Avadānas
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Called “apadāna” in Pali, these are mostly rebirth stories about people other than the Buddha: most notably the past-life biographies of the great disciples.
Caution! Under Construction
Please be aware that this tag is still under construction and as such is missing information and may be changed or removed at any time. For all the content under consideration for this tag, see the “Avadānas” folder on Google Drive.
Table of Contents
Books (4)
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The only complete translation of the Pāli Apadāna.
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This dissertation offers a comprehensive treatment of the textual sources of the Nandimitrāvadāna, a Buddhist narrative which is deemed an authoritative source for the cult of the Elders or Arhats in Central and East Asia. It is not only the first monographic study of this narrative and its textual history, but also the first systematic disquisition on living texts from the Buddhist tradition, a type of Buddhist texts that seem to lack a stable text-form and a unitary authorship. Putting all the three (i.e., Khotanese, Tibetan, Chinese) versions of the Nandimitrāvadāna under philological and historical scrutiny, the dissertation draws attention to the interplay between the fluid text and the cultic practice, and sheds light on the complexity of the tradition as well as the reception of the narrative in various cultural spheres.
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Readings (18)
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A general introduction to the collection.
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A couple pages from the first century BCE containing summaries of eleven Avadāna stories, including one authorizing the use of magic seals and one on the practice of self-immolation.
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Despite its richness as a source for one of the lost schools of Indian Buddhism (the Sarvāstivāda), and its potential contributions to our understanding of the development of narrative and ideology in early Buddhism more generally, the Avadānaśataka has never been fully translated into English.
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This article is a comparison and translation of a story found in the Mūlasarvāstivāda-vinaya, preserved in both Chinese and Tibetan manuscripts.
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Surveying pre-Gupta inscriptions, it becomes clear that the aspiration for nirvana has one recurring feature attached to it; the aspiration of the donor for the attainment of nirvana — whether for themselves or others — occurs when the donation is connected in some way or another to the relics or figural or non-figural representations of the historical Buddha. This suggests that the idea of being in the Buddha’s presence grew in importance in relation to the efficacy of religious practice in this period. The same ideas can be seen emerging in the later canonical Pali Apadana, and connect to developments in the emergence of Mahayana.
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The Buddhāpadāna further develops the concept of Buddha-field, in that it speaks of innumerable Buddha-fields in all ten directions in the multiverse. Thus the Apadānas clearly show the line of development from the concept of merit-field in the early Suttas to the Pure Land systems of later Mahāyāna.
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Their presence in an avadāna collection forces us to reflect upon what it might mean to be both a jātaka and an avadāna.
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For most of the women who became foremost leading disciples, or etadagga sāvikā, of the Buddha Gotama, it was not only their meeting with a past buddha, but also their seeing the Buddha together with an awakened woman, a leading bhikkhunī disciple of the Buddha, that truly stimulated their inspiration and galvanized their aspiration.
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Visiting the caves of Ajanta in October 1969, I had the pleasure to identify another artistic representation of the Sudhana story.
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