Ascetics And Brahmins

This volume brings together papers on Indian ascetical institutions and ideologies published by Patrick Olivelle over a span of about thirty years. Asceticism represents a major strand in the religious and cultural history of India, providing some of the most creative elements within Indian religions and philosophies. Most of the major religions, such as Buddhism and Jainism, and religious philosophies both within these new religions and in the Brahmanical tradition, were created by world-renouncing ascetics. Yet ascetical institutions and ideologies developed in a creative tension with other religious institutions that stressed the centrality of family, procreation and society. It is this tension that has articulated many of the central features of Indian religion and culture. The papers collected in this volume seek to locate Indian ascetical traditions within their historical, political and ideological contexts.

This volume brings together papers on Indian ascetical institutions and ideologies published by Patrick Olivelle over a span of about thirty years.

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Rules and Regulations of Brahmanical Asceticism is the critical edition and translation of a twelfth-century Sanskrit text written by Yadava Prakasaa, whose life and activities are of historical interest because, according to tradition, he was the teacher of the great Vais'n'ava theologian Ramanuja. This text is the oldest and most comprehensive example of medieval Sanskrit literature devoted to examining the duties of ascetics. Yadava Prakasaa is the only one who explicitly examines the thorny question of whether asceticism is a legitimate way of life for Brahmins. His topics include the people qualified to become ascetics; the rite for becoming an ascetic; the clothes and belongings of an ascetic; techniques of meditation; daily routines such as bathing, divine worship, and begging; proper conduct and etiquette; the manner of wandering; residence during the rains; expiatory penances; and the funeral. In his introduction, Patrick Olivelle examines the place of Yadava's text within the literary and institutional history of Brahman'ical asceticism. He discusses the origins of asceticism in India; its incorporation into the Brahman'ical mainstream; and its variations within Hindu sects, as well as in Buddhist and Jain traditions.

This 2006 book is an innovative study of warrior asceticism in India from the 1500s to the present.

This volume offers a complete translation of the Samyutta Nikaya, The Connected Discourses of the Buddha, the third of the four great collections in the Sutta Pitaka of the Pali Canon. The Samyutta Nikaya consists of fifty-six chapters, each governed by a unifying theme that binds together the Buddha's suttas or discourses. The chapters are organized into five major parts. The first, The Book with Verses, is a compilation of suttas composed largely in verse. This book ranks as one of the most inspiring compilations in the Buddhist canon, showing the Buddha in his full grandeur as the peerless "teacher of gods and humans." The other four books deal in depth with the philosophical principles and meditative structures of early Buddhism. They combine into orderly chapters all the important short discourses of the Buddha on such major topics as dependent origination, the five aggregates, the six sense bases, the seven factors of enlightenment, the Noble Eightfold Path, and the Four Noble Truths. Among the four large Nikayas belonging to the Pali Canon, the Samyutta Nikaya serves as the repository for the many shorter suttas of the Buddha where he discloses his radical insights into the nature of reality and his unique path to spiritual emancipation. This collection, it seems, was directed mainly at those disciples who were capable of grasping the deepest dimensions of wisdom and of clarifying them for others, and also provided guidance to meditators intent on consummating their efforts with the direct realization of the ultimate truth. The present work begins with an insightful general introduction to the Samyutta Nikaya as a whole. Each of the five parts is also provided with its own introduction, intended to guide the reader through this vast, ocean-like collection of suttas. To further assist the reader, the translator has provided an extensive body of notes clarifying various problems concerning both the language and the mean

In Alcohol in Early Java: Its Social and Cultural Significance, Jiří Jákl offers an account of the history of alcohol in pre-Islamic Java (9-15th C.E.).

The Majjhima Nikāya (abbreviated MN) or Collection of the Buddha's Intermediate Discourses is a collection of 152 discourses in the Pāli canon. The word "intermediate" refers to the length of each individual discourse. It contains a wide variety of teachings presented as narratives between the Buddha and a wide range of his contemporaries. The collection parallels the Madhyamāgama (MA) of the Sarvāstivāda school, which survives as a translation in the Chinese canon. The Collection of the Buddha's Intermediate Discourses is the best known collection among the four Nikāyas containing original suttas. This popularity may be due to the fact that it mixes biographical anecdotes with very superficial doctrinal content as opposed to the Saṁyutta Nikāya. This Intermediate Collection contains scattered and undisguised apocryphal suttas of petty intentionality, introduced very late, which detracts from its luster and credibility. However, it is interesting to note the value of the biographical references for the sake of contextualizing the Buddha in the world in which he lived. This first sub-collection, called The First Fifty, contains fifty suttas and is divided into five chapters: the Chapter on the Root of All Things, the Chapter on the Roar of the Lion, the Chapter on Similes, the Chapter on Pairs and the Minor Chapter on Pairs. We can highlight in this subcollection the suttas, MN 4 Fear and Awe, MN 26 The Noble Quest and MN 36 Great Discourse with Saccaka, which refer to the way in which the Buddha became enlightened, as well as autobiographical indications about his origin, who he was and the reasons why he forbade being called by his name. Also relevant are MN 10 The Four Instructions of Practice, MN 16 Mental Obstructions and MN 17 The Thickness of the Jungle. On the spurious side, MN 20 How to Stop Thinking, which exposes a false technique and also highlights the suttas MN43 and MN 44 which are anachronistic catechisms that seem to be made to explain doctrine in the form of questions and answers.