Literary Buddhas, Kartoniert / Broschiert

Klappentext

The Buddha lives in Buddhist tradition and in the popular imagination principally as a literary character, whose deeds and teachings are remembered and reimagined across a range of texts, old and new. Literary Buddhas acknowledges the many ways in which authors have characterized the Buddha down the centuries and across cultures, beginning with ancient India, through other Asian contexts, and then globally into modernity.

Literary Buddhas offers case studies of different literary recreations of the Buddha that both preserve and create, drawing upon prior heritage yet constantly reinventing the figure of the Buddha for new audiences and settings. From ancient Magadha to modern Mexico, these studies draw out from Buddhist stories what we can learn about different yet overlapping interests and concerns - political, philosophical, social and otherwise - of authors who brought to life "a teacher of gods and men" who has been the centre of Buddhist thought and practice for two and a half millennia.