Indian Buddhist Literarture

This is the first comprehensive study of a central narrative theme in premodern South Asian Buddhist literature: the Buddha’s bodily self-sacrifice during his previous lives as a bodhisattva. Conducting close readings of stories from Sanskrit, Pali, Chinese, and Tibetan literature written between the third century B.C. and the late medieval period, Reiko Ohnuma argues that this theme has had a major impact on the development of Buddhist philosophy and culture.