Posted on

Shakya, ‘Mañjuśrī in the Kathmandu Valley’ (2011)

Miroj Shakya. ‘Bodhisattva Mañjuśrī in the Buddhist Literature of the Kathmandu Valley (With Special Reference to the Svayaṃbhū Purāṇa)’. PhD dissertation, University of the West, Spring 2011. 261 pp.

From the Abstract

Mañjuśrī is portrayed as a founder of the Kathmandu Valley in the Svayaṃbhū Purāṇa, where he is shown playing a vital role in initiating the Nepalese Buddhist tradition. […] My study will focus on these legends of the Svayaṃbhū Purāṇa associated with Mañjuśrī.

Includes studies of short non-tantric texts related to Mañjuśrī, and texts and translations of various versions of the third chapter (on Mañjuśrī’s fabled draining of the Valley’s pleistocene lake) of the Svayambhūpurāṇa literature.

Mañjuśrī Shrine, Svayaṃbhū Stūpa (p.260)
Posted on

Jonathan Silk

Jonathan Silk not only studies Mahāyāna Buddhism; he thinks about it as well. Is that unusual? Put it this way: I feel that I can recommend his work on that basis alone.

  • A number of Prof. Silk’s articles are available at the University of Leiden’s online repository.
  • For starters: timely thoughts on Buddhist studies in his Oratie, Lies, Slander and the Study of Buddhism, delivered April 1st, 2008 (but no laughing matter). Offering so much to discuss, I present just this excerpt:

    I would be a happy man had I a nickel — that’s a small denomination American coin – for every time I have been told that Buddhism is not a religion, but rather a philosophy, a way of life. This is more than a rhetorical strategy by which an interested Westerner allows himself to explore Buddhism without feeling an apostate for doing so. For it derives its validity only by denying Buddhist traditions their intrinsic identity, and Buddhists — traditional, Asian Buddhists — their autonomy. Once one denies that Buddhism is a religion, it ceases to be an integral part of anyone’s life. Buddhism becomes something optional, adventitious, incidental even to the people whose lives it structures. For Westerners disaffected with religion, this may be a happy solution. But at least for the scholar, it is an impossibility, for it constitutes a refusal to acknowledge the tradition in its multiplicity and complexity, or even in its most intrinsic nature. [2008:12]

  • Official Site: http://www.leidenuniv.nl/professoren/show_en.php3-medewerker_id=950.htm
Posted on

Birkenholtz, ‘The Svasthānī Vrata Kathā Tradition’ (2010)

Jessica Lynn Vantine Birkenholtz. ‘The Svasthānī Vrata Kathā Tradition: Translating Self, Place and Identity in Hindu Nepal’. PhD dissertation, University of Chicago, 2010. 337 pp. UMI Number: 3408505.

From the Abstract

This dissertation presents an alternate social and cultural history of Nepal through the lens of a textual-historical study of the Svasthānī Vrata Kathā (SVK). A popular Nepali Hindu textual tradition, the SVK has an unbroken history that spans five hundred years and three languages (Sanskrit, Newar, and Nepali). Beginning in the sixteenth century, the text expanded from a handwritten eight-folio palm-leaf local legend on the origin of the Svasthānī vrat, or ritual vow, into a Purāṇic sourcebook of thirty-one chapters in over four hundred printed pages. The SVK’s medieval-modern historical span, the diversity of forms of its textual (re)production, and its sustained uniform core narrative provide a lens through which both immediate shifts and gradual transformations in Nepal’s literary, linguistic, social, religious, and political history can be viewed and interpreted.


Continue reading “Birkenholtz, ‘The Svasthānī Vrata Kathā Tradition’ (2010)”

Posted on

Allen, ‘Girls as goddesses in secular Nepal’ (23/05/2011)

Presentation

Michael Allen. ‘The worship of young virgin girls as goddesses in the secular state of Nepal’. Guest lecture, 23 May 2011, 13:00-15:00, Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (Copenhagen).

Abstract

In this lecture I intend to focus on some of the current debates in Nepal concerning the worship of young virgin girls as living forms of the goddess. At the heart of these debates is the issue of just what weight should be given to religious beliefs, practices and morals, in this case both Hindu and Buddhist, in what is now constitutionally a federal democratic republic formally committed to the propagation of predominantly secular ideals. Yet, prior to the success of the Maoist-led revolution in 2006, Nepal had been a Hindu monarchy of an orthodox kind in which the divine King and the virgin goddess were the twin pillars that together gave legitimacy to the state. My lecture concludes with some brief insights into just how both the goddess and the state survive today without their king – albeit somewhat precariously so.

Michael Allen is 
Emeritus Professor at the Department of Anthropology, University of Sydney.

Venue

NIAS, Leifsgade 33, 3rd floor, 2300 Copenhagen S.

Chanira Vajracharya, (now former) Lalitpur kumari. Photo © I.S., 2010.
Posted on

Hunt, ‘Considerations for Devanagari Typography’ (2008)

Paul D. Hunt. ‘Language and region specific considerations for Devanagari typography. Case studies in Sanskrit, Hindi, Marathi, & Nepali’. M.A. Thesis, University of Reading, September 2008. [PDF]

Reading, England, produces more than just atheist comedians; the University of Reading also awards respected higher degrees in Typeface Design. Hunt’s M.A. thesis, set in elegant Grandia, explores a few of the varied functions that Nāgarī type may be called on perform. It’s potentially useful reading for those working on Sanskrit texts who have dreamed of a better Unicode typeface, and who seek the typographical vocabulary to articulate exactly what they are looking for.

