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Huang, ‘Sanskrit-Chinese collated Laṅkāvatāra’ (2011)

Someone please tell me that this isn’t simply the CBETA e-text pasted alongside the DSBC e-text, printed out and slapped between a cover? Even priced at 88 Yuan (currently less than USD$14), that would be still worth less than the paper it’s printed on:

黄宝生(译注/作者) 《梵汉对勘入楞伽经》 中国社会科学出版社 ISBN 9787500496267 88.00元 600千字

Huang, Baosheng. Fàn-Hàn duì kān Rù léngjiā jīng [Sanskrit-Chinese* collation of the Laṅkāvatāra-sūtra]. Beijing: China Social Sciences Press, 2011. 765 pp. [official site]

* The “Tang-era translation” (唐代譯).

The same publisher has put out a similar treatment of the Bodhicaryāvatāra, apparently. STOP PRESS: and the Vimalakīrtinirdeśa (I guess they are using GRETIL’s ‘unofficial’ e-text).

Continue reading “Huang, ‘Sanskrit-Chinese collated Laṅkāvatāra’ (2011)”

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Oldmeadow, ‘Rimé: Buddhism without prejudice’ (2012)

Peter Oldmeadow. Rimé: Buddhism without prejudice. Carlton North: Shogam Publications [facebook], 2012 [forthcoming]. ISBN 9780980502220.

Buddhism without prejudice? That would be the Sanskritic tradition, surely.

But as Dr. Oldmeadow informs me: “I’ve attempted to bring together available material on the Rime movement and its context and present it in an accessible fashion which, hopefully, also throws some light on present-day Tibetan Buddhism.”

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Fan, ‘Advayasamatāvijaya: the Sanskrit MS in Tibet’ (2011)


范慕尤 (作者) 《梵文写本《无二平等经》的对勘与研究》
梵文贝叶经与佛教文献系列丛书②  中西书局 2011.12

Fan, Muyou. Advayasamatāvijaya: A Study Based upon the Sanskrit Manuscript Found in Tibet. Series of Sanskrit Manuscripts & Buddhist Literature 2. Shanghai: Zhongxi Book Company. 10+356+13 pp. 2011. ISBN 978-7-5475-0303-4. [English introduction]
(Via RISM)


Nice to see this new publication. Pardon me, though, if part of it seems just a little too familiar. Compare page 4ff of the front matter, on the parallels between the opening of the Advayasamatāvijaya (missing in Fan’s Sanskrit MS) and the STTS, presented as the author’s own work:

with the beginning of a document prepared for Dr. Fan in 2008:

Sincerely flattered, I am.

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Luo Hong, Kālidāsa’s Ṛtusaṃhāra (2010) & Meghadūta (2011)

迦梨陀娑 (著), 罗鸿 (汉文译著), 拉先加 (藏文译注) 〈迦梨陀娑《时令之环》汉藏译注与研究〉 中国藏学出版社 39元

Kālidāsa; Hong Luo (Ch. tr); Lha Byams rgyal (Tib. ed. & tr.). Jiālítuósuō “Shí​lìng zhī huán” Hàn-Zàng yìzhù​ yǔ​ yán​jiū [Kālidāsa’s Ṛtusaṃhāram: Annotated translation and study in Chinese & Tibetan]. Beijing: China Tibetology Publishing House, December 2010. ISBN 978-7-80253-294-6. [official site]

《时令之环》

迦梨陀娑(著), 罗鸿 (译者)〈云使〉北京大学出版社 29元

Kālidāsa; Hong Luo (Ch. tr). Yún​shǐ [Meghadūtam]. Beijing: Peking University Press, June 2011. ISBN 978-7-301-18795-1. [official site]

《云使》
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Fontein, ‘The Gaṇḍavyūha reliefs of Borobudur’ (2012)

Jan Fontein. Entering the Dharmadhātu: A study of the Gaṇḍavyūha reliefs of Borobudur. Studies in Asian Art and Archaeology 26. Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2012. ~240 pp. ISBN-13: 978-9004211223. €125. [official site]

From the Abstract

Entering the Dharmadhātu compares the complete set of panels with three early Chinese translations of Central Asian and Indian Sanskrit manuscripts of the Gaṇḍavyūha. This first identification of the entire series in English concludes with a discussion of the new perspectives on the meaning, symbolism, and architecture of Borobudur that a reading of the Gaṇḍavyūha suggests.

