Lilavai
Lilavai

Author: Kouhala

Publisher: Murty Classical Library of India

Published: 2021-01-05

Total Pages: 448

ISBN-13: 9780674247598

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"The Prakrit romance Låilåavaåi, an early ninth-century poem attributed to Kouhala and set in modern-day coastal Andhra Pradesh, is the most celebrated work in the genre. Complexly narrated in the alternating voices of its heroines and heroes and featuring a cast of semi-divine and magical beings, it centers on three young women: Låilåavaåi, princess of Sinhala (today's Sri Lanka); her cousin Mahanumai, princess of the mythical city Alaka; and Kuvalaavali, Mahanumai's adopted sister. Following a prophecy that Låilåavaåi's husband will rule the earth, the princess happens upon a portrait of King Hala of Pratishthana and immediately falls in love. While journeying to meet him, she hears her cousins' tales of their lost loves, and then vows not to marry until they are reunited. To win Låilåavaåi's hand, King Hala journeys to the underworld, faces monsters, and overcomes armies. Låilåavaåi explores themes of karma and female desire, notably privileging women as storytellers. A new edition of the Prakrit text, presented in the Devanagari script, accompanies a new English prose translation"--

Buddha's Words for Tough Times
Buddha's Words for Tough Times

Author: Peter Skilling

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2024-02-20

Total Pages: 556

ISBN-13: 1614299021

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Twenty translations from the vast corpus of Buddhist literature come alive in this full-color anthology of ancient wisdom for turbulent times, as a master scholar uncovers their sources and significance. Change and loss have always been part of the human condition, but in today’s world, the pace and intensity of uncertainty has reached new extremes. The Buddha observed the truth of impermanence more than 2,500 years ago and diagnosed the source of the anxiety it engenders so incisively that his prescription still resonates and heals here and now. In Buddha’s Words for Tough Times, Peter Skilling, one of the world’s foremost authorities on Buddhist scripture, brings the reader face to face with the wealth of Buddhist literature, from a teaching in a single word, to a seminal collection of verses on impermanence, to narrations of the Buddha’s teaching journeys across the Gangetic Plain. Translating from sources in Tibetan, Sanskrit, and Pali, he uncovers the complex history of the vast writings of the Buddhist canons, and his skill in revealing the meaning of twenty gems from within those riches brings them alive for English readers. We could have no better guide for this exploration, an exploration whose value is more urgent than ever.

Indian Kavya Literature
Indian Kavya Literature

Author: Anthony Kennedy Warder

Publisher: Motilal Banarsidass Publ.

Published: 1994

Total Pages: 670

ISBN-13: 9788120804494

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It is multi-volume series work. The main pupose of this work is literary criticism, evaluating a great tradition of literature and to present comprehensive study of sanskrit literature. So far 6 volumes have been published. Each volume presents literature itself in successive periods of its development. This fourth volume describes in more detail the extensive literature preserved from the 7th and 8th centuries. These centuries are relatively rich in extant movels, including those of Bana, Dandin, Kutuhala, Haribhadra and Uddyotana, from which we at last get a fairly full view of the scope of this genre in medieval India. The greatest Indian critics, writing in the 11th century, found the literature of these two centuries, and especially the plays of Harsa, Narayana, Matraraja and Bhavabhuti, of exceptional interest for such theories as those of the aesthetic development of emotions, and consequently provide us with very detailed analyses, here brought together for the first time. This suggests a distinctive character for the period here presented and a subtitle for the present volume. Historically it matches the rise of a new political system after the collapse of the Gupta Empire. The masterpieces of Matraraja, Kutuhala and Uddyotana, recently recovered from neglected manuscripts, are described in this volume, also the restored epic of Kumaradasa and the partly restored novel of Dandin.

Theft of a Tree
Theft of a Tree

Author: Nandi Timmana

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2024-02-13

Total Pages: 225

ISBN-13: 0674297415

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The first English translation of a thousand-year-old story of Krishna and his wife Satyabhama, retold by the most famous court poet of the Vijayanagara Empire. Legend has it that the sixteenth-century Telugu poet Nandi Timmana composed Theft of a Tree, or Pārijātāpaharaṇamu, to help the wife of Krishnadevaraya, king of the south Indian Vijayanagara Empire, win back her husband’s affections. Timmana based his work on a popular millennium-old Krishna tale. Theft of a Tree recounts how Krishna stole the wish-granting pārijāta tree from the garden of Indra, king of the gods. Krishna takes the tree to please his favorite wife, Satyabhama, who is upset when he gifts his chief queen a single divine flower. After battling Indra, he plants the pārijāta for Satyabhama—but she must perform a rite temporarily relinquishing it and her husband to enjoy endless happiness. This is the first English translation of the poem, which prefigures the modern Telugu novel with its unprecedented narrative unity.

Language of the Snakes
Language of the Snakes

Author: Andrew Ollett

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2017-10-10

Total Pages: 324

ISBN-13: 0520968816

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A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press’s Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. Language of the Snakes traces the history of the Prakrit language as a literary phenomenon, starting from its cultivation in courts of the Deccan in the first centuries of the common era. Although little studied today, Prakrit was an important vector of the kavya movement and once joined Sanskrit at the apex of classical Indian literary culture. The opposition between Prakrit and Sanskrit was at the center of an enduring “language order” in India, a set of ways of thinking about, naming, classifying, representing, and ultimately using languages. As a language of classical literature that nevertheless retained its associations with more demotic language practices, Prakrit both embodies major cultural tensions—between high and low, transregional and regional, cosmopolitan and vernacular—and provides a unique perspective onto the history of literature and culture in South Asia.

The Encyclopedia of the Novel
The Encyclopedia of the Novel

Author: Peter Melville Logan

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2014-02-11

Total Pages: 803

ISBN-13: 111877907X

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Now available in a single volume paperback, this advanced reference resource for the novel and novel theory offers authoritative accounts of the history, terminology, and genre of the novel, in over 140 articles of 500-7,000 words. Entries explore the history and tradition of the novel in different areas of the world; formal elements of the novel (story, plot, character, narrator); technical aspects of the genre (such as realism, narrative structure and style); subgenres, including the bildungsroman and the graphic novel; theoretical problems, such as definitions of the novel; book history; and the novel's relationship to other arts and disciplines. The Encyclopedia is arranged in A-Z format and features entries from an international cast of over 140 scholars, overseen by an advisory board of 37 leading specialists in the field, making this the most authoritative reference resource available on the novel. This essential reference, now available in an easy-to-use, fully indexed single volume paperback, will be a vital addition to the libraries of literature students and scholars everywhere.