The king despairs of his idle sons, so he hires a learned brahmin who promises to make their lessons in statecraft unmissable. The lessons are disguised as short stories, featuring mainly animal protagonists. Many of these narratives have traveled across the world, and are known in the West as Aesop’s fables. Co-published by New York University Press and the JJC Foundation For more on this title and other titles in the Clay Sanskrit series, please visit http://www.claysanskritlibrary.org

Naráyana’s best-seller gives its reader much more than “Friendly Advice.” In one handy collection—closely related to the world-famous Pañcatantra or Five Discourses on Worldly Wisdom —numerous animal fables are interwoven with human stories, all designed to instruct wayward princes. Tales of canny procuresses compete with those of cunning crows and tigers. An intrusive ass is simply thrashed by his master, but the meddlesome monkey ends up with his testicles crushed. One prince manages to enjoy himself with a merchant’s wife with her husband’s consent, while another is kicked out of paradise by a painted image. This volume also contains the compact version of King Víkrama’s Adventures, thirty-two popular tales about a generous emperor, told by thirty-two statuettes adorning his lion-throne. Co-published by New York University Press and the JJC Foundation For more on this title and other titles in the Clay Sanskrit series, please visit http://www.claysanskritlibrary.org

Seminar paper from the year 2013 in the subject Didactics for the subject English - Literature, Works, grade: 1,0, University of Tubingen (Philosophische Fakultät), course: Popular Culture, language: English, abstract: Representing the Holocaust in a comic book is a daring enterprise; doing it with animal figures is even bolder. Spiegelman's work Maus braves many conventions of dealing with the Holocaust but reconstructs it in an unprecedented and unique manner. By exceeding literary boundaries and generic expectations, it is thus an essential addition to Holocaust literature. [...] This paper analyzes the animal metaphor in Spiegelman's Maus. It examines and discusses the different spheres in which the functions of the animal metaphor become evident. First, this paper traces back to the origins of using animals in literature. After a brief historical introduction of the sources and the development of animal figures, chapter 2 explains their literary function and their significance in comic books. Chapter 3 delivers a brief overview of Maus. It includes a synopsis of the comic's plot as well as a summary of its reception. Chapter 4, the main part of this paper, investigates the various functions and receptions of the animal metaphor in Maus from different perspectives. In chapter 4.1, Spiegelman's personal explanations reveal how Maus's animal characters function for him as a second generation witness. Chapter 4.2 focuses upon these implications brought into play with the use of the mask. A further subject, discussed in chapter 4.3, is how the animal imagery serves as a distancing and defamiliarizing device in order to deal with the horror of the Holocaust. Chapter 4.4 discusses the interconnection between both features. In chapter 4.5, the examination tries further to comprehend how the animal metaphor contributes to the reconstruction of ethnicity and identity in Maus. Since any analysis of a comic book must not neglect its visual dimension, chapter 4.6 considers Maus's drawing style and the significance of its visual representation. Maus has attracted many critics and its reception has been diverse and manifold. Target of the criticism has been especially the use of animals as substitutes for human beings. Chapter 4.7 examines and discusses Maus's animal device from a critical point of view regarding its incongruities and problems brought into play with the association of human beings and animals. The last chapter summarizes the insights of the analysis and discusses in what way Maus's animal metaphor strikes a new path in the conception and reconstruction of the Holocaust.

When Go·várdhana composed his "Seven Hundred Elegant Verses" in Sanskrit in the twelfth century CE, the title suggested that this was a response to the 700 verses in the more demotic Prakrit language traditionally attributed to King Hala, composed almost a thousand years earlier. Both sets of poems were composed in the arya metre. Besides being the name of a metre, in Sanskrit arya means a noble or elegant lady, and Go·várdhana wished to reflect and appeal to a sophisticated culture. These poems each consist of a single stanza, almost as condensed and allusive as a Japanese haiku. They cover the gamut of human life and emotion, though the favorite topic is love in all its aspects. Co-published by New York University Press and the JJC Foundation For more on this title and other titles in the Clay Sanskrit series, please visit http://www.claysanskritlibrary.org

Inside Wat Si Chum are 86 inscribed stone reliefs depicting jatakas, former lives of Gotama Buddha. This book presents the latest evidence and porposes new interpretations. It offers the first-ever English translation of the inscriptions, photographs of the reliefs supplemented by 19th century jataka paintings from Wat Khrua Wan, Bangkok, essys on all aspects of the temple and a discussion of the significance of jataks in international Buddhist literature, art and ideology.--Back cover.

In this second volume of the Garland of Past Lives, Aryashura applies his elegant literary skill toward composing fourteen further stories that depict the Buddha’s quest for enlightenment in his former lives. Here the perfection of forbearance becomes the dominant theme, as the future Buddha suffers mutilations from the wicked and sacrifices himself for those he seeks to save. Friendship, too, takes on central significance, with greed leading to treachery and enemies transformed into friends through the transformative effect of the future Buddha’s miraculous virtue. The setting for many such moral feats is the forest. Portrayed as home for the future Buddha in his lives as an animal or ascetic, the peaceful harmony of this idyllic realm is often violently interrupted by intrusions from human society. Only the future Buddha can resolve the ensuing conflict, influencing even kings, in the stories but also throughout Asian history, to express wonder and devotion at the startling demonstrations of virtue they encounter.

V.1. "'Bhishma, ' the sixth book of the eighteen-book epic "Maha·bhárata," narrates the first ten days of the great war between the Káuravas and the Pándavas. This first volume covers four days from the beginning of the great battle and includes the famous "Bhagavad Gita" ("Song of the Lord"), presented here within its original epic context. In this "bible" of Indian civilisation the charioteer Krishna empowers his disciple Árjuna to resolve his personal dilemma: whether to follow his righteous duty as a warrior and slay his opponent relatives in the just battle, or to abstain from fighting and renounce the warrior code to which he is born. The "Gita" culmintates in Krishna's theophany, when he reveals himself in the horrendous form of Death as the all-devouring fire of Time, a manifestation famously echoed by Oppenheimer when he witnessed the first atom bomb exploding.