The Character of “Character” in Early South Asian Religious Narratives: An Introductory Essay

摘要

This essay introduces the five subsequent articles, all of which focus onnone or more literary characters from South Asian religious narratives.nCovering examples from source texts found in Hinduism, Buddhism,nand Jainism, this essay will introduce the main characters discussed innthe subsequent articles, examine some general features pertaining tonthe “character” of literary characters in South Asian religious narra-ntives, identify some of the scholarly trends and issues in examiningncharacter in South Asian religious literature, and highlight our particu-nlar contributions to this endeavor. For specialists in South Asian reli-ngious traditions, we hope this collection of papers can help open upnsome new avenues of research; for those readers who focus on otherntraditions, we hope these papers can help bring to attention some ofnthe wonderfully complex and engaging literary characters that populatenthe sources of South Asian religious traditions, and provoke analogousnwork on other traditions and other areas.