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 Download ACK_Amprapali and Upagupta  (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