| The Basket of Discourses: The Pali Lyric and its Structure is mainly a critical approach to Buddhist poems composed in India during the sixth through the first century B.C. The thesis is designed especially for the interest of the American reader. The first chapter about the relationship between American and Buddhist literature reminds the reader of the American literary community's growing interest in Buddhist thought. The second chapter--a brief autobiographical precis--means to answer the questions that might predictably arise about the cultural "authority" of the communicator in so comparatively unfamiliar a subject area as this. For the third and the fourth chapters, the research used the original Pali scriptures, their translations, and secondary sources from both the East and the West. This essay is the first literary treatment of those ancient Pali poems. With the introduction of an altogether new literary genre, this evaluation adds a new chapter to Americans' understanding of Asian literature. |
