Saturday, February 28, 2009

ACK-086: Amrapali and Upagupta

[Update - 01 mar 2009, 7:45 PM IST]

Apoorva has provided the link for a better cover of this comic (displayed on left here) The new cover can be downloaded by clicking on it (and then use right click and save image as option) and be added to the original link

I'll also update the download link soon for first time downloaders. New link has been provided now. Thanks a lot Apoorva.

ACK's Description:

The story of Amrapali is told in the Maha-Parinibbana Sutta and in Malasarvastivadas. The garden which Amrapali gave up to Lord Buddha was still in existence when Fa-Hien visited during the Gupta age.


Author: Subba Rao
Illustrator: Souren Roy


(32 pages, 1200 px wide, 12.75 MB)

 Info from Wikipedia:
Ambapāli, also known as "Ambapālika" or "Amrapāli", was a nagarvadhu (royal courtesan) of the republic of Vaishali in ancient India around 500 BC. She is mentioned in the old Pali texts and Buddhist traditions. Legends surrounding her state the following:
Ambapali or Amrapali was of unknown parentage, and received her name because at her birth she was found at the foot of a mango tree in one of the royal gardens in Vaishali.

(Etymologically, the name, Ambapali or Amrapali, is derived from a combination of two Sanskrit words: "amra", meaning mango, and "pallawa", meaning young leaves or sprouts.)
Ambapali grew to be a lady of extraordinary beauty, charm, and grace, and many young nobles of the republic desired her company. To avoid confrontations among her suitors, she was accorded the status of the state courtesan of Vaishali. Stories of her beauty traveled to the ears of Bimbisara, who was then the king of the neighboring, hostile kingdom of Magadha. He attacked Vaishali, and for some days as a traveller he took refuge in Amrapali house.

Bimbisara was a good musician, soon Amrapali and Bimbisara fell in love but after being identified as Bimbisara, the king of Magadha, she requested him to go away & stop the war.Bimbisara who was in love really stopped the war. In the eyes of the folks of Vaishali, this incident made him a coward King. Later Amrapali bore him a son named Vimala Kondanna. Ajatashatru, the son of Bimbisara took a revenge by invading Vaishali.
Ambapali once desired to have the privilege of serving food to Buddha. The Buddhist traditions state that Buddha accepted the invitation against the wishes of the ruling aristocracy of Vaishali. Ambapali received Buddha with her retinue, and offered meals to him. Soon thereafter, she renounced her position as courtesan, accepted Buddhist faith, and remained an active supporter of the Buddhist order.
On growing up, Vimala Kondanna too became a Buddhist monk.

Till yesterday, I knew nothing about action scripts in photoshop. Since I am spending some time with the s/w of late, a host of features are opening up before me. The recent addition to my knowledge base is action scripts, as mentioned above. It is such a wonderful thing for performing repetitive jobs that are of essentially same nature. Now, I don't have to open each individual page and perform cleaning-brightning on them, what I've been doing all the way along till now. Using action scripts, the same function can be applied automatically to all the pages in the same folder. That saves a lot of time. One hour job can be done in two minutes.

That is a big discovery for me and I thought it would be appropriate to share the knowledge with all fellow scanners. After all we are all here to share, isn't it?

Present comic is the first prepared using this technique.

- TPH

16 comments:

Anonymous said...

First again:)..Thanks for this classic!

Regards,
Demonoid Fan

Anonymous said...

Thanks, TPH.

TPH said...

@Demonoid Fan: You are first indeed, and not for the first time. :-)

Welcome.

@Deb: Thanks Deb. Most welcome.

Unknown said...

thanks TPH.

TPH said...

@Apoorva Chandar: Welcome. More ACKs are coming.

Unknown said...

i have a better cover which i got on the net. unfortunately, couldn't get the inner notes

here' the link:[IMG]http://i43.tinypic.com/28wp8as.jpg[/IMG]

TPH said...

@Apoorva Chandar: Thanks a lot Apoorva. I've added your given link to the post. Will also be providing a new download link.

Unknown said...

you are welcome TPH

Dhaval said...

Thanks for the great ACK and fantastic scans TPH!!

Just a little request to Blog Authors: We should retain the link to Download "Comical" or similar tools for new users..

I recommended the site to some of my friends and few uncles and aunts, who are not "google-handed" like most of us, and they all came back to me saying they don't know how to read the downloaded cbr/cbz/rar format comics!

I would like to suggest that we should keep the "How to Read" section with some tips about downloading the comics and also download link for "Comical" or similar tool, preferably, somewhere on the top of the page.

Its a great work.. admired by all grown up kids.. :) the oldest I know is my uncle, 76 years old(or young!)

He has sent his best wishes for this blog..

Samik said...

Am getting this error message :(

"The key you provided for file download was invalid. This is usually caused because the file is no longer stored on Mediafire. This occurs when the file is removed by the originating user or Mediafire."

TPH said...

@Dhaval: Thanks and welcome dear friend. I find your suggestion really good and am going to implement it right now. You are absolutely correct. New discoverers of comics sites may find it difficult to read the files in cbr/cbz formats and there should be some help regarding this on the blog page. Thanks for actively supporting the effort.

And many thanks and best wishes to your uncle. We are very happy to know about him.

@Samik: Today morning I replaced the old upload from my mediafire folder with the new link (with better cover page). You probably tried between those times when old one was deleted and new one was still under upload process.

Now it is working fine. You can download it. Thanks for the visit.

Samik said...

does anyone know the ACK number of this comic? Here it says 86, I have a list posted by Prabhat, which says it should be 161. I also need the number for the comic Thanedar Hasan Askari. I tried to open the comic and see that the number is something 286... but doesnt corroespond with the list...

TPH said...

@Samik: IBH never maintained a systematic approach for numbering ACKs. The same issues were published boring different serial numbers at different times. Unlike indrajals, which was published more like a magazine with publication date on each issue, ACKs underwent repeated reprints time and again. So many times they changed the issue number to make things worse for the more enthusiatic collectors. Also when they sold rights to diamond comics for some short time, diamond gave the ACK series a completely different numbering.

All this is so confusing, that I do not keep track of ACKs serially by numerals. I sort them only by the title so as to obtain an alphabetically ordered list. That's enough for me personally.

Let' see if someone can help you in this matter.

sona said...

Hello sir , I am not able 2 download the older comics thru mediafire..Is thr sum problem

Anonymous said...

Who knows where to download XRumer 5.0 Palladium?
Help, please. All recommend this program to effectively advertise on the Internet, this is the best program!

vikki said...

Older comics need some fixing this link is working great :)