Download World Literature and Composition Siddhartha Information Sheet

World Literature and Composition
Siddhartha Information Sheet
Characters
Siddhartha
 Protagonist
 Handsome, intelligent, Brahmin’s son
 Searching for Self
Govinda
 Siddhartha’s best friend
 Joins him at first but eventually becomes a Buddhist monk
Siddhartha Gautama Sakyamuni (the Buddha)
 The Illustrious One
 Presented as a man, with emphasis on his reality, his humanity, and his
peacefulness
Kamala
 Courtesan (highly placed prostitute) with whom Siddhartha falls in love
 Mother of his son
Vasudeva
 Ferryman
 Becomes Siddhartha’s spiritual guide
Siddhartha’s son
 11 years old
 Spoiled
 Rebels against his father’s lifestyle and values
Hindu and Buddhist Terms
Ascetic
 A person who dedicates his or her life to a pursuit of contemplative ideals and
practices extreme self-denial or self-mortification for religious reasons.
 A person who leads an austerely simple life, especially one who abstains from the
normal pleasures of life or denies himself or herself material satisfaction.
Brahmin
 Cultured, intelligent person of the upper class
 A member of the priestly Brahmin case, the highest caste in India
 Hindu belief is that the nearly perfect souls are born into the Brahmin caste
Om

A Hindu sacred word that symbolizes Brahma, spoken before reciting mantras or
mystically contemplated in its written or spoken form
Atman
 The soul of the individual in Hindu philosophy
 Soul of universe and source of all individual souls
All Radiant
 Hinduism
 Ultimate peace of perfection when a human becomes a god
Rig-Veda
 The oldest and most important of the sacred books of Hindus
Sanskrit
 Ancient sacred and literary language of India
Upanishads of Sama Veda, Chandogya Upanishads
 Any one of a group of ancient Sanskrit philosophical commentaries
Brahman/Brahma
 In Hindu theology, the pervading soul of the universe, the essence of being and
intelligence
 Atman
 God of creation
 Brahma the creator, Vishnu the preserver, Siva the destroyer
Samanas
 Wandering Hindu ascetics who practice self-denial
Nirvana
 Buddhist idea of heavenly peace
 Perfect happiness
 Reached by the complete absorption of one’s self into the supreme universal
spirit
Mara
 According to early Buddhists, the devil who tempted Buddha
Maya
 Hinduism
 The endless repetition of births, deaths, and rebirths to which man is subject
Krishna
 One of the most important Hindu gods
 An incarnation of Vishnu
Agni
 In Hinduism, a principal Vedic god
 God of fire, the sun, and lighting and mediator between mankind and the gods