| Readings of the Vessantara Jātaka Contributor(s): Collins, Steven (Editor) |
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ISBN: 0231160380 ISBN-13: 9780231160384 Publisher: Columbia University Press OUR PRICE: $103.95 Product Type: Hardcover - Other Formats Published: March 2016 |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Religion | Buddhism - Sacred Writings - Philosophy | Buddhist - Religion | Buddhism - Rituals & Practice |
| Dewey: 294.382 |
| LCCN: 2015012734 |
| Series: Columbia Readings of Buddhist Literature |
| Physical Information: 0.7" H x 6" W x 9.1" (1.40 lbs) 232 pages |
| Themes: - Religious Orientation - Buddhist - Cultural Region - Indian - Cultural Region - Asian |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: The Vessantara Jataka tells the story of Prince Vessantara, who attained the Perfection of Generosity by giving away his fortune, his children, and his wife. Vessantara was the penultimate rebirth as a human of the future Gotama Buddha, and his extreme charity has been represented and reinterpreted in texts, sermons, rituals, and art throughout South and Southeast Asia and beyond. This anthology features well-respected anthropologists, textual scholars in religious and Buddhist studies, and art historians, who engage in sophisticated readings of the text and its ethics of giving, understanding of attachment and nonattachment, depiction of the trickster, and unique performative qualities. They reveal the story to be as brilliantly layered as a Homeric epic or Shakespearean play, with aspects of tragedy, comedy, melodrama, and utopian fantasy intertwined to problematize and scrutinize Theravada Buddhism's cherished virtues. |
Contributor Bio(s): Collins, Steven: - Steven Collins (PhD, Greek and Latin Literature and Philosophy and Psychology, Oxford) is Chester D. Tripp Professor in the Humanities in the Department of South Asian Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago. He is the author of Selfless Persons: imagery and thought in Theravada Buddhism (Cambridge, 1982), Nirvana and other Buddhist Felicities: Utopias of the Pali imaginaire (Cambridge, 1998), and Nirvana: concept, imagery, narrative (Cambridge, 2010) and the editor of The Vessantara Jātaka (Columbia, 2016). I chose him as a reader for his knowledge of the social and cultural history of Buddhism in premodern and modern Southeast Asia and Pali language and literature. |