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Title
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en_US
Sakyamuni's One Hundred Fables
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Description
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en_US
Language note: Bilingual: English/Chinese
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en_US
Original language: san
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en_US
Translated and annotated by Tetcheng Liao
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Creator
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en_US
Liao, Te-chen
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Date
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2016-01-25T20:10:30Z
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en_US
2011-12
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en_US
1981
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Date Available
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2016-01-25T20:10:30Z
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Date Issued
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en_US
1981
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Abstract
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en_US
Here is a paperback version of 98 Buddhist fables. The book is apparently privately published by the translator. I read the first eleven. They seem to me to be closest to the pious anecdotes we read in hagiographical Christian literature like Rodriguez' The Practice of Perfection and Christian Virtues. They tend to show the folly of mistakes in early spirituality. Typical failures are to do a little something, to find it good, and then to overdo it. Alternatively, one fails and then tries to cover the failure and so compounds the problem. The frequent negative conclusion is that one is laughed at, or as one typo has it, laughted at (2). There are several such typos on the early pages I read. Let me report on three of these first fables. The first fable features a man who finds a little salt helping the flavor of his food. He then eats a great deal of salt on an empty stomach. So some monks find a little fasting good and then overdo their fasting. Fable 9 finds a man praising his father for giving up sexual desires completely from his earliest youth; he is laughed at when people ask how he came to be conceived. Fable 11 presents a Brahman who predicts that his son will die in a week. To save his reputation for accurate predictions, he kills his son and people come to respect him as a prophet. The introduction claims that Aesop's fables teach moral principles, while Sakyamuni's fables illustrate a religious precept to reflect the nature of human being. These latter are thus in this opinion strictly a religious literature. After an epilogue and a list of errata, apparently all the fables are told in Chinese.
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Identifier
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en_US
7557 (Access ID)
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Language
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en_US
eng
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Publisher
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en_US
Apparently privately published
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en_US
Taipei
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Subject
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en_US
BQ5780.S37 1981
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en_US
Sakyamuni Buddha
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en_US
Title Page Scanned
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Type
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en_US
Book, Whole