholars, is divided into three sections, namely, Buddhist Jaina and Hindu Philsosphical Researches. The articles in Hindu section take a comperative base. K.K.Raj compares the Buddhist and Mimamsa views on Laksana. K. Bhattacharya speaks of grammarians and philososphers regarding post-Panini grammarians on a certain anusasana. R.C.Dwivedi compares kashmir Saivism with Sankara`s Vedanta and T.S.Rukmani compares Siddhis as found in the Bhagavata Purana and in Patanjali`s Yogasutras. R.V. Joshi compares the Advaita and the Vaisnava views of the matter.
An extensive study of self-sacrificial images in Indian art, this book examines concepts such as head-offering, human sacrifice, blood, suicide, valour, self-immolation, and self-giving in the context of religion and politics to explore why these images were produced and how they became paradigms of heroism.
The evolution of Oriental Studies in Britain over the last century is traced in thirteen essays on key figures (twelve of them Fellows of the British Academy). They exemplify the outstanding contribution of British scholars to Oriental scholarship, within the general trend in the West to understand and interpret the civilisations of the East sympathetically. Through the careers and achievements of these influential scholars these essays shed light on studies ranging from Ancient Egyptian and Hebrew, through Arabic, Persian and Turkish, to Indology, Chinese and Japanese. With important changes of methodology and approach to the cultures and religions of Asia, the twentieth century has been an exciting and fruitful period for Oriental Studies in Britain.