The Forest of Thieves and the Magic Garden

The Forest of Thieves and the Magic Garden PDF Author: Phyllis Granoff
Publisher: Penguin Books India
ISBN: 9780140437225
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 388

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Book Description
Original and compelling tales of Jain wisdom This fine selection of stories revolves around the concept of renunciation, the essence of Jainism. True and complete knowledge, omniscience and liberation from the endless cycles of transmigratory births can be achieved by lay men and women as well as by monks and nuns. Themes central to Jainism are explored here. Among these are renunciation of the world by young men; the effects of such renunciation upon families, wives and children; the persistence of emotional bonds beyond a single birth; the paradox of friendship and social ties, at once tenacious and transient; the strength of the fidelity and piety of women and the power of love and excessive emotion to delude and entrap. The translations, drawn from texts dating between the seventh and fifteenth centuries B.C., represent a variety of genres: didactic tales, the epics, spiritual autobiographies, pilgrimage texts and folktales. Phyllis Granoff's authentic, modern and reader-friendly rendering from the Sanskrit and Prakrit makes this a rich and remarkable narrative of living Jainism and its literary traditions.

The Forest of Thieves and the Magic Garden

The Forest of Thieves and the Magic Garden PDF Author: Phyllis Granoff
Publisher: Penguin Books India
ISBN: 9780140437225
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 388

Get Book Here

Book Description
Original and compelling tales of Jain wisdom This fine selection of stories revolves around the concept of renunciation, the essence of Jainism. True and complete knowledge, omniscience and liberation from the endless cycles of transmigratory births can be achieved by lay men and women as well as by monks and nuns. Themes central to Jainism are explored here. Among these are renunciation of the world by young men; the effects of such renunciation upon families, wives and children; the persistence of emotional bonds beyond a single birth; the paradox of friendship and social ties, at once tenacious and transient; the strength of the fidelity and piety of women and the power of love and excessive emotion to delude and entrap. The translations, drawn from texts dating between the seventh and fifteenth centuries B.C., represent a variety of genres: didactic tales, the epics, spiritual autobiographies, pilgrimage texts and folktales. Phyllis Granoff's authentic, modern and reader-friendly rendering from the Sanskrit and Prakrit makes this a rich and remarkable narrative of living Jainism and its literary traditions.

The Forest of Thieves and the Magic Garden

The Forest of Thieves and the Magic Garden PDF Author: Phyllis Granoff
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0141907932
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 418

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Book Description
The stories collected in this volume reflect the rich tradition of medieval Jain storytelling between the seventh and fifteenth centuries, from simple folk tales and lives of famous monks to sophisticated narratives of rebirth. They describe they ways in which a path to peace and bliss can be found, either by renouncing the world or by following Jain ethics of non-violence, honesty, moderation and fidelity. Here are stories depicting the painful consequences when a loved one chooses life as a monk, the triumph of Jain women who win over their husbands to their religion, or the rewards of a simple act of piety. The volume ends with an account of vice and virtue, which depict the thieving and destructive passions lurking in the forest of life, ready to rob the unsuspecting traveller of reason and virtue.

The Concept of Bharatavarsha and Other Essays

The Concept of Bharatavarsha and Other Essays PDF Author: B. D. Chattopadhyaya
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 1438471769
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 252

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Book Description
This collection explores what may be called the idea of India in ancient times. Its undeclared objective is to identify key concepts which show early Indian civilization as distinct and differently oriented from other formations. The essays focus on ancient Indian texts within a variety of genres. They identify certain key terms—such as janapada, desa, varṇa, dharma, bhāva—in their empirical contexts to suggest that neither the ideas embedded in these terms nor the idea of Bharatavarsha as a whole are "given entities," but that they evolved historically. Professor Chattopadhyaya examines these texts to unveil historical processes. Without denying comparative history, he stresses that the internal dynamics of a society are best decoded via its own texts. His approach bears very effectively on understanding ongoing interactions between India's "Great Tradition" and "Little Traditions." As a whole, this book is critical of the notion of overarching Indian unity in the ancient period. It punctures the retrospective thrust of hegemonic nationalism as an ideology that has obscured the diverse textures of Indian civilization. Renowned for his scholarship on the ancient Indian past, Professor Chattopadhyaya's latest collection only consolidates his high international reputation.

