Download or read book Devotion in the Buddhist Literature of Medieval Sri Lanka written by Charles Hallisey and published by . This book was released on 1988 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Sri Lanka at the Crossroads of History written by Zoltán Biedermann and published by UCL Press. This book was released on 2017-06-07 with total page 357 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The peoples of Sri Lanka have participated in far-flung trading networks, religious formations, and Asian and European empires for millennia. This interdisciplinary volume sets out to draw Sri Lanka into the field of Asian and Global History by showing how the latest wave of scholarship has explored the island as a ‘crossroads’, a place defined by its openness to movement across the Indian Ocean.Experts in the history, archaeology, literature and art of the island from c.500 BCE to c.1850 CE use Lankan material to explore a number of pressing scholarly debates. They address these matters from their varied disciplinary perspectives and diverse array of sources, critically assessing concepts such as ethnicity, cosmopolitanism and localisation, and elucidating the subtle ways in which the foreign may be resisted and embraced at the same time. The individual chapters, and the volume as a whole, are a welcome addition to the history and historiography of Sri Lanka, as well as studies of the Indian Ocean region, kingship, colonialism, imperialism, and early modernity.
Download or read book Relics Ritual and Representation in Buddhism written by Kevin Trainor and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1997-06-13 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a serious study of relic veneration among South Asian Buddhists. Drawing on textual sources and archaeological evidence from India and Sri Lanka, including material rarely examined in the West, it looks specifically at the practice of relic veneration in the Sri Lankan Theravada Buddhist tradition. The author portrays relic veneration as a technology of remembrance and representation which makes present the Buddha of the past for living Buddhists. By analysing the abstract ideas, emotional orientation and ritual behaviour centred on the Buddha's material remains, he contributes to the 'rematerializing' of Buddhism which is currently under way among Western scholars. This book is an excellent introduction to Buddhist relics. It is well written and accessible and will be read by scholars and serious students of Buddhism and religious studies for years to come.
Download or read book Popularizing Buddhism written by Mahinda Deegalle and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 2007-06-01 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores the ritual practice of Buddhist preaching.
Download or read book Ties That Bind written by Reiko Ohnuma and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2012-07-12 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reiko Ohnuma offers a wide-ranging exploration of maternal imagery and discourse in pre-modern South Asian Buddhism, drawing on textual sources preserved in Pali and Sanskrit. She demonstrates that Buddhism in India had a complex and ambivalent relationship with mothers and motherhood-symbolically, affectively, and institutionally. Symbolically, motherhood was a double-edged sword, sometimes extolled as the most appropriate symbol for buddhahood itself, and sometimes denigrated as the most paradigmatic manifestation possible of attachment and suffering. On an affective level, too, motherhood was viewed with the same ambivalence: in Buddhist literature, warm feelings of love and gratitude for the mother's nurturance and care frequently mingle with submerged feelings of hostility and resentment for the unbreakable obligations thus created, and positive images of self-sacrificing mothers are counterbalanced by horrific depictions of mothers who kill and devour. Institutionally, the formal definition of the Buddhist renunciant as one who has severed all familial ties seems to co-exist uneasily with an abundance of historical evidence demonstrating monks' and nuns' continuing concern for their mothers, as well as other familial entanglements. Ohnuma's study provides critical insight into Buddhist depictions of maternal love and maternal grief, the role played by the Buddha's own mothers, Maya and Mahaprajapati, the use of pregnancy and gestation as metaphors for the attainment of enlightenment, the use of breastfeeding as a metaphor for the compassionate deeds of buddhas and bodhisattvas, and the relationship between Buddhism and motherhood as it actually existed in day-to-day life.
Download or read book Buddhist Theology written by Roger Jackson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-12-16 with total page 424 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Scholars of Buddhism, themselves Buddhist, here seek to apply the critical tools of the academy to reassess the truth and transformative value of their tradition in its relevance to the contemporary world.
