Eastern Classics Reading List (notes)

Eastern Classics Seminar Reading List Notes

Fall Semester

Week 1-2: The Ramayana is an enormous Indian epic. We shall first read an abridged version (of which there are many) of the whole work, and then read selected episodes in their entirety.
Week 3: The Vedas are religious works of great antiquity, the oldest and most interesting of which is the Rig Veda
Week 4: The Upanishads are speculative treatises appended to the end of the Vedas (hence the name "Vedanta").
Week 5: The Arthashastra is a treatise on politics; the Institutes of Manu is, in effect, a compilation of Hindu laws, customs, and duties.
Week 6: The Birth of the War God (Kumarasambhava) and the Shakuntala‹a poetic narrative and a play by India's greatest Sanskrit poet.
Week 7-8: Charvaka (or Lokaytata) is not the name of an author but of an ancient and heterodox school of thought that denies the authority of the Vedas and makes a case for materialism and hedonism. The short readings would be from the Rise of the Moon Intellect (the dialogue of the materialist and King Passion), the Tattvopaplavasimha (the refutation of inference as a means of valid cognition), and Shankara's summary of the chief teachings of this school.
Yoga, Vaisheshika, and Sankhya are three of the six orthodox schools of Hindu speculative thought (vs. the heterodox schools of Charvaka, Buddhism, and Jainaism, which deny the authority of the Vedas). They offer different accounts of what is discoverable by experience and reason, with accommodations of Vedic authority to these accounts.
Week 9: The Gitagovinda (Love Song of the Dark Lord) is a lyrical poem narrating Krishna's love for the maid Radha.
Week 9-12: The Mahabharata is the second major Indian epic, and is even larger than the Ramayana (and nearly eight times as long as the Iliad and Odyssey combined). It contains the Bhagavad Gita, a religious text of intrinsic importance and considerable influence.
Week 12-14: Confucius (K'ung Fu-Tzu) and Lao Tzu are the two most venerable thinkers of Chinese antiquity. They offer divergent accounts of the world and man's place in it.
Week 15: The Inner Chapters is a basic text of Taoism, deep but entertaining as well.
Week 16: The Chinese poetry selections will be taken from Greg Wincup's The Heart of Chinese Poetry.

Spring Semester
Week 1: Records of the Historian is an early history containing chronicles and biographies on the founding of the Ch'in and Han dynasties.
Week 2: Mencius (or Meng Tzu)--the central figure in the development of Confucianism.
Week 3: The Acts of the Buddha (Buddhacarita)--an epic poem narrating the life of the Buddha.
Dhammapada ( "dhamma" is the Pali equivalent of the Sanskrit "dharma," hence "path of dharma")--Buddhist ethics.
Week 4: Mahaparinibana Sutta ("sutta" is the Pali equivalent of the Sanskrit "sutra")--the last days of the Buddha.
The Questions of King Milinda--Questions about possible inconsistencies in Buddhist teaching, posed by King Milinda to the sage, Nagasena, and answered.
Weeks 5-7: Journey to the West (Monkey is its alternate title) a picaresque and satirical Chinese folk epic.
Weeks 9-10: Tale of Genji (Genji Monagatori)--Japanese novel, probably the first incontestably great work written in this genre anywhere in the world‹1010 A.D.
Week 11: Vigrahavyavartani--Dialectical arguments for "dependent arising" and the voidness (insubstantiality or lack of essential nature) of all things, by Nagarjuna, founder of the Madhyamaka school of Buddhism.
Week 12: Vedanta is another of the six orthodox schools of Hindu thought. Shankara is arguably the premier speculative thinker in later Hinduism, and his commentary of the Vedanta Sutra opposes the "non-dualism" he advocates to the teaching of other schools, orthodox and heterodox.
Week 13: The Great Learning and the Doctrine of the Meanpost--Buddhist Chinese texts that became canonized along with the Analects and Mencius as the "Four Books" of classical Confucianism.
Wana Yang Ming‹intuitionist neo-Confucianism.
Week 14: Platform Sutra--a Chinese text fundamental to Ch'an (Zen) Buddhism.
Dogen was the founder of Soto Zen. The Shobo-Genzo consists of short inspirational lectures given to his students at the Zen monastery.
Week 15: A Book of Five Rings--reflections on strategy and Zen by Japan's most famous swordsman.
The Narrow Road to the Deep North--Zen travelogue by the greatest of the haiku poets.
Week 16: The No theater of Japan is the only living analog of the Greek theater. The No plays are short and concentrated, and they have roots in both Buddhism and Shinto. It is possible that a video of the greatest of these plays, Nonomiya (Forest Shrine) could be made available on video cassette for viewing by the seminar participants.