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Administrivia: Brief end-of-year report

  • Traffic is up about 375% over last year, according to one metric. Many of the new visitors are sentient beings.
  • The top three countries from which readers visit Jinajik are the USA, Japan and Germany (not necessarily in that order). Great nations like the great yāna, it seems.
  • There may be no such thing as a free bhojana, but the lure of it is precisely what brings many of you here. The most clicked-on tag in 2011 is Sanskrit text, closely followed by PDF.
  • The most read article this year, by far, was last year’s announcement of Michael Allen’s The Daśakarma Vidhi. (For those who might want more, I have a short review forthcoming in the Journal of the Oriental Society of Australia.)
  • Complaints received in 2011: 0. Compliments received: 1. (A ratio that would please Mr. Micawber.)
New year fireworks, Melbourne, 2012.
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Shrestha, ‘Street transformation in Kathmandu’ (2011)

Dr. Shrestha reports on a happy new role for Newar Buddhist monasteries, one that the advocates of ‘Rebuilding Buddhism’ would surely welcome: the parking lot.

Bijaya K. Shrestha. ‘Street typology in Kathmandu and street transformation’.
Urbani izziv 22 no. 2, 2011, pp.107–121. DOI:10.5379/urbani-izziv-en-2010-21-02-002 [PDF]

There is much useful information here (like the data showing the Kathmandu Valley’s population amost tripling in three decades; p.115, fig.7), in addition to Shrestha’s lucid account of how the Newars’ great cities have been mismanaged.

Te Bāhā, Kathmandu, as car park.
Te Bāhā, Kathmandu, as car park. Bijaya Shrestha (2011:118).

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Steinkellner, ‘News from the Manuscript Department’ (2011)

Old news for most:

Steinkellner, Ernst. ‘Opening speech: News from the manuscript department.’ In Krasser, Lasic, Franco & Kellner (eds)., Religion and Logic in Buddhist Philosophical Analysis: Proceedings of the Fourth International Dharmakīrti Conference, Vienna, August 23–27, 2005. Beiträge zur Kultur- und Geistesgeschichte Asiens Nr. 69. Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2011, pp.xvii–xxi. [PDF]

Briefly: the author of the Hetubinduṭīkātātparyavyākhyā (2d, p.xx), “a certain Jayabhadra (?)” is quite unlikely to have been “a scholar belonging to Nepalese royalty”; this would be unprecedented. At least one tantric commentary by an ācārya called Jayabhadra was preserved in Nepal, and I suppose it is not out of the question that this person had access to Bhaṭṭa Arcaṭa’s commentary, but I am unaware of any reference to him holding the post of rājaguru (a title which was not unknown in India).

Locating the original material doesn’t seem to be high on the agenda: “as of September 2007 the result has been: Nothing. (By the end of 2010: still no changes)” (p.xxi n.9). This is a surprising statement. On the one hand, the collaborators are accused, implicitly, of ineptitude; on the other, it is an admission that ‘our side’ cannot improve anything. Time to end the monopoly and hand the baton to someone who can get the job done.

Then there is the mention of several (Sanskrit?) pramāṇa texts on “Bhutanese paper”, p.xx, which also sounds weird.

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Book of the Year: ‘Hardships and Downfall of Buddhism’

Giovanni Verardi (appendices by Federica Barba). Hardships and Downfall of Buddhism in India. Nalanda-Sriwijaya Series 4. Delhi/Singapore: Manohar & Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2011. 523 pp.

Not a very catchy title, but I doubt that something more direct (say, The Hindu Extermination of Buddhism) would have been very appealing to Singapore’s Nalanda-Sriwijaya Centre, the book’s publisher.

This book is an extraordinary achievement, all the more so for it relying only indirectly, for the most part, on scriptural and epigraphic sources. Verardi’s contribution is based on something at least as useful: first-hand observation of the key sites and remains, clearly articulated in terms of long-term patterns. It is by far one of the most important contributions to the study of Buddhism in India published in a long time — though I don’t agree with everything in it, by any means. (Given the chance, I will expand on that later.) The omission of any discussion of the Theravādins’ catastrophic role, painstakingly explained in Peter Schalk’s 2002 Buddhism among Tamils volumes, has to be regarded as particularly puzzling — at least until one sees Peter Skilling’s name in the acknowledgements. But let me be clear: Verardi, who has pursued his line of inquiry for over three decades, has succeeded in making sense out of a slew of data in a way that is unlikely to be bettered for some time.