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Head, Eyes, Flesh, Blood : Giving Away the Body in Indian Buddhist Literature / Reiko Ohnuma.

By: Material type: TextTextPublisher: New York, NY : Columbia University Press, [2006]Copyright date: ©2006Description: 1 online resource (392 p.) : 9 illusContent type:
Media type:
Carrier type:
ISBN:
  • 9780231137089
  • 9780231510288
Subject(s): DDC classification:
  • 294.3/42 22
LOC classification:
  • BQ1029.I42 O56 2007
  • BQ1029.I42 O56 2007
Other classification:
  • online - DeGruyter
Online resources: Available additional physical forms:
  • Issued also in print.
Contents:
Frontmatter -- Contents -- Illustrations -- Tables -- Conventions Used in This Book -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- I. The Gift-of-the-Body Genre -- II. Conventions of Plot -- III. Conventions of Rhetoric -- IV. Dāna: The Buddhist Discourse on Giving -- V. A Flexible Gift -- VI. Bodies Ordinary and Ideal -- VII. Kingship, Sacrifice, Offering, and Death: Some Other Interpretive Contexts -- Conclusions -- Appendix: A Corpus of Gift-of-the-Body Jātaka -- Notes -- Bibliography of Works Cited -- Index
Summary: Head, Eyes, Flesh, and Blood is the first comprehensive study of a central narrative theme in premodern South Asian Buddhist literature: the Buddha's bodily self-sacrifice during his previous lives as a bodhisattva. Conducting close readings of stories from Sanskrit, Pali, Chinese, and Tibetan literature written between the third century BCE and the late medieval period, Reiko Ohnuma argues that this theme has had a major impact on the development of Buddhist philosophy and culture.Whether he takes the form of king, prince, ascetic, elephant, hare, serpent, or god, the bodhisattva repeatedly gives his body or parts of his flesh to others. He leaps into fires, drowns himself in the ocean, rips out his tusks, gouges out his eyes, and lets mosquitoes drink from his blood, always out of selflessness and compassion and to achieve the highest state of Buddhahood. Ohnuma places these stories into a discrete subgenre of South Asian Buddhist literature and approaches them like case studies, analyzing their plots, characterizations, and rhetoric. She then relates the theme of the Buddha's bodily self-sacrifice to major conceptual discourses in the history of Buddhism and South Asian religions, such as the categories of the gift, the body (both ordinary and extraordinary), kingship, sacrifice, ritual offering, and death. Head, Eyes, Flesh, and Blood reveals a very sophisticated and influential perception of the body in South Asian Buddhist literature and highlights the way in which these stories have provided an important cultural resource for Buddhists. Combined with her rich and careful translations of classic texts, Ohnuma introduces a whole new understanding of a vital concept in Buddhists studies.
Holdings
Item type Current library Call number URL Status Notes Barcode
eBook eBook Biblioteca "Angelicum" Pont. Univ. S.Tommaso d'Aquino Nuvola online online - DeGruyter (Browse shelf(Opens below)) Online access Not for loan (Accesso limitato) Accesso per gli utenti autorizzati / Access for authorized users (dgr)9780231510288

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Illustrations -- Tables -- Conventions Used in This Book -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- I. The Gift-of-the-Body Genre -- II. Conventions of Plot -- III. Conventions of Rhetoric -- IV. Dāna: The Buddhist Discourse on Giving -- V. A Flexible Gift -- VI. Bodies Ordinary and Ideal -- VII. Kingship, Sacrifice, Offering, and Death: Some Other Interpretive Contexts -- Conclusions -- Appendix: A Corpus of Gift-of-the-Body Jātaka -- Notes -- Bibliography of Works Cited -- Index

restricted access online access with authorization star

http://purl.org/coar/access_right/c_16ec

Head, Eyes, Flesh, and Blood is the first comprehensive study of a central narrative theme in premodern South Asian Buddhist literature: the Buddha's bodily self-sacrifice during his previous lives as a bodhisattva. Conducting close readings of stories from Sanskrit, Pali, Chinese, and Tibetan literature written between the third century BCE and the late medieval period, Reiko Ohnuma argues that this theme has had a major impact on the development of Buddhist philosophy and culture.Whether he takes the form of king, prince, ascetic, elephant, hare, serpent, or god, the bodhisattva repeatedly gives his body or parts of his flesh to others. He leaps into fires, drowns himself in the ocean, rips out his tusks, gouges out his eyes, and lets mosquitoes drink from his blood, always out of selflessness and compassion and to achieve the highest state of Buddhahood. Ohnuma places these stories into a discrete subgenre of South Asian Buddhist literature and approaches them like case studies, analyzing their plots, characterizations, and rhetoric. She then relates the theme of the Buddha's bodily self-sacrifice to major conceptual discourses in the history of Buddhism and South Asian religions, such as the categories of the gift, the body (both ordinary and extraordinary), kingship, sacrifice, ritual offering, and death. Head, Eyes, Flesh, and Blood reveals a very sophisticated and influential perception of the body in South Asian Buddhist literature and highlights the way in which these stories have provided an important cultural resource for Buddhists. Combined with her rich and careful translations of classic texts, Ohnuma introduces a whole new understanding of a vital concept in Buddhists studies.

Issued also in print.

Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.

In English.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 02. Mrz 2022)