Imagining a Place for Buddhism: Literary Culture and Religious Community in Tamil-Speaking South India

ISBN-13: 9780195139990 / Angielski / Twarda / 2001 / 272 str.

Anne Elizabeth Monius

Opis

While Tamil-speaking South India is celebrated for its preservation of Hindu tradition, other religious communities have played a significant role in shaping the region's religious history. Among these non-Hindu communities is that of the Buddhists, who are little-understood because of the scarcity of remnants of Tamil-speaking Buddhist culture. Here, focusing on the two Buddhist texts in Tamil that are complete (a sixth-century poetic narrative and an eleventh-century treatise on grammar and poetics), Monius sheds light on the role of literature and literary culture in the formation, articulation, and evolution of religious identity and community.

Recenzje

Anne Monius has produced a learned and detailed book on the insufficiently studied subject of Buddhism in South India, which greatly enriches our knowledge of the religious life of the early medieval Tamil-speaking region.