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Charming Cadavers

Horrific Figurations of the Feminine in Indian Buddhist Hagiographic Literature

Liz Wilson author

Format:Hardback

Publisher:The University of Chicago Press

Published:26th Nov '96

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

Charming Cadavers cover

In this study of sexuality, desire, the body, and women, Liz Wilson investigates first-millennium Buddhist notions of spirituality. She argues that despite the marginal role women played in monastic life, they occupied a very conspicuous place in Buddhist hagiographic literature. In narratives used for the edification of Buddhist monks, women's bodies in decay (diseased, dying, and after death) served as a central object for meditation, inspiring spiritual growth through sexual abstention and repulsion in the immediate world. Taking up a set of universal concerns connected with the representation of women, Wilson displays the pervasiveness of an drocentrism in Buddhist literature and practice.

ISBN: 9780226900537

Dimensions: 23mm x 15mm x 2mm

Weight: 510g

276 pages