Friday, 13 September 2019, 5.30 p.m.

Room B103, Brunei Gallery Building
School of Oriental and African Studies
Thornhaugh Street
Russell Square
London WC1H OXG

ALL ARE WELCOME

ABSTRACT
Jātakas or “stories of past lives of the Buddha” form an important and popular part of Buddhist scriptures, both for the Buddhist tradition itself and modern scholarship. The only surviving canonical collection of jātakas is that of the Theravādins included in the Pāli canon. In the literary genre of the īs traditional jātakas have been adapted and transformed into new stories composed in the style of classical Indian poetry (kāvya). Thus it is to be expected that a comprehensive canonical collection such as the Pāli Jātaka, or some very similar collection, exerted a certain influence on the writers of jātakamālās. The lecture tries to illustrate the quite different degree of influence traditional jātakas as found in the Pāli Jātaka had on the works of Āryaśūra and Haribhaṭṭa respectively, even though both poets are otherwise closely linked representatives of the genre of the jātakamālās.