What intrigues me most are the Buddhist folktales. I was completely unaware that Buddhism had its own folk literature, rather than being simply a system of philosophy and religious ideas. On a similar note, I'm also interested in the Amar Chitra Katha comic books. I would like to see exactly how the stories are not only translated for an English-speaking readership, but illustrated in a format that has its primary producers in the United States, thousands of miles away from where the stories originated.
"Buddha as Mendicant" by Abanindro Nath Tagore
Illustration from Myths of the Hindus and Buddhists, 1914
My knowledge of mythology has come from a disparate list of sources. I have never read through the entirety of any books solely dedicated to mythology. On the other hand, I have read several books whose stories were influenced by the ancient mythologies. These include The Lord of the Rings and The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe. These stories take aspects of the mythology (such as the presence of centaurs or of gods and demigods in eternal conflict) and sown them into a separate narrative.
I stayed for several days in a relatively remote Buddhist monastery in South Korea. I'm interested in how a philosophical and religious system founded on the southern part of the continent could have traveled across international and geographical boundaries and established a firm foothold in numerous other countries. It seems likely that some aspect of Buddhism resonates with a significant number of people or that it is easily adaptable to the lifestyles and preexisting systems of thought in other regions.
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