Sunday, August 21, 2022

The Monkey King by Shobha Viswanath

I've decided to just starting blogging about books from my own bookshelf that are available also at the Internet Arcive, in addition to the African/Diaspora project I'm working on. So, to get that started, here's a lovely book from India: The Monkey King by Shobha Viswanath.


The gorgeous artwork is by Uma Krishnaswamy, who gives a nice explanation of the traditions she is working with (click on the image for a larger view):


Here you can see the good monkey-king trying to make a bridge for the monkeys to use to escape to the other side of the river:


The story is from a famous Buddhist jataka tale (more about jatakas), the Mahakapi jataka, or "Great Monkey" jataka. You can read more about that at Wikipedia, which features this 2nd-century-BCE sculpture


So, if you are curious to read a Buddhist jataka tale, this lovely children's book is a great place to start:

by Shobha Viswanath




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