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Zotter, ‘Pūjā-Blüten in Nepal’; on the Puṣpacintāmaṇi (2009)

Flowers for the Newars' Ganesacaturthi
Pflanzen, die von Newars zur Gaṇeśacaturthī verwendet werden

Astrid Zotter (née Krause). ‘Pūjā-Blüten in Nepal: Bestimmungen des Puṣpacintāmaṇi‘. Universität Leipzig: PhD dissertation, 2009. [In German; PDF] 408 pp., illus.

Dr. Zotter’s dissertation on the medieval flower-offering manual Puṣpacintāmaṇi presents a critical edition of the Sanskrit and Newar texts, and discusses the role of this important work in Nepal from the reign of Pratap Malla onwards. This is a new milestone in Newar studies, and more generally another welcome contribution to the study of the transmission of Sanskrit texts and vernacular translations in medieval South Asia. A few words from the abstract (roughly translated):

From the Abstract

The Sanskrit text Puṣpacintāmaṇi (PuCi) treats flower offerings (upacāra) in the most important worship ritual of Hinduism, the pūjā. In 400 verses, about 200 names of flowers prescribed as appropriate or inappropriate gifts for various deities and pūjās are listed. The text is a compilation (nibandha), in which the contents of 47 named source texts are reported. […]

The aim of the thesis is not only to edit this text, which was published for the first time in 1966, anew on the basis of all traditional manuscripts and to translate it for the first time, but also to fit it into its context. Here, the context of the historical development of the text, the position of the PuCi in the textual tradition and the varieties of interpretation are taken into account. […] Continue reading “Zotter, ‘Pūjā-Blüten in Nepal’; on the Puṣpacintāmaṇi (2009)”

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Zotter & Zotter, ‘Initiations in India & Nepal’ (2010)

Hindu and Buddhist Initiations in NepalAstrid Zotter and Christof Zotter (eds). Hindu and Buddhist initiations in India and Nepal. Ethno-Indology, v.10. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2010. 380 p. ISBN 9783447063876. [worldcat/Lehmanns]

The contributors to this volume are from different academic disciplines and treat examples of both kinds of rituals in various religious settings. Of special interest in this collection of essays are interrelationships among initiations and their relations to other kinds of rituals. The papers are devoted to the study of minute details and point to the dynamics of initiations. The transfer of ritual elements accompanied by readjustments to new contexts as the modification of procedures or the reassignment of meanings is one of the recurring traits. Other aspects addressed by the authors include the relation of script (ritual handbooks) to performance or various forces of change (e.g. the economics of ritual, gender-related variations, modernization and democratization). Continue reading “Zotter & Zotter, ‘Initiations in India & Nepal’ (2010)”

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Widdess, ‘Rāga Knowledge in the Kathmandu Valley’ (2011)

Widdess, Richard. ‘Implicit Rāga Knowledge in the Kathmandu Valley.’ Analytical Approaches to World Music 1 (1), 2011, pp.73-92. [abstract / PDF (11 MB)]

Abstract extract

The term rāga is current not only in the classical traditions of North and South Indian music, where it is the subject of an extensive written and oral theory, but also in many non-classical traditions especially of religious music in South Asia. For example, devotional songs (dāphā) sung by groups of Newar farmers in the Kathmandu Valley, Nepal, are regularly attributed to rāgas; but there is little explicit (i.e. verbally expressed) knowledge about rāga among the performers. […] The present study suggests that rāga-preludes sung before each dāphā song constitute melodic models that underlie song melodies. […]

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Weiler, ‘Neoclassical Newar Residences’ (2009)

Katharina Maria Lucia Weiler. ‘The Neoclassical Residences of the Newars in Nepal: Transcultural Flows in the Early 20th century Architecture of the Kathmandu Valley’. PhD diss., Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg, 2009. [abstract / PDF (40 MB)]

Almost as good as being there, this lavishly illustrated dissertation treats an important architectural subculture of the Kathmandu Valley. Weiler looks closely at the stylistic origins of buildings built by people who wanted to emulate Europe, while remaining tantric Hindus and Buddhists at heart. This lucid description of a relatively recent strand in the rich tapestry of Newar urban life is commended to aficionados of Nepalese taste.

Nike of Samothrace and Śrī yantra at Ananda Niketan

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Vajracharya & Allen, ‘The Daśakarma Vidhi’ (2010)

Pandit Vaidya Asha Kaji (Ganesh Raj Vajracharya); Michael Allen, ed. The Daśakarma Vidhi: Fundamental Knowledge on Traditional Customs of Ten Rites of Passage Amongst the Buddhist Newars. Kathmandu: Mandala Book Point, 2010. 191 pp. ISBN: 9789994655144. [official site (ordering details)]

From the blurb:

The daśakarma begin with the birth ceremony 
(jaṭābhiṣeka) and end in the ceremonial initiation of the Supreme Seniormost or Head of the Community (cakreśvarābhiṣeka). The system of the daśakarma is so instilled in the life of every Buddhist Newar that the rites have become part and parcel of the life-cycle, thus presenting as inseparable traditional and cultural rites unique among human beings on earth. […]

