The Yogin and the Madman: Reading the Biographical Corpus of Tibet's Great Saint Milarepa (South Asia Across the Disciplines)

Tibetan biographers began writing Jetsun Milarepa's (1052–1135) life story shortly after his death, initiating a literary tradition that turned the poet and saint into a model of virtuosic Buddhist practice throughout the Himalayan world. Andrew Quintman traces this history and its innovations in narrative and aesthetic representation across four centuries, culminating in a detailed analysis of the genre's most famous example, composed in 1488 by Tsangnyön Heruka, or the "Madman of Western Tibet." Quintman imagines these works as a kind of physical body supplanting the yogin's corporeal relics. Contents Acknowledgments Introduction 1. Earliest Sources: A Biographical Birth 2. Proto-Lives: Formations of a Skeletal Biography 3. Biographical Compendia: Lives Made Flesh 4. A New Standard: Tsangyon Heruka's Life and Songs of Milarepa 5. The Yogin and the Madman: A Life Brought to Life 6. Conclusions Epilogue: Mila Comes Alive! List of Abbreviations Appendix 1: The Life of Jetsun Mila by Gampopa Appendix 2: Text Colophons, English Translations, and Tibetan Transcriptions Appendix 3: Text Outlines and Concordances Notes Bibliography Index