(Part 2) Best asian literary history & criticism books according to redditors

This is inaccurate. None of the major shrines ever existed to protect anyone from anything, they were all troublemakers.

Sōhei as a phenomenon were a great source of conflict and strife. If you read sources like the Heike Monogatari, you will find that as early as the 1180s (and right through into the sengoku jidai) entire monasteries effectively fielded armies and regularly fought one another over trifles. Sticking with the Heike Monogatari, it tells us that the Enryaku-ji and Mii-dera temples were heavily involved in the Gempei War, with not a few "monks" being thugs who just wanted to fight and merely shaved their hair to do so.

If you read the Helen Craig McCulloch translation, in chapter one you will find the section [15] "Petitioning with Sacred Palanquins [Mikoshi], which neatly illustrates how the Sōhei terrorised cities like Kyoto by generally trashing them then leaving behind portable shrines as a kind of a spiritual threat (to interpolate, the threat is the anger of spirits or gods contained within if the townsfolk fight back). It also partially reflects that the samurai as an institution only got going because of the Sōhei doing things like this, insamuch as house Taira and house Minamoto are only converged on the capital to guard the gate from these monks, who probably have as much to do with spirituality as I do to goat-juggling. You need to read between the lines, though, because epics like the Heike were usually an oral tradition passed down by monks.

Source: http://www.amazon.com/The-Tale-Heike-Helen-McCullough/dp/0804718032/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1341343180&sr=8-1&keywords=heike+monogatari

Really damn good as secondary reading: http://www.amazon.com/Samurai-Sacred-Stephen-Turnbull/dp/B005IUTGXO/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1341343212&sr=1-1&keywords=samurai+and+the+sacred

Lydia Liu wrote a book called "Translingual Practice: Literature, National Culture, and Translated Modernity-China, 1900-1937" (link below) that discusses the purposeful mistranslation of the Chinese character "yi" by the British. "Yi" refers to outsiders or foreigners, and can be used in a derogatory way to mean "barbarian". Many non-Chinese cultures were referred to as "yi", usually with descriptors, like "The Barbarians of the East", or "The Large Eyed Barbarians". Liu theorizes that the British purposefully translated "yi" as barbarian in order to take offense, and use that offense as a justification for the various invasions/political machinations that Britain perpetrated in China, particularly in the Opium War period.

(Link to the book on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Translingual-Practice-Literature-Translated-Modernity-China/dp/0804725357/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1373953389&sr=1-2)

Okay so

I'll divide this into a few sections, assuming you can only speak English and want books in a somewhat reasonable price range.

Though if you're at uni or have access to a uni library: make the most of it.

Oh yeah before I forget, as a general rule, if you're reading an explanation or exploration of a culture's beliefs or stories, find something written by someone who comes from the actual culture if you can. It's always best as a foreigner to have your first insight being from someone who's grown up with it. Avoid people like Alan Watts like the fucking plague. Though of course actual academics on the mythology and religion generally write quite well about them.

First up, Shintoism.

The perfect primer for Japanese mythology is the oldest book extant in Japan's history: the Kojiki. In English, you really cannot go past the Philippi translation. It is incredibly comprehensive with cross referencing and explaining basically any term you could want to know. Philippi explains the history of the book, the intracies of the language involved, and competing theories regarding contentious points alongside with the translation. The one downside here is that it's rather pricey. The book is out of print due to copyright issues, so you can only really get it for around $100 at the lowest. Still, it's a pretty great resource. A word of warning though, there are a lot of boring chapters in the Kojiki if you're interested in myths. Part of the reason why the Kojiki and the Nihongi were commissioned at the time was to legitimise imperial rule, so you have a lot of chapters that just talk about lineage, connecting the Imperial family back to Amaterasu. "Emperor Steve was born in this year, had six kids with three wives and died. He was succeeded by Emperor Greg." Stuff like that.

If you want something that isn't a primary text and is a little more accessible, The Kami Way is supposed to be quite good. It's very cheap, written by two academics (one from Japan one from the West), and quite short, making it easy to dive into. The one downside is that it's a little old, so its scholarship might not be quite as current as some other books.

