The Heavenly Exploits: Buddhist Biographies from the Divyavadana (Hardcover )

The Heavenly Exploits: Buddhist Biographies from the Divyavadana Book Description

"The books line up on my shelf like bright Bodhisattvas ready to take tough questions or keep quiet company. They stake out a vast territory, with works from two millennia in multiple genres: aphorism, lyric, epic, theater, and romance."
--Willis G. Regier, "The Chronicle Review"

"No effort has been spared to make these little volumes as attractive as possible to readers: the paper is of high quality, the typesetting immaculate. The founders of the series are John and Jennifer Clay, and Sanskritists can only thank them for an initiative intended to make the classics of an ancient Indian language accessible to a modern international audience."
--"The Times Higher Education Supplement"

"The Clay Sanskrit Library represents one of the most admirable publishing projects now afoot. . . . Anyone who loves the look and feel and heft of books will delight in these elegant little volumes."
--"New Criterion"

"Published in the geek-chic format."
--"BookForum"

"Very few collections of Sanskrit deep enough for research are housed anywhere in North America. Now, twenty-five hundred years after the death of Shakyamuni Buddha, the ambitious Clay Sanskrit Library may remedy this state of affairs."
--"Tricycle"

aNow an ambitious new publishing project, the Clay Sanskrit Library brings together leading Sanskrit translators and scholars of Indology from around the world to celebrate in translating the beauty and range of classical Sanskrit literature. . . . Published as smart green hardbacks that are small enough to fit into a jeans pocket, the volumes are meant to satisfy both the scholar and the lay reader. Each volume has a transliteration of the original Sanskrit texton the left-hand page and an English translation on the right, as also a helpful introduction and notes. Alongside definitive translations of the great Indian epics -- 30 or so volumes will be devoted to the Maha-bharat itself -- Clay Sanskrit Library makes available to the English-speaking reader many other delights: The earthy verse of Bhartri-hari, the pungent satire of Jayanta Bhatta and the roving narratives of Dandin, among others. All these writers belong properly not just to Indian literature, but to world literature.a
--"LiveMint"

aThe Clay Sanskrit Library has recently set out to change the scene by making available well-translated dual-language (English and Sanskrit) editions of popular Sanskritic texts for the public.a
--"Namarupa"

"A fine addition to an esteemed series. . . . Tatelman has a fine appreciation for lively storytelling, and his work corrects the tendency to neglect this important means of conveying the teachings--a tendency that has long characterized the field of Buddhist studies, despite the fact that monastic libraries across the Buddhist world are chock-full of these kinds of tales. . . . Tatelman's translation makes for a particularly good study aid in that it is faithful to the Sanskrit (which is printed on facing pages) without much loss of elegance. The syntax of the English approximates that of the Sanskrit, which makes for easy Sanskrit training. Given the paucity of adequate Sanskrit textbooks (not to mention texts useful for the student of Buddhist hybrid Sanskrit), this volume thus stands out as an excellent teaching tool."
--"H-Buddhism@H-Net"

This selection of religious biographies from the early centuries C.E. offers adelightful introduction to a literary genre that has played an essential part in Buddhist self-understanding for over two thousand years.

The Heavenly Exploits are "Buddhist Biographies from the Divyavadana." The worldly face of religious literature, these lively morality tales have inspired audiences across Asia for more than two millennia. This volume contains four of the thirty-eight Buddhist biographical stories in the "Divyavadana," or Heavenly Exploits. Where religion meets the world, these tales present something for everyone.

Co-published by New York University Press and the JJC Foundation

For more on this title and other titles in the Clay Sanskrit series, please visit http: //www.claysanskritlibrary.org

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