Download or read book Religions of the East written by Stephen Hunt and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-05-15 with total page 542 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Under the rubric of 'Religions of the East', which includes Buddhism, Hinduism, Sikhism, Janiism and a myriad of Chinese religio-philosophies, are a vast range of views concerning human sexuality. These contrasting attitudes are mapped through this volume on Religions of the East in The Library of Essays on Sexuality and Religion series. Part 1 presents previously-published articles that explore several Eastern Religions in the way they construct sexuality through expressions of their pertinent holy writings and belief systems, as applied in differing historical and cultural contexts. Part 2 takes sexual renunciation and asceticism as its focus through the traditions of Hinduism, Jainism and the Chinese religious systems. Part 3 explores the connection between sexuality, gender and sexuality in Hindu and Buddhist customs in varied social settings. The final part of the volume includes articles examining Eastern religions in their attitudes towards sexual 'variants' including bi-sexuality, trans-sexuality and contested sexual categories.
Download or read book The Embodiment of Bhakti written by Karen Pechilis and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 1999 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this interpretive history of bhakti, both chronicle and comparison are used to identify and analyze bhakti as understood by various Tamil Siva-bhakti authors and authorities."--BOOK JACKET.
Download or read book The Embodiment of Bhakti written by Karen Pechilis Prentiss and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2000-01-06 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers an interpretive history of bhakti, an influential religious perspective in Hinduism. Prentiss argues that although bhakti is mentioned in every contemporary sourcebook on Indian religions, it still lacks an agreed-upon definition. "Devotion" is found to be the most commonly used synonym. Prentiss seeks a new perspective on this elusive concept. Her analysis of Tamil (south Indian) materials leads her to suggest that bhakti be understood as a doctrine of embodiment. Bhakti, she says, urges people towards active engagement in the worship of God. She proposes that the term "devotion" be replaced by "participation," emphasizing bhakti's call for engagement in worship and the necessity of embodiment to fulfill that obligation.
Download or read book Voice of the Buddha written by Maria Heim and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-09-12 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What would a Buddhist theory of texts look like through the lens of the 5th-century thinker Buddhaghosa? In Voice of the Buddha, Maria Heim reads from the principal commentator, editor, and translator of the Theravada intellectual tradition, yielding fresh insight into all three collections of the early Pali texts: Vinaya, the Suttas, and the Abhidhamma. Buddhaghosa considered the Buddha to be omniscient, the Buddha's words to be "oceanic." Every word, passage, book--indeed the corpus as a whole--is taken to be "endless and immeasurable" in Buddhaghosa's view. Commentarial practice thus requires disciplined methods of expansion, drawing out the endless possibilities for meaning and application. Heim considers Buddhaghosa's theories of texts, and follows his practices of exegesis to discover how he explored scripture's infinity. By examining the significance of the immeasurability of scripture in commentarial practice and as a general principle, this book offers new tools to understand the huge scriptural and commentarial literature of the Pali tradition. And by taking seriously a traditional commentator's theory of texts, it beckons us to learn from commentaries themselves how we might read and interpret them and the texts on which they comment.
Download or read book Spreading the Dhamma written by Daniel Veidlinger and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2006-08-31 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How did early Buddhists actually encounter the seminal texts of their religion? What were the attitudes held by monks and laypeople toward the written and oral Pali traditions? In this pioneering work, Daniel Veidlinger explores these questions in the context of the northern Thai kingdom of Lan Na. Drawing on a vast array of sources, including indigenous chronicles, reports by foreign visitors, inscriptions, and palm-leaf manuscripts, he traces the role of written Buddhist texts in the predominantly oral milieu of northern Thailand from the fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries. Veidlinger examines how the written word was assimilated into existing Buddhist and monastic practice in the region, considering the use of manuscripts for textual study and recitation as well as the place of writing in the cultic and ritual life of the faithful. He shows how manuscripts fit into the economy, describes how they were made and stored, and highlights the understudied issue of the "cult of the book" in Theravâda Buddhism. Looking at the wider Theravâda world, Veidlinger argues that manuscripts in Burma and Sri Lanka played a more central role in the preservation and dissemination of Buddhist texts. By offering a detailed examination of the motivations driving those who sponsored manuscript production, this study draws attention to the vital role played by forest-dwelling monastic orders introduced from Sri Lanka in the development of Lan Na’s written Pali heritage. It also considers the rivalry between those monks who wished to preserve the older oral tradition and monks, rulers, and laypeople who supported the expansion of the new medium of writing.