Next up, Hinduism.

Hinduism is fucking terrifying to tackle because there is just so much stuff on it. Keep in mind that Hinduism is more a collection of belief systems than one unified belief system, keep in mind that it has an incredibly well preserved written and oral history, keep in mind that it's an offshoot of one of the oldest attested religions on Earth... there's a lot here.

and then you have the five hundred books written by western people about the TRUE way to Awaken Your Chakras

Now two of the most important texts here are the Rig Veda and the Upanishads. The Rig Veda is one of the oldest religious texts in the world, a collection of religious hymns. Until recently, there was no good full translation into English. Sure you can find one on the Sacred Texts website but... it's crap from 19th century England. Scholarship was not the same then as it is now. However, in 2014, an absolutely fantastic resource was completed. It is the full Rig Veda, unabridged, with commentary on every single one of over a thousand hymns. The poetry sings, the commentary is insightful... and it costs 400 american dollars all up. I only got to read these through my university library.

There's a few good Upanishad translations for cheap though. A lot shorter too, normally clocking it at only around 500 pages. I picked one up from Oxford World's Classics. This is pretty essential if you want to understand what the Brahman concept from Digital Devil Saga actually is.

In terms of a general introduction though, probably this book is the best. It's a pretty thorough overview that covers the history of Hinduism from ancient times to today, the mythology of it, etc.

Next, Buddhism.

Buddhism has a similar problem to Hinduism in terms of scope, though somewhat less pronounced, as Buddhism is genuinely just one belief system, separated into sects that are much more comparable to Christianity's variations. You do probably get even more "Namaste Bro" type people with Buddism than you do Hinduism though.

My knowledge here isn't as much up to scratch though, as up til now I've read more about the practice and history of Buddhism as opposed to going in depth about the mythology and cosmology of it all, which I only really know on a very superficial level. I'm trying to change that right now though; it's super interesting to learn what Hindu gods became in the Buddhist belief system, and how they evolved further upon reaching Japan.

If you're looking more into the mythology side of things, don't read something like the Dhammpada, which is a sayings text. Of course it's interconnected, but you'll probably want something a bit more direct.

I'd recommend again going to an academic text rather than straight into the three baskets. And in this case, I'd recommend this book, which I picked up purely because of a certain coincidence and have found very interesting. By framing it around the cosmology of Buddhism, this book naturally leads into talking about Buddhist deities, and other things you're more likely to be interested in, without skimping on explanation about how this connects to the Buddhist belief system.

Finally, Taoism

all i can recommend you here is the tao te ching and the zhuangzi, get them with a good commentary, i don't know enough about other texts that explain taoism to recommend any

That's about what I'd recommend. If anyone wants to suggest any improvements to this list please do!

If you're especially interested in Tamil, David Shulman's "biography" of the language is exceptionally interesting, though dense with detail: https://www.amazon.com/Tamil-Biography-David-Shulman/dp/0674059921

I've used the same site for translations for all of my writeups (Mostow). Sometimes I've used Porter's in my Poem of the Day comments if I didn't like how Mostow interpreted them, but yeah never for these ones. The meanings are usually close enough and I don't usually go into great depth explaining the poems beyond face value in these writeups.

I'm actually not 100% sure what the translations are used in the show, but I'm fairly certain that the CR translations are styled to preserve the "same syllables". I believe /u/walking_the_way mentioned that.

Generally, when looking at these poems, I (and /u/combo33) have been going with dedicated professional translations (Mostow, Porter, MacMillan).

Mostow's book can be found here and all the translations are available for free here, if you're curious about some other poems.

Edit: Porter's is here. I think Combo33 has a physical copy of MacMillan's.

These are really the only three academic books in English covering the Korean language and Korean linguistics that I know of. I've read all three and actually had Prof. Ramsey as an instructor/adviser/mentor. Some of the information in the last two is a little dated (language changes constantly after all), but all are definitely worth reading.

http://www.amazon.com/History-Korean-Language-Ki-Moon-Lee/dp/0521661897/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1376282744&sr=8-1&keywords=A+History+of+the+Korean+Language

http://www.amazon.com/The-Korean-Language-Cambridge-Surveys/dp/0521369436/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1376282775&sr=8-1&keywords=The+Korean+Language

http://www.amazon.com/Korean-Language-Suny-Series-Studies/dp/0791448320/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1376282775&sr=8-2&keywords=The+Korean+Language

EDIT: I should add that these books do cover the creation of Hangul and changes in Korean orthography.