Jainism

Jainism PDF Author: Jeffery D. Long
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 0857736566
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 171

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Book Description
Jainism evokes images of monks wearing face-masks to protect insects and mico-organisms from being inhaled. Or of Jains sweeping the ground in front of them to ensure that living creatures are not inadvertently crushed: a practice of non-violence so radical as to defy easy comprehension. Yet for all its apparent exoticism, Jainism is still little understood in the West. What is this mysterious philosophy which originated in the 6th century BCE, whose absolute requirement is vegetarianism, and which now commands a following of four million adherents both in its native India and diaspora communities across the globe?In his welcome new treatment of the Jain religion, Long makes an ancient tradition fully intelligible to the modern reader. Plunging back more than two and a half millennia, to the plains of northern India and the life of a prince who - much like the Buddha - gave up a life of luxury to pursue enlightenment, Long traces the history of the Jain community from founding sage Mahavira to the present day. He explores asceticism, worship, the life of the Jain layperson, relations between Jainism and other Indic traditions, the Jain philosophy of relativity, and the implications of Jain ideals for the contemporary world. The book presents Jainism in a way that is authentic and engaging to specialists and non-specialists alike.

Indian Asceticism

Indian Asceticism PDF Author: Carl Olson
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0190225327
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
Using religio-philosophical discourses and narratives from epic, puranic, and hagiographical literature, Indian Asceticism focuses on the powers exhibited by ascetics of India from ancient to modern time.

Heroic Wives Rituals, Stories and the Virtues of Jain Wifehood

Heroic Wives Rituals, Stories and the Virtues of Jain Wifehood PDF Author: M. Whitney Kelting
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190452862
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
Although in Hinduism it is mainly used to refer to widow immolation, the term 'sati' means 'true woman' - a female hero. Whitney Kelting has learned that in Jainism satis appear as subjects of devotional hymns. This seems paradoxical, given that Jain spirituality is to disengage oneself from worldly existence and Jain devotionalism is usually directed toward those souls who have reached perfect detachment. In fact, however, there is a vast corpus of popular texts, many of them written by prominent scholar-monks between the 16th and 18th centuries, illustrating the distinctly worldly virtues of devoted Jain wives. In this fieldwork-based study, Kelting explores the ways in which Jain women use sati narratives and rituals to understand wifehood as a choice, which these women's ongoing ritual practices continually shape. She focuses on eight well-known Jain sati narratives, recorded in both formal ritual contexts and in informal retellings, and also as read aloud from printed versions. She finds that one of the principal functions of Jain sati narratives is to contribute to a discourse of wifehood, which addresses the concerns of Jain laywomen within the Jain value system and provides a fertile context in which Jain women can explore their questions of virtue and piety.

Parables in Changing Contexts

Parables in Changing Contexts PDF Author: Marcel Poorthuis
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004417524
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 356

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Book Description
In Parables in Changing Contexts, new venues in the comparative study of parables are addressed by scholars of Judaism, New Testament, Buddhism and Islam. Essays cover parables in the synoptic Gospels, Rabbinic midrash, and parabolic tales and fables in the Babylonian Talmud. Three essays address parables in Islam and Buddhism. The volume shows how parables are suitably adapted in terms of form and rhetoric to enhance religious identity formation. Parables serve as media, as sensational forms making the sacred present, albeit encoded or riddled, in all cases invoking the listener’s active interpretative participation and cultural imagination. Adapting a multidisciplinary approach to these gems of storytelling, parables in a particular way provide new insights in the cultures that produced them.

Yoga Powers

Yoga Powers PDF Author: Knut A. Jacobsen
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004214313
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 532

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Book Description
A neglected topic in the research on yoga and meditation traditions, the extraordinary capacities called yoga powers are at the core of the religious imagination in the history of religions in South Asia. Yoga powers explained the divine, the highest gods were thought of as great yogins, and since major religious traditions considered their attainment as an inevitable part of the salvific process the textual traditions had to provide rational analyses of the powers. The essays of the book provide a number of new insights in the yoga powers and their history, position and function in the Hindu, Buddhist and Jain traditions, in classical Yoga, Haṭha Yoga, Tantra and Śaiva textual traditions, in South Asian medieval and modern hagographies, and in some contemporary yoga traditions.

Nagabharana: Recent Trends in Jainism Studies

Nagabharana: Recent Trends in Jainism Studies PDF Author: Prof.Dr.PEDARAPU CHENNA REDDY
Publisher: Blue Rose Publishers
ISBN: 9356114463
Category : Young Adult Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 464

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Book Description


The Jains

The Jains PDF Author: Paul Dundas
Publisher: Psychology Press
ISBN: 0415266068
Category : Jainism
Languages : en
Pages : 369

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Book Description
"This revised and expanded edition takes account of new research into Jainism as carried out over the last ten years."--BOOK JACKET.