8.75" x 11.25," 112 pp., hard cover.
# BUANWI - $ 19.95

BUDDHIST ANIMAL WISDOM STORIES

by Mark W. McGinnis

Around the beginning of the common era, Indian Buddhists began to collect fables illuminating various human virtues and foibles--from kindness, cooperation, loyalty and self-discipline on the one hand to greed, pride, foolishness, and treachery on the other. Instead of populating these stories with people, they cast the animals of their immediate environment in the leading roles--which may have given the tales a universal appeal that helped them travel around the world, surfacing in the Middle East as Aesop's fables and in various other guises throughout East and Southeast Asia, Africa, Russia, and Europe.

This lovely, hard-bound edition of the Jataka tales (past life stories of the Buddha) is one of the finest presentations we've seen.

In Buddhist Animal Wisdom Stories author and painter Mark McGinnis has collected these hallowed popular tales and retold them in vividly poetic yet accessible language, their original Buddhist messages firmly intact. With 44 stories, each tale is accompanied with a beautifully rendered full-color painting, making this an equally attractive book for children and adults, whether Buddhist or not, who love fine stories about their fellow wise (and foolish) creatures.

Includes such tales as:
  • The Alert Antelope

  • The Banyan Deer

  • The Beetle and the Elephant

  • The Buffalo and the Monkey

  • The Compassionate Ape

  • The Dutiful Parakeet

  • The Elephant and the Dog

  • The Falcon and the Wild Fowl

  • The Fearful Elephant

  • The Fish and the Tortoise

  • The Foolhardy Crows

  • The Golden Mallard

  • and many others
Mark McGinnis is an artist and educator based at Northern State University in Aberdeen, South Dakota. His interdisciplinary projects have been featured in over 110 solo exhibitions nationwide, and his previous publications include Elders of the Faiths, Lakota and Dakota Animal Wisdom Stories, and Elders of the Benedictines.