For the record, Meme Theory has lost traction as a science. [Example] (http://cfpm.org/jom-emit/2005/vol9/edmonds_b.html).

There are also a lot of issues in which "Memes" only work as metaphors for "ideas" and "signs" in a semiotic sense. In that way, it should only work within theories of literature. But it doesn't because the Humanities are kind of closed off from scientific communities and vice versa. (This is a different case for Japan. See this book for example. Another academic decided to concentrate on the relationship between literature and science with the novelist Kobo Abe. Kojima has repeatedly cited Abe as an influence on the Metal Gear Solid series).

On the other hand, Meme Theory evolved--so to say--into other areas like "Network Theory" and the digital humanities. Franco Moretti concentrates on a theory of literature that approaches it from a Darwinist and Evolutionary perspective. In all seriousness, narratives and "literature" are what MGS2 are about.

I've just recently bought a copy, only mine was part of an anthology with three other classic Chinese wisdom texts: https://www.amazon.com/Four-Chinese-Classics-Analects-Mencius/dp/1619028344

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I figured it would be helpful to read all of those translated by the same translator (David Hinton) - he also has a translation of the I Ching, however it is stand-alone. I've thoroughly enjoyed his translation and can't recommend the book I linked enough.

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To those asking, I think of the Tao Te Ching as the Art of War for everyday life (although the Art of War can also be applied in every day life). The nice feature of the anthology I linked is that he also comments on context and such, which is very helpful as someone who has no clue about Chinese wisdom texts or history and culture.

我以前用那本书学文言文
https://www.amazon.com/Du-Handbook-Classical-Chinese-Grammar/dp/1904623743

Good point, sorry I didn't tag this well. The author's name is Han Yong-Un, but his pen name is Manhae. I only know of two books Everything Yearned For and Love's Silence but I'm not sure if you would find this poem in them. Sorry...

He is a very well known Buddhist poet and independence activist, I did choose a fairly..unknown (?) poem though because I liked it >.<

For a Japanese commoner's perspective of the Russo-Japanese War, try Clouds Above the Hill by Shiba Ryotaro. This historical novel covers all the way from the beginning of the societal changes in the Meiji Restoration all the way to the victory over the Russians in 1905.

(I'm quite surprised it's finally got an English translation, having seen the NHK historical drama adaptation on TV a few years ago)

http://www.amazon.com/The-Zen-Works-Stonehouse-14th-Century/dp/1582434913

That's the version I have, not sure why it's ridiculously expensive. Here is a cheap version

http://www.amazon.com/Mountain-Stonehouse-English-Chinese-Edition/dp/1556594550/ref=pd_sim_b_1?ie=UTF8&refRID=1N3QD35871VPXWHFVAJN

Stonehouse has been called “the greatest of all Zen monks who made poetry their medium of instruction.” His works have rarely been available in English, but now all of the hermit monk’s poetry, including the major poetic works, “Mountain Poems” and “Gathas,” as well as his most illuminating instructional dharma talks, can be read in Red Pine’s superb translations.

>I used those as examples because, as far as I can see any relationship between your philosophy/rhetoric and Buddhism, they would appear to be in contradiction of each other. But that doesn't mean I'm interested in debating the merits of the n-word or its implications for Buddhism.

If you're not interested in debating whether using rhetoric such as the n-word is in contradiction to Buddhism or not then this shouldn't be introduced into a discussion.

>All I want to know is what your beliefs are, and how they relate to Buddhism. For example: Do you accept the Four Noble Truths? Do you practise the Noble Eightfold Path?

I think you are asking this genuinely. And in order to respond genuinely requires a very long answer. I'm working on some posts as a general catch-all to these types of questions but they aren't done.

