[Buddha-l] Mara/Yama

[Stuart Ray Sarbacker]

Friends,

Apologies for the cross-listing if you have seen this query already.

I am currently advising a student that is working 
on issues related to the origins and 
transformations of Mara in Indian Buddhism and 
its descendents. He is particularly interested in 
the continuities and discontinuities between Mara 
in Pali and Sanskrit literature across sectarian 
boundaries, and the precedents of Mara in Vedic 
literature and the personification and role of 
death in tantrism, especially with respect to the 
figure of Yama.

I am pushing an examination of Vedic and 
Upanisadic materials (such as the Katha Up.) and 
he has already begun examining Nikaya literature, 
the Buddhacarita, and Prajñaparamita literature. 
Among secondary sources, he has already looked at 
Trevor Ling's Buddhism and the Mythology of Evil, 
Ernst Windisch's Mara und Buddha, Wendy Doniger's 
Origins of Evil in Hindu Mythology and a broad 
range of critical and sociological literature on 
evil and its symbolism.

I would be extremely grateful for suggestions 
with respect to both primary and secondary 
materials relevant to examining the 
transformations of Mara across the spectrum of 
Indian Buddhism, and also with respect to the 
continuity and discontinuity between the 
personification of death in Hinduism and Buddhism.

Many Thanks,
-- 
Dr. Stuart Sarbacker
Lecturer in Religion
Director of Undergraduate Studies
Department of Religion
Northwestern University
http://www.religion.northwestern.edu/faculty/sarbacker.html
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