Imagining a Place for Buddhism: Literary Culture and Religious Community in Tamil-Speaking South IndiaWhile 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. |
Contents
3 | |
1 Reading Manimekalai as Buddhist Literature | 13 |
2 The Manimekalais Community of Readers and Listeners | 58 |
3 The Manimekalais Buddhist Community Envisioned | 87 |
Language Literary Theory and Religious Community | 116 |
5 Imagining Community through Commentary | 137 |
Conclusion | 156 |
Notes | 161 |
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Common terms and phrases
aesthetic almsbowl Amutacurapi Aravanan ascetic Asian audience bad karma birth bowl relic Branch Stories Buddha Buddha-to-be Buddhadatta Buddhaghosa Buddhist community Buddhist text Buddhist world Cankam century chapter characters Cilappatikāram cited classical Tamil Cōla Coliya commentary compassionate composed in Tamil context corpus Cutamati Dandin Dhammapada dharma discussion doctrine early medieval envisioned ētu example Faxian future Buddha goddess grammar Hindu History human Ibid images imagined inscriptions interdependent origination Jain Jātaka Kāńcaṇan Kāńcīpuram Kannaki karma karmic Kāvyādarśa king Kōvalan landscape literary culture literary language lives London Madras Manimekalai Manipallavam Mātavi Maturai monastic monks Nāgas notes ornate poetic Pāli Pali Text Society Pallava Peruntēvaṇār Poems poetic ornamentation poetry previously Pukar region renunciation Richman Śaiva Sanskrit Śiva South India Southeast Asia Sri Lanka Studies Tamil language Tamil literary Tamil Literature Tamil text Tamil-speaking teachings text's themes theory tion Tirukkural Tolkāppiyam tradition trans translation transregional University Press Utayakumaran Vańci verse Viracoliyam vision Xuanzang Zvelebil