Reinventing the Wheel: Paintings of Rebirth in Medieval Buddhist Temples - Hardcover

Teiser, Stephen F.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0295986492 ISBN 13: 9780295986494

Publisher: University of Washington Press, 2007

Synopsis

Awarded the Prix Stanislas Julien by the Academie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres

The Wheel of Rebirth is one of the most basic and popular images in Buddhist visual culture. For nearly two thousand years, artists have painted it onto the porches of Buddhist temples; preachers have used it to explain karmic retribution; and philosophers have invoked it to illuminate the contrast between ignorance and nirvana. In Reinventing the Wheel, noted scholar Stephen F. Teiser explores the history and varied interpretations of the Wheel of Rebirth, a circle divided into sections depicting the Buddhist cycle of transmigration.

Combining visual evidence with textual sources, Reinventing the Wheel shows how the metaphor of the wheel has been interpreted in divergent local traditions, from India to Tibet, Central Asia, and China. Teiser deftly shows how written and painted renditions of the wheel have animated local architectural sites and religious rituals, informing concepts of time and reincarnation and acting as an organizing principle in the cosmology and daily life of practicing Buddhists.

Engaging and accessible, this uniquely pan-Buddhist tour will appeal to anyone interested in Buddhist culture, as well as to scholars of religious studies, art history, architecture, philosophy, and textual studies.

About this title

Review:

A milestone in the scholarship on Buddhism. This book will remain a standard and definitive account of the subject for a long time to come. It is hard to imagine that any serious student of Buddhism can afford to neglect this book.

Author: Eugene Wang, Harvard University

From the Author:

Stephen F. Teiser is D. T. Suzuki Professor in Buddhist Studies, Princeton University. He is the author of The Ghost Festival in Medieval China

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Washington Press
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 0295986492
• ISBN 13: 9780295986494
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 336