Introductory Note Foreword, Wendy Doniger Prologue 1: Beginnings 2: Monsoon Rain 3: Adjustments 4: Durga 5: Festival Day 6: Surpanakha 7: The Choosing 8: The Peacock Garden 9: The Competition 10: Wearing the Red Line 11: Soil and Suffering 12: News 13: The First Sights 14: The Fight 15: In the Arms of a Tree 16: Departure 17: Sadness 18: Tapestries 19: Holding on and Letting Go 20: Out the Gates 21: Devadatta 22: Splendour 23: The Return 24: Overcoming Obstacles 25: Departures Study Questions Notes
Combines fictional narrative with scholarly analysis to introduce the story of the Buddha from the unique perspective of his wife, Yasodhara, whom he abandons to find enlightenment.
Vanessa R. Sasson is Professor of Religious Studies in the Liberal and Creative Arts Department of Marianopolis College, Canada. She is the author of The Birth of Moses and the Buddha: A Paradigm for the Comparative Study of Religions (2007), co-editor of Imagining the Fetus: The Unborn in Myth, Religion, and Culture (2009), and editor of Little Buddhas: Children and Childhoods in Buddhist Texts and Traditions (2013).
Sasson's Yasodhara and the Buddha explores the emotional dimensions
to the story of the Buddha while also making new connections in
familiar material ... to brilliant effect.
*Times Literary Supplement*
Yasodhara and the Buddha by Professor Sasson is a seminal and
original contribution to Buddhism literature in terms of the life
of the Buddha. An inherently fascinating, impressively informative,
exceptionally well written, and thoroughly entertaining, Yasodhara
and the Buddha is especially and unreservedly recommended for
community, college and university library collections.
*Midwest Book Review*
Sasson’s book is a page-turner, an enchanting fairytale, and at the
same time grounded in the realities of the human condition. I was
captured and pulled into the events of a time and place to which I
was already predisposed. It opened my eyes to the human side of
Buddha’s story.
*Shambhala Times*
Vanessa R. Sasson combines the spirit of fiction with the beauty of
Indian mythology and in-depth academic research. She shares the
evocative story of the Buddha from the perspective of a forgotten
woman: Yasodhara, the Buddha’s wife.
*Integral Yoga Magazine*
Yasodhara and the Buddha is splendid for conjuring visions of
floating, of gods and a tree watching over Buddha, of doors of
flowers in the forests, or of love walking in the form of a man as
it speaks about human ways of comprehending life.
*Asian Book of Reviews*
A feminist rendering of an ancient myth, Yasodhara and the Buddha
lovingly revives the story of the Buddha’s spouse for modern
readers. Written by a religious scholar, the novel comes complete
with scholarly sources, tracing its roots to the tradition of epic
Indian religious storytelling. Marvellous.
*Historical Novel Society*
Sasson creates a more vibrant story world by borrowing historical
information and rich imagination, making the images of Yasodhara
and the Buddha more three-dimensional and distinctive. ... [T]his
book is highly innovative, with a unique research perspective and a
lively and readable story.
*Religious Studies Review*
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