My short answer is that I come to religion or philosophies like religion through inductive reasoning, not faith. This means I support primary sources so long as they demonstrate efficacy in the real world and preferably over a long historical period. I have little respect for a pure authoritarian faith driven approaches like Abrahamic religions.

I think the Four Noble Truths and the Noble Eightfold Path demonstrate efficacy as memes. However I think the western interpretation and application of these memes is in some cases intentionally perverted and in other cases just unsustainable. The foreign application of these memes are closer to the original spirit (if there is verifiably such a thing) but not necessarily developed enough to be dynamically applied in different areas or times to reflect a more principled rather than literal approach.

Since there is also no single school of Buddhism or canon the question is a bit broad. Since I'm driven by pragmatism over faith, I am studying sources from both the Pali canon and Mahayana canons. This means that my ultimate views will necessarily be eclectic rather than based on one school. So I will always be in violation of some school, which is fine with me. As an example I'm currently reading Ārya-Satyakaparivarta sutra, which endorses defensive warfare. But this so far seems like a conflict in Theravada Buddhism.

Buddhism: Beginner's Guide... by Michael Williams will give you a nice overview.

Buddhism: Beginner's Guide to Understanding & Practicing Buddhism to Become Stress and Anxiety Free (Buddhism, Mindfulness, Meditation, Buddhism For Beginners) https://www.amazon.com/dp/1537410008/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_U-HODbJHF38YG

Get　some　Genkoyoushi　graph　paper,　and　invest　in　the　brush　pens　(easily　obtained　for　quite　inexpensive from amazon) and start practicing. There numerous sheets online that you can print off and put under your graph paper that will show you proper strokes.

http://japanese-lesson.com/resources/pdf/characters/hiragana_writing_practice_sheets.pdf

This site has some great practice sheets: http://www.guidetojapanese.org/learn/

https://www.amazon.com/Japanese-Writing-Practice-Book-Genkouyoushi/dp/1521363579/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1549132597&sr=8-1&keywords=genkouyoushi

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I've used it a bit. I went through Translating Buddhism from Tibetan cover to cover, though, and my personal trick was to do all the exercises, not move on until I feel I've mastered an exercise, and to not really worry much about the vocabulary.

I can get disheartened by a lot of memorization so I just use a dictionary when I don't know a word. As vocab words keep coming up. I eventually know them without peeking.


This may not be the best approach for everyone, but I work mostly with scriptural rather than colloquial Tibetan so instant recall of terms is not as critical for me.

If you have time to get it and read it before the lesson, try Ezra Pound's The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry. He basically uses Chinese writing as a basis for Imagism, which was a crucial form for many Modernists, including himself, William Carlos Williams, Amy Lowell, etc.

In the 1920s & '30s, Imagism via Chinese writing was a hip way of writing. I imagine it would be interesting to the students that their language was tapped by American poets.

There's a great collection of poetry from buddhist nuns of this time period and beyond, Daughters of Emptiness

>Its because theres this weird concept in India where they actually think they are white

No one thinks they are 'white', sadly fair skin is preferred here.

>Im not kidding theres like clothing stores in India named aftet Hitler

There is, but the owner confessed that he didn't know who Hitler was. 'Hitler' is used to describe strict people in India.

>Its because back in the day the British classified half of India as Caucasian (which it is) but they forgot to tell the Indians that Caucasian does not necsessarily mean White

Will need a source on that.

>only refers to skull shape.

Skull shape comes under 'Scientific racism' which is a pseudoscience.

>It reminds me of when White people claim they're Aryans (which they kinda are) but it specifically refers to the Iranian people who are the real Aryans (they're just called Iran - which basically means "Arya").

Never heard about this in any serious discussion. Arya(=Nobel), it is widely contested that were they even a race? Even if they existed, people are so mixed that there are no 'real Aryans'. I can suggest a great book by Dorothy Figueira- Aryans, Jews, Brahmins: Theorizing Authority Through Myths of Identity

Gitanjali by Rabindranath Tagore

http://www.amazon.com/Gitanjali-Collection-Indian-Poems-Laureate/dp/0684839342