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Buddhist literature


The original teaching in its ethical basis gave rise to great literature. It began to take shape in the monasteries of India in its various languages, and after the advancement of Muslims to the Ganges valley, the destruction of monasteries and the escape of surviving monks – in the monasteries of Tibet, Burma and Sri Lanka. The codification of the Buddhist texts occurred on this island, considered earlier the abode of rakshasas and the place of the great victory over them of Rama.
The scientist Buddhagosha, who lived in Sri Lanka in the 5th century. translated the Buddhist canon from Sinhalese prakrita into the language of Pali and, apparently, reworked it. This canon consisted of three parts, called “baskets” (pitak), since manuscripts written on specially processed palm leaves were folded into baskets and stored there. In one of the baskets, along with Buddhist accents, sermons and teachings, reasoning of a philosophical and religious nature, collected hymns

of monks and nuns, works of high poetry, as well as “Jataka” – a collection of first tales (about III century BC. .) about reincarnations of the Buddha. The poetic passages of a secular nature included in it are ascribed to the Buddhagosh himself. Since the time of the first jataka, this genre of ancient Indian literature (prose, alternating with verses) has become widespread. Their plot is based on fables and fairy tales about animals, parables, historical legends.
The life of India was also reflected in small lyrical poems written by monks and nuns, gathas – “Thera-gatha” and “Theri-gatha”, the greatest works of world lyric poetry. But the main thing is the subtle transmission of experiences of people who have left the worldly vanity, discovered the beauty of nature, the purity of friendship, the joy of spiritual enlightenment. Truly a treasury of wisdom was the “Dhammapada” in which the abstract ethical ideas of Buddhism are transmitted in the form of aphorisms selected in such a way that they fit into one sense line, complementing each other.
In
Sanskrit, there were written some sutras – the arches of laconic aphoristic utterances, which reached us in Chinese and Tibetan translations. For mythology, the most important are “Lalitavestar” (a description of Buddha’s life, immeasurably more colorful than in the Pali versions), “The Lotus of the Good Law” is a collection of dialogues of theological content, “Description of the Happy Land” (about the Buddhist “paradise” where the righteous grow in lotuses before the throne of the Buddha), “Entry into Lanka.” Many mythological elements are contained in the commentaries to the canonical Buddhist texts, in the biographies of Buddhist disciples turned into mythological characters. The most valuable source for the study of Buddhist mythology are the monuments of Buddhist art, complementing and developing the literary narrative by depictive means.


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Buddhist literature
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