Asha Kaji Vajracharya (1908–1992) was one of twentieth-century Nepal’s most respected Buddhist figures. Having cultivated the traditional learning of a pandit, he became renowned in his native Lalitpur as an Ayurvedic doctor, tantric practitioner and raconteur of Buddhist lore. He published over thirty books, many of which were translations or commentaries based on Sanskrit originals, and opened up his own manuscript collection to photography by the Nepal-German Manuscript Preservation Project. He advised and collaborated with a number of foreign scholars, and became the first Newar master to teach the Buddhist tradition of the Kathmandu Valley outside Asia, touring Japan at his students’ request, and bestowing initiation into the cycle of Cakrasamvara upon a non-Newar couple for the first time in the modern era. […]

Michael Allen was born in Dublin, Ireland, in 1928. He received his B.A. degree in Philosophy from Trinity College, Dublin in 1950 and his Ph.D. in Social Anthropology from the Australian National University in 1965. He was appointed to a lectureship in Anthropology at Sydney University in 1964 and retired as Professor in 1993. ln addition to his extensive fieldwork on Newar society and religion, conducted mainly between 1966 and 1978, Professor Allen has also carried out anthropological research in Vanuatu (1958–82) and in lreland (1988–96).

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Salguero, ‘Buddhist Medicine in China’ (2010)

C. Pierce Salguero. Buddhist Medicine in Medieval China: Disease, Healing, and the Body in Crosscultural Translation (Second to Eighth Centuries C.E.). PhD diss., Johns Hopkins University, March 2010. 395 pp. [abstract at author’s site/PDF]

Abstract

This dissertation is a study of the role of literary and cultural translation in the transmission and reception of Buddhist medicine in medieval China between the second and eighth centuries. This dissertation brings to light the diversity of medical material in the Chinese Tripitaka, analyzes the central metaphors and discourses in this corpus, and examines how these foreign medical ideas were understood in their historical context. I employ methodologies from Translation Studies to reconcile the study of the transregional exchange of linguistic and cultural repertoires with the agency of individual historical authors as they retooled and adapted foreign knowledge to forward contemporary social strategies. I utilize this theoretical framework to analyze how Indian medical doctrines influenced Chinese Buddhist discourses and practices, while also emphasizing the importance of disease, healing, and the body as sites of crosscultural negotiation.

[via kuden-ML]

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Fiordalis, ‘Miracles in South Asian Buddhist Lit’ (2008)

David V. Fiordalis. Miracles and Superhuman Powers in South Asian Buddhist Literature. PhD diss., University of Michigan, 2008. 232 pp. [HDL / PDF]

Abstract

Scholars have long been aware of the presence of marvelous events in Buddhist literature. While it is now more fashionable to speak about them, some still hesitate to use the word miracle in reference to Buddhism. Paying attention to how Buddhists defined their own terms, this dissertation argues that the concept of the miracle is appropriate to use in translating specific Buddhist terminology. The present study examines the narrative and scholastic language Buddhists used to denote and classify various types of miracles and superhuman powers. […] Continue reading “Fiordalis, ‘Miracles in South Asian Buddhist Lit’ (2008)”

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Slusser, ‘Antiquity of Nepalese Wood Carving’ (2010)

Antiquity of Nepalese Wood Carving
Slusser (2010)

Mary Slusser. The Antiquity of Nepalese Wood Carving: A Reassessment. Freer/Sackler Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution: August 2010. ISBN 9780295990293. 325 pp., 201 illus. [official site]

According to the blurb, the author has carbon-dated certain items to a period as early as the Licchavi era, notably the struts of Uku Bāhā, one of the oldest continuously maintained Buddhist institutions in South Asia. Objects still in situ appear to be of much greater antiquity than previously thought.

A preview of Slusser’s findings was published on asianart.com. Given the author’s impressive contribution, we can perhaps overlook the misplaced horror at the recent painting of those wooden struts, which, incidentally, I witnessed during the Bāhā’s preparatory cleaning for its hosting of the Matayā festival. I am sure Dr. Slusser appreciates that sacred places in the Valley are living entities, subject to periodic renovation, which do not stay frozen in time for the amusement of Westerners with antiquarian fetishes.

It should also be said that “the first to publish an Ukubāhāḥ strut—or for that matter any Nepalese wooden sculpture” was not “Pratapaditya Pal in his 1974 Art of Nepal“. Previously there was Stella Kramrisch, and of course Giuseppe Tucci published many photographs of such items in the course of his career, culminating in his ’69 coffee-table book of erotic Newar temple sculpture, Rati-Līlā — a lyrical and mature statement of Tucci’s thinking, juxtaposed in a slightly tawdry way with photographed wood carvings of human (and other) maithuna scenes of questionable artistic merit.

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Dziwenka, ‘Last Light of Indian Buddhism’ (2010)

Ronald James Dziwenka. ‘The Last Light of Indian Buddhism’ — The Monk Zhikong in 14th Century China and Korea. PhD diss., University of Arizona, 2010. 406 pp. UMI Number: 3412160. [Thanks to A. M.]

Abstract

Zhikong's route from Magadha to Korea (Map 1).
This dissertation investigates the northeast Indian Buddhist Monk, Dhyānabhadra (Zhikong 指空, Jigong 지공, Śūnyadisaya, ca. 1289–1364 C.E.). He began his more than a decade of study in the Nālandā Mahāvihāra education system late in the 13th century, and then at the age of nineteen began a journey to the east and a life that would lead to him being known as “the last light of Indian Buddhism” in East Asia. This study is inspired by two goals. One is to retrace the formation,
dissemination and reception of his thought and soteriological paradigm of practice from his native state of Magadha, then Sri Lanka, and then throughout India, Yuan China and Goryeo Korea. The other is [to] explicate the main elements and concepts of his thought and present them to the academic community.