Renunciant Stories across Traditions: A Novel Approach to the Acts of Thomas and the Buddhist Jātakas

Renunciant Stories across Traditions: A Novel Approach to the Acts of Thomas and the Buddhist JātakasSyriaca.org: The Syriac Reference PortalThe National Endowment for the HumanitiesThe International Balzan Prize FoundationDavid A. Michelsoncbsc_adminRecord added to Zotero bycbsc_adminSyriaca.org: The Syriac Reference Portalhttp://syriaca.org/cbss/CVRM9LI9/tei

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2024-08-15-04:00

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CREATED: This bibl record was autogenerated from a Zotero record.VishmaKunuRenunciant Stories across Traditions: A Novel Approach to the Acts of Thomas and the Buddhist Jātakashttp://syriaca.org/cbss/CVRM9LI9https://www.zotero.org/groups/a_comprehensive_bibliography_on_syriac_studies/items/CVRM9LI9https://www.zotero.org/groups/4861694/items/CVRM9LI92018This study brings excerpts from the Acts of Thomas (Act 1.11-16 and Act 3.30-33) together with two Buddhist jātakas (Udaya Jātaka–#458 and Visavanta Jātaka–#69) to consider how stories might have been transmitted in the early centuries of the common era in a milieu of mercantile exchange on the Indian Ocean. The Acts of Thomas is a 3rd century CE Syriac Christian text concerned with the apostle Thomas proselytizing in India. The jātakas are popular didactic narratives with a pronounced oral dimension that purport to be accounts of the Buddha’s previous lives. Syriac Christians possessed knowledge about Indian religious practices linked to renunciation, and it is plausible that they adapted Buddhist jātakas to convey Christian ideas in the account of Thomas journeying to India and converting people there. Epigraphic evidence from the western Deccan in India attests to yavana, or Greek, patronage of Buddhist institutions in cosmopolitan settings where ideas and commodities circulated. Against the grain in scholarship on early Christianity that tends to privilege Latin and Greek sources, this project moves the lens of analysis eastward to consider Indian influence on early Christianity as expressed in the Acts of Thomas. A literary comparison of the texts under consideration with reference to the historical and cultural context of exchange reveals similar models of renunciant practices in Buddhism and Christianity that establishes new grounds for consideration of interconnectivity across ‘East’ and ‘West.’ Kunu, Vishma. “Renunciant Stories across Traditions: A Novel Approach to the Acts of Thomas and the Buddhist Jātakas.” Ph.D. dissertation, Temple University, 2018. Vishma Kunu, Renunciant Stories across Traditions: A Novel Approach to the Acts of Thomas and the Buddhist Jātakas (Ph.D. dissertation, Temple University, 2018).Acts of ThomasBuddhismI-III CEIII CEIndiaNT apocryphaasceticismcomparativetrade