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Poetical Vision of the Buddha's Former Lives: Seventeen Legends from Haribhatta's Jatakamala (With English Introduction, main text in Sanskrit)
Poetical vision of the Buddha's former lives


 
Our Price: $42.00
Members Price: $37.80
Author: Michael Hahn
Format: Hardcover
ISBN: 9788177421040
Publication Date: 2011


Product Code: 17235
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Description
 
The present book contains the first Indian edition of 17 (out of 34) legends from the Garland of Birth-Stories (Jatakamala) by the Kashmirian poet Haribhatta who lived not later than 400 CE. His composition, written in the prosimetric campu style, is a worthy successor to Aryasura's Jatakamala. An exemplary representative of the chaste style (vaidarbhi ritih), it enchants the reader by its perfectly lucid Sanskrit, the great variety of metres (29) and superb prose sections, which can be regarded as forerunners of Dandin's and Bana's prose novels. The legends, which are meant to illustrate the six moral perfections (paramita), viz. giving, morality, forbearance, striving, meditation and wisdom, are chosen not only from the rich store-house of Buddhist narrative literature, but occasionally also from other sources, e.g., the Mahabharata or even folk tales. Until 1973, Haribhatta's work was known only from its medieval Tibetan translation. Between 1973 and 1976, Michael Hahn discovered ten of its legends in anonymous manuscripts from Nepal. They were published (in Latin script) in Japan in 2007. In 2004, Michael Hahn got access to another fragmentary Sanskrit manuscript that permitted him to include seven more legends in the present Indian edition. An English translation is currently being prepared.

A CD containing colour photographs of the oldest manuscript of Haribhatta's Jatakamala from Nepal is attached to book

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