Download or read book Buddhist Fury written by Michael K. Jerryson and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2011-07-28 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Buddhist violence is not a well-known concept. In fact, it is generally considered an oxymoron. An image of a Buddhist monk holding a handgun or the idea of a militarized Buddhist monastery tends to stretch the imagination; yet these sights exist throughout southern Thailand. Michael Jerryson offers an extensive examination of one of the least known but longest-running conflicts of Southeast Asia. Part of this conflict, based primarily in Thailand's southernmost provinces, is fueled by religious divisions. Thailand's total population is over 92 percent Buddhist, but over 85 percent of the people in the southernmost provinces are Muslim. Since 2004, the Thai government has imposed martial law over the territory and combatted a grass-roots militant Malay Muslim insurgency. Buddhist Fury reveals the Buddhist parameters of the conflict within a global context. Through fieldwork in the conflict area, Jerryson chronicles the habits of Buddhist monks in the militarized zone. Many Buddhist practices remain unchanged. Buddhist monks continue to chant, counsel the laity, and accrue merit. Yet at the same time, monks zealously advocate Buddhist nationalism, act as covert military officers, and equip themselves with guns. Buddhist Fury displays the methods by which religion alters the nature of the conflict and shows the dangers of this transformation.
Download or read book A Multilingual Nation written by Rita Kothari and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017-11-21 with total page 474 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How does India live through the oddity of being both a nation and multilingual? Is multilingualism in India to be understood as a neatly laid set of discrete languages or a criss-crossing of languages that runs through every source language and text? The questions take us to reviewing what is meant by language, multilingualism, and translation. Challenging these institutions, A Multilingual Nation illustrates how the received notions of translation discipline do not apply to India. It provocatively argues that translation is not a ‘solution’ to the allegedly chaotic situation of many languages, rather it is its inherent and inalienable part. An unusual and unorthodox collection of essays by leading thinkers and writers, new and young researchers, it establishes the all-pervasive nature of translation in every sphere in India and reverses the assumptions of the steady nature of language, its definition, and the peculiar fragility that is revealed in the process of translation.
Download or read book Visions of the Buddha written by Eviatar Shulman and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021-09-30 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Visions of the Buddha offers a ground-breaking approach to the nature of the early discourses of the Buddha, the most foundational scriptures of Buddhist religion. Although the early discourses are commonly considered to be attempts to preserve the Buddha's teachings, Shulman demonstrates that these texts are full of creativity, and that their main aim is to beautify the image of the wonderous Buddha. While the texts surely care for the early teachings and for the Buddha's philosophy or his guidelines for meditation, and while at times they may relate real historical events, they are no less interested in telling good stories, in re-working folkloric materials, and in the visionary contemplation of the Buddha in order to sense his unique presence. The texts can thus be, at times, a type of meditation. Eviatar Shulman frames the early discourses as literary masterpieces that helped Buddhism achieve the wonderful success it has obtained. Much of the discourses' masterful storytelling was achieved through a technique of composition defined here as the play of formulas. In the oral literature of early Buddhism, texts were composed of formulas, which are repeated within and between texts. Shulman argues that the formulas are the real texts of Buddhism, and are primary to full discourses. Shaping texts through the play of formulas balances conservative and innovative tendencies within the tradition, making room for creativity within accepted forms and patterns. The texts we find today are thus versions--remnants--chosen by history of a much more vibrant and dynamic creative process.
