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Of Ancestors and Ghosts : How Preta Narratives Constructed Buddhist Cosmology and Shaped Buddhist Ethics by Adeana McNicholl; Assistant Professor of Religious Studies Adeana McNicholl is a nonfiction available to read on EtoBox.

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In Buddhist cosmology, preta s make up one of several categories of rebirth. They are best known as "hungry ghosts," pitiful beings with miniscule mouths and bloated stomachs whose state of extreme starvation is a result of stinginess and immorality in a former life. But they were not always portrayed in this way. Of Ancestors and Ghosts traces the construction of the Buddhist realm of the preta s through narrative literature composed in Pali and Sanskrit in the first millennium of Buddhism's development in South Asia. By exploring issues such as where the departed go after they die, how the living can assist the dead in the next world, and how the departed fits into a karmic cosmology, Buddhist monks used these stories to construct the preta realm and, with it, Buddhist cosmology as we know it today. In the process they established themselves as religious experts concerning the dead. Of Ancestors and Ghosts illustrates the importance of narrative for the construction of religious cosmologies, showing that cosmologies come into formation over a long, cumulative process. Far from being simple morality tales, preta literature helped develop and articulate Buddhi

Who reads Of Ancestors and Ghosts : How Preta Narratives Constructed Buddhist Cosmology and Shaped Buddhist Ethics?

Author

Adeana McNicholl; Assistant Professor of Religious Studies Adeana McNicholl

Publisher

Oxford University Press, Incorporated

Published

2024

Language

EN

ISBN

9780197748909

Category

nonfiction

Subjects

Science, Religion, History