Publication at Faculty of Arts |
2020
Abstract
The article deals with answers to such questions as why among numerous biographies of the Tibetan Buddhist saint Milarepa (1040-1123) the one written by Tsangnyon Heruka in approx. 1488, i.e. more than three centuries after Milarepa's death, became the most popular, and why it is perceived as authentic. After a short introduction, reader is given an idea how this problem was solved by Andrew Quintman who translated the Tsangnyon's text into English and apart from that he analysed it in his well-known book The Yogin and the Madman (2014).
Furthermore, the article suggests a possibility to read the first three chapters of the text as a move (chod) according to the Propp's Morphology of Folktale (1958).