NAME

Parse::Marpa::WHY - Why call this parser "Marpa"?

WHY CALL IT MARPA?

Marpa is the name of the greatest of the Tibetan "translators". In that time (we're talking the 11th century AD) Indian Buddhism was at its height. A generation of Tibetans translators were devoting themselves to obtaining its texts and translating them from Sanskrit. Marpa was their major figure, and today he is known simply as Marpa Lotsawa: "Marpa the Translator".

In the 11th century, translation was not a job for the indoors type. A translator needed to study with the Buddhist teachers who had the texts and could explain them. That meant going to India. Marpa's home was in the Lhotrak Valley, and from there the easiest way to India was via the 15,000 foot Khala Chela Pass. To reach Khala Chela's three-mile high summit, Marpa had to cross two hundred miles of Tibet, most of them difficult and all of them lawless.

From Khala Chela downhill to the great Buddhist center of Nalanda University was four hundred miles, but Tibetans would stop for years or months in Nepal, getting used to the low altitudes. Almost no germs live in the cold, thin air of Tibet, and Tibetans arriving directly in the lowlands had no immunities. Tibetans had learned the hard way not to go straight to Nalanda. Whole expeditions had died from disease within weeks of arrival on the hot plains.

BLATANT PLUG

There's more about Marpa in my new novel, The God Proof, in which his studies, travels and adventures are a major subplot. The God Proof centers around Kurt Gödel's proof of God's existence. Yes, that Kurt Gödel, and yes, he really did work out a God Proof (it's in his Collected Works, Vol. 3, pp. 403-404). The God Proof is available at Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/God-Proof-Jeffrey-Kegler/dp/1434807355.