Speaking of Monks: Religious Biography in Asia

The two essays in this volume explore how monks in medieval India and China wrote about themselves with their fellow monks. The author translates and discusses biographies and autobiographies of two Jain monks, who lives in the 11th and 14th century CE. The book tells us how a community of Chinese Buddhists viewed the life of the founder of their group, and how his biography reflected the changes that the community underwent. The essays are the result of a joint research project on religious biographies in Asia, carried out with assistance from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.