Characteristics of Devanagari script (Hunt 2008, Fig.10 p.14)

The current situation is far from perfect, of course. Of the Unicode Nāgarī faces out there at the moment, I could only recommend two or three, at most, for serious philological typesetting. It is frustrating that adequate faces are not even available to buy, for the most part.
Continue reading “Hunt, ‘Considerations for Devanagari Typography’ (2008)”

Posted on

Liland, ‘The transmission of the Bodhicaryāvatāra’ (2009)

Fredrik Liland. ‘The transmission of the Bodhicaryāvatāra: The history, diffusion, and influence of a Mahāyāna Buddhist text’. M.A. thesis, Universitetet i Oslo, 2009. [official site/PDF] Supervised by Jens E. Braarvig.

From the Abstract

The thesis is concerned with the 7th Century Mahāyāna Buddhist text Bodhicaryāvatāra (BCA) and its significance as a vehicle for cultural exchange. We trace its history in India and beyond, from its proposed author Śāntideva’s hand, its contemporary influence in India, and its impact in the lands—Nepal, Tibet, China, Mongolia, and beyond—and languages—Sanskrit, Newari, Tibetan, Chinese, Mongolian, and others—where it travelled. The nature of its influence has varied with the times and places where it has found itself, but in all instances it received a prominent place of canonical status, and was mostly revered.
[…]
The BCA has received quite a lot of attention in modern scholarship since the first publication of a critical Sanskrit edition by Minayev in 1889. A large number of new manuscripts of the text have surfaced since then, and a separate chapter is dedicated to philological concerns and the dire need for a new and updated version that will take into account also the new knowledge we now have of the text[‘]s history. A mostly unnoticed commentary, the Bodhicaryāvatāra-ṭippaṇi, also receives i[t]s long overdue attention in this chapter.

Liland’s thesis presents a long over due bibliographically-oriented update to scholarship on the Bodhicaryāvatāra. Two other scholars are said to have been recently working on a critical edition of the text: Daniel Stender and Richard Mahoney. I do not know whether either are proceeding.

One stand-out feature of Liland’s thesis is the attention it pays to Nepalese sources and translations in the Newar (“Newari”) language, which, as regular readers know, are routinely neglected in Buddhist studies, notwithstanding the fact that they originate in direct contact with the Sanskrit original in a South Asian Buddhist setting. Despite this unusual but welcome development, I can point to at least three areas of further improvement:

  1. “Ratna Bahādur Vajrācārya (1893-1955), of whom not much is known” (p.92): in fact, at least four (mostly short) biographies of this outstanding figure are in print, including a dedicated and independently published treatment by Manish Shakya.
  2. No mention of (the many) translations into South Asian vernaculars; here’s one in Nepali. Not all such translations were done from Sanskrit, but some have been.
  3. No reference to manuscripts in private or recently documented collections.

Continue reading “Liland, ‘The transmission of the Bodhicaryāvatāra’ (2009)”

Posted on

Liu, ‘dhyānāni tapaś ca’ [Kāyabhāvanāsūtra] (2010)

Liu, Zhen. *Meditations and Asceticisms: On the discovery and study of Buddhist Sanskrit Manuscripts. Shanghai Guji Publishing House, 2010. 299 pp., 58 yuan. ISBN 9787532556670. [WorldCat]

刘震（著）《禅定与苦修—关于佛传原初梵本的发现和研究》上海古籍出版社

This book, as far as I am able to tell from internet gleanings (I’ve not seen it at the time of writing), is a revised and expanded (修订、增补) version of Zhen Liu’s PhD dissertation on a unique Sanskrit manuscript of the Kāyabhāvanāsūtra 《修身经》 of the Dīrghāgama submitted to Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München.

Further information can be found in this startlingly rich Chinese writeup by an editor at a Chinese publishing house:

Xu, Wenkan（徐文堪）. ‘The Inspiring Results of Research on the Gilgit Manuscripts’（吉尔吉特写本研究的可喜成果）, Dongfang Zaobao 《东方早报》, March 20, 2011.

Posted on

Milligan, ‘Inscribed Reliefs & Inscriptions at Sanchi’ (2010)

Milligan, Matthew David. ‘A Study of Inscribed Reliefs within the Context of Donative Inscriptions at Sanchi’. M. A. thesis, University of Texas at Austin, 2010. [official site URI / PDF]

From the abstract

Sanchi stūpa #2 & inscription (p.98)
Inscribed relief art at the early Buddhist archaeological site of Sanchi in India exhibits at least one interesting quality not found elsewhere at the site. […] Two inscribed images of stūpas found on the southern gateway record the gifts of two prominent individuals. The first is a junior monk whose teacher holds a high position in the local order. The second is the son of the foreman of the artisans of a king. Both inscribed stūpa images represent a departure from a previous donative epigraphical habit. Instead of inscribing their names on image-less architectural pieces, these two particular individuals inscribed their names on representations of stūpas, a symbol with a multiplicity of meanings. […] I suggest that these donations were recorded as part of the visual field intentionally, showing the importance of not only inscribing a name on an auspicious symbol but also the importance of inscribing a name for the purpose of being seen.