The Yogin and the Madman: Reading the Biographical Corpus of Tibet's Great Saint Milarepa
Andrew Quintman
Abstract
Tibetan biographers began writing Jetsun Milarepa's (1052–1135) life story shortly after his death, initiating a literary tradition that turned the poet and saint into a model of virtuosic Buddhist practice throughout the Himalayan world. This book traces this history and its innovations in narrative and aesthetic representation across four centuries, culminating in a detailed analysis of the genre's most famous example, composed in 1488 by Tsangnyön Heruka, or the “Madman of Western Tibet.” The book imagines these works as a kind of physical body supplanting the yogin's corporeal relics.
Keywords: death, Tibetan biographers, Jetsun Milarepa, literary tradition, Buddhist practice, Himalaya, Tsangnyön Heruka
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2013 | Print ISBN-13: 9780231164153 |
| Published to Columbia Scholarship Online: November 2015 | DOI:10.7312/columbia/9780231164153.001.0001 |
