Title Reading the Mahāvaṃsa : the literary aims of a Theravāda Buddhist history / Kristin Scheible

Published New York : Columbia University Press, [2016]

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Description 1 online resource (viii, 223 pages) Series South Asia across the disciplines South Asia across the disciplines. Contents Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- A Note On Transliteration And Translation -- Introduction -- 1. Instructions, Admonitions, And Aspirations In Vamsa Proems -- 2. Relocating The Light -- 3. Nāgas, Transfigured Figures Inside The Text, Ruminative Triggers Outside -- 4. Nāgas And Relics -- 5. Historicizing (In) The Pāli Dīpavaṃsa and Mahāvaṃsa -- Conclusion -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index Summary Vamsa is a dynamic genre of Buddhist history filled with otherworldly characters and the exploits of real-life heroes. These narratives collapse the temporal distance between Buddha and the reader, building an emotionally resonant connection with an outsized religious figure and a longed-for past. The fifth-century Pali text Mahavamsa is a particularly effective example, using metaphor and other rhetorical devices to ethically transform readers, to stimulate and then to calm them. Reading the Mahavamsa advocates a new, literary approach to this text by revealing its embedded reading advice (to experience samvega and pasada) and affective work of metaphors (the Buddha's dharma as light) and salient characters (nagas). Kristin Scheible argues that the Mahavamsa requires a particular kind of reading. In the text's proem, special instructions draw readers to the metaphor of light and the nagas, or salient snake-beings, of the first chapter. Nagas are both model worshippers and unworthy hoarders of Buddha's relics. As nonhuman agents, they challenge political and historicist readings of the text. Scheible sees these slippery characters and the narrative's potent and playful metaphors as techniques for refocusing the reader's attention on the text's emotional aims. Her work explains the Mahavamsa's central motivational role in contemporary Sri Lankan Buddhist and nationalist circles. It also speaks broadly to strategies of reading religious texts and to the internal and external cues that give such works lives beyond the page Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index Notes In English Online resource; title from digital title page (viewed on October 13, 2016) Subject Mahānāma, active 5th century. Mahāvaṃsa SUBJECT Mahāvaṃsa (Mahānāma) fast Subject Buddhist literature, Pali -- History and criticism RELIGION / Comparative Religion Buddhist literature, Pali Therawada Genre/Form Criticism, interpretation, etc. Form Electronic book LC no. 2016038697 ISBN 9780231542609 0231542607 0231171382 9780231171380

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