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This is the first attempt at a description of the grammar and lexicon of Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit. Most North Indian Buddhist texts are composed in it. It is based primarily on an old Middle Indic vernacular not otherwise identifiable. But there seems reason to believe that it contains features that were borrowed from other Middle Indic dialects. In other words, even its Middle Indic aspects are dialectically somewhat mixed. Most strikingly, however, BHS was also extensively influenced by Sanskrit from the very beginning of the tradition as it has been transmitted to us, and increasingly as time went on. Many (especially later) products of this tradition have often, though misleadingly, been called simply 'Sanskrit', without qualification. In principle, the author has excluded from the grammar and dictionary all forms which are standard Sanskrit, and all words which are used in standard Sanskrit with the same meanings.
Contributed articles presented at the Seminar on Buddhist Literary Heritage in India: Text and Context held in July 2005 in Kolkata under the coordination of Calcutta University Manuscript Resource Centre in collaboration with The Asiatic Society, Kolkata.
This book presents an answer to the question: what is nirvana? Part I distinguishes between systematic and narrative thought in the Pali texts of Theravada Buddhism in South and Southeast Asia, arguing that nirvana produces closure in both, and setting nirvana in the wider category of Buddhist Felicities. Part II explores other Buddhist utopias (both eu-topias, 'good places', and ou-topias, 'no-places'), and relates Buddhist utopianism to studies of European and American utopian writing. The book ends with a close reading of the Vessantara Jataka, which highlights the conflict between the ascetic quest for closure and ultimate felicity, and the ongoing demands of ordinary life and society. Steven Collins discusses these issues in relation to textuality, world history and ideology in premodern civilizations, aiming to contribute to an alternate vision of Buddhist history, which can hold both the inside and the outside of texts together.