Overview

The foremost way in which the Buddha lives both in Buddhist tradition and in the popular imagination is as a literary character. Whatever we know about him is an amalgamation of his various life-stories and portrayals across a vast range of texts, old and new. This volume acknowledges the plurality of ways in which authors have characterized the Buddha down the centuries and across cultures, beginning with ancient India, through wider Asian contexts, and then globally into modernity. Contributions to the volume offer case studies of different literary recreations of the Buddha that both preserve and create, drawing upon prior heritage yet constantly reimagining the figure of Śākyamuni - understood to be a 'teacher of gods and men' - for new audiences and settings. The volume's chapters examine the Buddha as a figure who lives and changes through literary accounts of his character, life and deeds. From ancient Magadha to modern Mexico, these studies draw out of Buddhist stories what we can learn about the different yet overlapping interests and concerns - political, philosophical, social and otherwise - of authors who brought to life the individual who has been the centre of Buddhist thought and practice for two and half millennia.

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9781800508750

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Christopher V. Jones is a Bye-Fellow of Selwyn College, and affiliated lecturer and research associate at the Faculty of Divinity, University of Cambridge. A primary focus of his research is the history of Mahayana Buddhist thought in the early centuries of the Common Era, preserved in Sanskrit, Chinese, and Tibetan literature. Naomi Appleton is Senior Lecturer in Asian Religions at the University of Edinburgh. Her primary research interest is the role of narrative in the construction, communication and challenge of religious ideas in early India, and she has published extensively on this area, including Jātaka Stories in Theravāda Buddhism (Ashgate 2010), Narrating Karma and Rebirth (CUP 2014), Shared Characters in Jain, Buddhist and Hindu Narrative (Routledge 2017), as well as translations of Buddhist narrative and numerous articles on related themes.

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