The Yogin and the Madman: Reading the Biographical Corpus of Tibet's Great Saint Milarepa

The Yogin and the Madman: Reading the Biographical Corpus of Tibet's Great Saint Milarepa
ISBN-10
0231535538
ISBN-13
9780231535533
Category
Religion
Pages
336
Language
English
Published
2013-11-05
Publisher
Columbia University Press

Description

Tibetan biographers began writing Jetsun Milarepa's (1052–1135) life story shortly after his death, initiating a literary tradition that turned the poet and saint into a model of virtuosic Buddhist practice throughout the Himalayan world. Andrew Quintman traces this history and its innovations in narrative and aesthetic representation across four centuries, culminating in a detailed analysis of the genre's most famous example, composed in 1488 by Tsangnyön Heruka, or the "Madman of Western Tibet." Quintman imagines these works as a kind of physical body supplanting the yogin's corporeal relics.

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