nameandnature

My wife has been blogging about ancient literature. She's started with The Epic of Gilgamesh and moved on to the Old Testament, starting with the similarities between the Flood and creation stories in Genesis and Gilgamesh. More will be appearing on scribb1e's journal in future.

As part of some sort of cultural exchange programme, I've been reading Bhikkhu Nanamoli's The Life of the Buddha, a telling of the Buddha's life using excerpts from the Pali canon. It's interesting, although very strange in places, mostly because of the cosmology of the time. I think it could do with a glossary explaining some of the Pali words which Nanamoli chose not to translate. I'd not realised the Buddha had superpowers (he regularly reads minds, and occasionally does cool stuff like preventing a robber from catching him even though the robber's running as fast as he can), or that lots of supernatural beings were present at his birth. I'll probably write more about it when I've finished it.