Download or read book The Bodhisattva Path written by and published by Motilal Banarsidass Publishe. This book was released on 2007 with total page 410 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Inquiry of Ugra (Ugrapariprccha) is one of the most influential Mahayana sutras, preserved and transmitted in both India and China over many centuries and actively quoted in treatises on the bodhisattva path. It is, nevertheless, one of the most neglected texts in Western treatments of Buddhism. The Ugra appers to be one of the earliest bodhisattva scriptures to come down to us, and as such it offers a particularly valuable window on the process by which the bodhisattva path came to be seen as a distinct vocational alternative within certain Indian Buddhist communities. The Bodhisattva Path is a study and translation of the Ugra that will fundamentally alter previous perceptions of the way in which Mahayana was viewed and practiced by its earliest adherents. To achieve a better understanding of the universe of ideas, activities, and institutional structures within which early self-proclaimed bodhisattvas lived, the author first considers the Ugra as a literary document, employing new methodological tools to examine the genre to which it belong, the age of its extant versions, and their relationships to one another. She goes on to challenge the dominant notions that the Mahayana emerged as a reform of earlier Buddhism and offered lay people an easier option. On the contrary, the picture that emerges is of the early Mahayana as a more difficult and demanding vocation, initially limited to a small contingent of monastic males. Combining a detailed critical study and translation of an important Buddhist scripture with a sweeping re-examination of the relationship between the Buddha and the practitioners alike and other interested in the history of Indian Buddhism and the formation of Mahayana.
Download or read book Siva s Saints written by Gil Ben-Herut and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-07-02 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Comprising more than twelve million people and renowned for their resistance to Brahminical values, the Virasaivas are a vibrant and unorthodox religious community with a provocative socio-political voice. The Virasaiva tradition has produced a vast and original body of literature, composed mostly in Kannada, a Dravidian language from south India. Siva's Saints introduces a previously unexplored and central primary work produced in the early thirteenth century, the Ragalegalu. This was the first narrative text written about the incipient devotional tradition dedicated to the god Siva in the Kannada-speaking regions; through stories of the saints, it images the life of this new religious community. The Ragalegalu inaugurated a new era in the production of devotional narratives accessible to wide audiences. Gil Ben-Herut challenges common notions about this tradition in its nascent phases. By closely reading the saints' stories in this text, Siva's Saints takes a more nuanced historical view than commonly-held notions about the egalitarian and iconoclastic nature of the early tradition, arguing instead that early bhakti (devotionalism) in the Kannada-speaking region was less-radical and more accommodating toward traditional religious, social, and political institutions than thought of today. In contrast to the narrowly sectarian and exclusionary vision that shapes later accounts, the Ragalegalu is characterized by an opposite impulse of offering an open invitation to people from all walks of life, and their stories illustrate the richness of their devotional lives. Analysis of this seminal text yields important insights into the role of literary representation of the social and political development of a religious community in a pre-modern and non-Western milieu.
Download or read book Foucault Buddhism and Disciplinary Rules written by Malcolm Voyce and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2016-12-01 with total page 191 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book suggests that previous critiques of the rules of Buddhist monks (Vinaya) may now be reconsidered in order to deal with some of the assumptions concerning the legal nature of these rules and to provide a focus on how Vinaya texts may have actually operated in practice. Malcolm Voyce utilizes the work of Foucault and his notions of 'power' and 'subjectivity' in three ways. First, he examines The Buddha's role as a lawmaker to show how Buddhist texts were a form of lawmaking that had a diffused and lateral conception of authority. While lawmakers in some religious groups may be seen as authoritative, in the sense that leaders or founders were coercive or charismatic, the Buddhist concept of authority allows for a degree of freedom for the individual to shape or form themselves. Second, he shows that the confession ritual acted as a disciplinary measure to develop a unique sense of collective governance based on self regulation, self-governance and self-discipline. Third, he argues that while the Vinaya has been seen by some as a code or form of regulation that required obedience, the Vinaya had a double nature in that its rules could be transgressed and that offenders could be dealt with appropriately in particular situations. Voyce shows that the Vinaya was not an independent legal system, but that it was dependent on the Dharmaśāstra for some of its jurisprudential needs, and that it was not a form of customary law in the strict sense, but a wider system of jurisprudence linked to Dharmaśāstra principles and precepts.
