Grains of Gold
★★★★★
★★★★★
Regular price
€51.99
Regular price
€52.99
Sale
Sale price
€51.99
20th century
A01=Gendun Chopel
Age Group_Uncategorized
Age Group_Uncategorized
Author_Gendun Chopel
automatic-update
B06=Donald S. Lopez Jr.
B06=Thupten Jinpa
british colony
buddhism
Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=HBJF
Category=HBLW
Category=HRE
Category=NHF
Category=QRF
china
classics
colonialism
COP=United States
customs
dalai lama
Delivery_Delivery within 10-20 working days
dharma king asoka
drawings
dynasty
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_non-fiction
ethnography
exoticism
folklore
gupta
history
illustrations
india
Language_English
legend
lhasa
linguistics
maps
modernity
mount girnar
native plants
nonfiction
PA=Available
pala
pilgrimage
political prisoner
Price_€20 to €50
PS=Active
religion
sacred sites
sanskrit
singhala
snow mountains
softlaunch
south asia
spirituality
sri lanka
tibet
tibetan language
tirthikas
travelogue
treason
Product details
- ISBN 9780226091976
- Weight: 794g
- Dimensions: 16 x 23mm
- Publication Date: 17 Jan 2014
- Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
- Language: English
Delivery/Collection within 10-20 working days
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In 1941, philosopher and poet Gendun Chopel (1903-51) sent a large manuscript by ship, train, and yak across mountains and deserts to his homeland in the northeastern corner of Tibet. He would follow it five years later, returning to his native land after twelve years in India and Sri Lanka. But he did not receive the welcome he imagined: he was arrested by the government of the regent of the young Dalai Lama on trumped-up charges of treason. He emerged from prison three years later a broken man and died soon after. Gendun Chopel was a prolific writer during his short life. Yet he considered that manuscript, which he titled Grains of Gold, to be his life's work, a book to delight his compatriots with tales of an ancient Indian and Tibetan past, while alerting them to the wonders and dangers of the strikingly modern land abutting Tibet's southern border, the British colony of India. Now available for the first time in English, Grains of Gold is a unique compendium of South Asian and Tibetan culture that combines travelogue, drawings, history, and ethnography.
Gendun Chopel describes the world he discovered in South Asia, from the ruins of the sacred sites of Buddhism to the Sanskrit classics he learned to read in the original. He is also sharply, often humorously critical of the Tibetan love of the fantastic, bursting one myth after another and finding fault with the accounts of earlier Tibetan pilgrims. Exploring a wide range of cultures and religions central to the history of the region, Gendun Chopel is eager to describe to his Buddhist audience in Tibet all the new knowledge he gathered in his travels. At once the account of the experiences of a tragic figure in Tibetan history and the work of an extraordinary scholar, Grains of Gold is an accessible, compelling book animated by a sense of discovery of both a distant past and a strange present.
Thupten Jinpa is adjunct professor at McGill University in Montreal. He has translated and edited numerous books and is the author, most recently, of Essential Mind Training. Donald S. Lopez Jr. is the Arthur E. Link Distinguished University Professor of Buddhist and Tibetan Studies at the University of Michigan.
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