The Yogin and the Madman: Reading the Biographical Corpus of Tibet''s Great Saint Milarepa
ISBN: 9780231535533
Platform/Publisher: JSTOR / Columbia University Press
Digital rights: Users: unlimited; Printing: chapter; Download: chapter
Subjects: Mi-la-ras-pa 1040-1123; Lamas -- Tibet Region -- Biography -- History and criticism; Biography as a literary form;

Tibetan biographers began writing Jetsun Milarepa's (1052-1135) life story shortly after his death, initiating a literary tradition that turned the poet and saint into a model of virtuosic Buddhist practice throughout the Himalayan world. Andrew Quintman traces this history and its innovations in narrative and aesthetic representation across four centuries, culminating in a detailed analysis of the genre's most famous example, composed in 1488 by Tsangny#65533;n Heruka, or the "Madman of Western Tibet." Quintman imagines these works as a kind of physical body supplanting the yogin's corporeal relics.

Andrew Quintman is assistant professor in the Department of Religious Studies at Yale University.

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