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Therigatha: Poems of the First Buddhist Women (Murty Classical Library of India)
Charles Hallisey
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Description for Therigatha: Poems of the First Buddhist Women (Murty Classical Library of India)
Hardcover. The Therigatha is a poetry anthology in the Pali language by and about the first Buddhist women. The poems are arguably among the most ancient examples of women's writing in the world and are unmatched for their quality of personal expression and the extraordinary insight they offer into the lives of women in the ancient Indian past. Series: Murty Classical Library of India. Num Pages: 304 pages. BIC Classification: DCF. Category: (G) General (US: Trade). Dimension: 214 x 138 x 22. Weight in Grams: 454.
A stunning modern translation of a Buddhist classic that is also one of the oldest literary texts in the world written by women.
The Therīgāthā, composed more than two millennia ago, is an anthology of poems in the Pali language by and about the first Buddhist women. These women were therīs, the senior ones, among ordained Buddhist women, and they bore that epithet because of their religious achievements. The poems they left behind are arguably among the most ancient examples of women’s writing in the world and they are unmatched for their quality of personal expression and the extraordinary insight they offer into the lives of women in the ancient Indian past—and indeed, into the lives of women as such.
This new version of the Therīgāthā, based on a careful reassessment of the major editions of the work and printed in the Roman script common for modern editions of Pali texts, offers the most powerful and the most readable translation ever achieved in English.
Product Details
Publisher
Harvard University Press
Format
Hardback
Publication date
2015
Series
Murty Classical Library of India
Condition
New
Weight
453g
Number of Pages
336
Place of Publication
Cambridge, Mass, United States
ISBN
9780674427730
SKU
V9780674427730
Shipping Time
Usually ships in 4 to 8 working days
Ref
99-2
About Charles Hallisey
Charles Hallisey is Yehan Numata Senior Lecturer on Buddhist Literatures at Harvard University.
Reviews for Therigatha: Poems of the First Buddhist Women (Murty Classical Library of India)
The Therigatha has a lot of claims on our attention. It is among the first poetry of India; among the first poems by women in India; the first collection of women’s literature in the world. But these claims should not obscure its status as poetry. While the poems embody the world-view and morality of early Indian Buddhism, making them invaluable historical documents, they repay the reader’s attention generously.
Neel Mukherjee
New Statesman
An austere and revelatory compendium of poems composed over two thousand years ago by Buddhist nuns.
Kanishk Tharoor
Los Angeles Review of Books
Therigatha is a collection of Pali poems attributed to the earliest Buddhist nuns. Though it is a part of the major Theravada Buddhist canon and has been well known to scholars for a long time, these beautiful verses haven’t reached the general public who might be interested in Buddhism…We see Buddhists meditating on women’s bodies as they grow old and lose their beauty, but this time the Buddhists in question are women, and their analysis, though rooted in the same assumptions, is markedly different…The poems of the Therigatha are not narratives; rather, they are dialogues, meditations, and songs, and they carry a more intimate tone that is beautifully expressed in Hallisey’s fluid translation. These poems present a cacophony of different voices of women struggling to find themselves in Buddhism against the prevailing assumptions of their day.
Eric M. Gurevitch
Public Books
It is a welcome and significant development that these poems have been included and acknowledged as part of world literature…Hallisey’s book will ensure that this work receives a broader audience. His illuminating introduction gives an admirably distilled historical, literary and metrical history of the verses, placing them both within traditions of Buddhist practice and in the literary forms to which they are notably akin in subsequent Indian poetry.
Sarah Shaw
Religious Studies Review
Therigatha: Poems of the First Buddhist Women is marvelous not only in that it is an archive of poetry in a language no longer in use but also in that it is the world’s first known collection of literary work by women—documenting the aspirations and achievements of women from nearly two thousand years ago. These poems or utterances that introduce their readers to the practice and intricacies of Buddhism also serve as a testament to the multiplicity of faith and cultural experience in the Indian sub-continent.
Pragya Tiwari
India at LSE blog
We can only welcome an undertaking like the Murty Classical Library of India, which intends to inject fresh blood directly into the circulatory system of the English language. Any intelligent reader cannot fail to be favorably impressed in the presence of the variegated offerings of the series’ first titles…The Murty Classical Library offers a surprising array of texts that are in any case capable of broadening the all-too-restricted horizons of the average Western reader.
Roberto Calasso
New York Review of Books
Neel Mukherjee
New Statesman
An austere and revelatory compendium of poems composed over two thousand years ago by Buddhist nuns.
Kanishk Tharoor
Los Angeles Review of Books
Therigatha is a collection of Pali poems attributed to the earliest Buddhist nuns. Though it is a part of the major Theravada Buddhist canon and has been well known to scholars for a long time, these beautiful verses haven’t reached the general public who might be interested in Buddhism…We see Buddhists meditating on women’s bodies as they grow old and lose their beauty, but this time the Buddhists in question are women, and their analysis, though rooted in the same assumptions, is markedly different…The poems of the Therigatha are not narratives; rather, they are dialogues, meditations, and songs, and they carry a more intimate tone that is beautifully expressed in Hallisey’s fluid translation. These poems present a cacophony of different voices of women struggling to find themselves in Buddhism against the prevailing assumptions of their day.
Eric M. Gurevitch
Public Books
It is a welcome and significant development that these poems have been included and acknowledged as part of world literature…Hallisey’s book will ensure that this work receives a broader audience. His illuminating introduction gives an admirably distilled historical, literary and metrical history of the verses, placing them both within traditions of Buddhist practice and in the literary forms to which they are notably akin in subsequent Indian poetry.
Sarah Shaw
Religious Studies Review
Therigatha: Poems of the First Buddhist Women is marvelous not only in that it is an archive of poetry in a language no longer in use but also in that it is the world’s first known collection of literary work by women—documenting the aspirations and achievements of women from nearly two thousand years ago. These poems or utterances that introduce their readers to the practice and intricacies of Buddhism also serve as a testament to the multiplicity of faith and cultural experience in the Indian sub-continent.
Pragya Tiwari
India at LSE blog
We can only welcome an undertaking like the Murty Classical Library of India, which intends to inject fresh blood directly into the circulatory system of the English language. Any intelligent reader cannot fail to be favorably impressed in the presence of the variegated offerings of the series’ first titles…The Murty Classical Library offers a surprising array of texts that are in any case capable of broadening the all-too-restricted horizons of the average Western reader.
Roberto Calasso
New York Review of Books