Sanskritic civilization · Tantric studies · Newar & Nusantaran Buddhism
John Vincent Bellezza. Death and Beyond in Ancient Tibet: Archaic Concepts and Practices in a Thousand-Year-Old Illuminated Funerary Manuscript and Old Tibetan Funerary Documents of Gathang Bumpa and Dunhuang. Denkschriften der philosophisch-historischen Klasse 454; Beiträge zur Kultur- und Geistesgeschichte Asiens 77. Vienna: Austrian Academy of Sciences Press, 2013 [official]. 292 pp. ISBN 978-3-7001-7433-2.
Sree Padma. ‘Hariti: Village Origins, Buddhist Elaborations and Saivite Accommodations’. Asian and African Area Studies (『アジア・アフリカ地域研究』), 11 (1), 2011, pp.1–17. [PDF]
Big news — the prototypical yoginītantra has finally been unearthed in Sanskrit:
Péter-Dániel Szántó (on behalf of Arlo Griffiths & Alexis Sanderson). ‘A Sanskrit Manuscript of the Sarvabuddhasamāyogaḍākinījālaśaṃvara‘. Manuscripta Buddhica Workshop, Procida, September 8–11 2013 [academia.edu].
(via: P-D Sz.)
Richard Widdess. Dāphā: Sacred Singing in a South Asian City. Music, Performance and Meaning in Bhaktapur, Nepal. SOAS Musicology Series. Ashgate, December 2013 [official site]. 378 pages (w/ “50 b&w illustrations, 50 music examples and 1 map”). ISBN 978-1-4094-6601-7.
Dāphā, or dāphā bhajan, is a genre of Hindu-Buddhist devotional singing, performed by male, non-professional musicians of the farmer and other castes belonging to the Newar ethnic group, in the towns and villages of the Kathmandu Valley, Nepal. The songs, their texts, and their characteristic responsorial performance-style represent an extension of pan-South Asian traditions of rāga- and tāla-based devotional song, but at the same time embody distinctive characteristics of Newar culture.
Chan, Yiu-wing 陳耀榮. ‘An English translation of the Dharmatrāta-Dhyāna Sūtra (達摩多羅禪經 T15, no.618) — With Annotation and a Critical Introduction’. PhD diss., The University of Hong Kong, 2013. ix+548 pp. [official site]
One of the early texts translated from Sanskrit into ancient Chinese in around 411 C.E. is called the Dharmatrāta-dhyāna-sūtra (T15, no.618) which was a detailed account of the meditational methods of Buddhasena and Dharmatrāta who were the two most renowned dhyāna teachers in Kaśmīra around 400C.E. They may be regarded as belonging to the tradition of the Sarvāstivāda Dārṣṭāntika masters who were characterized by their active interest in meditation and popular preaching in which they excelled in communicating through poems and allegories. […]
This sūtra essentially preserves the ancient Sarvāstivādin meditation teachniques. But it importantly incorporates Mahāyānistic-Tantric elements, such as the maṇḍala and visualization. […] As a result, it came to exert a great impact on the subsequent teaching and practice of Chinese Buddhism, particularly those of Buddhist meditation.
Benjamin Wood. ‘The Jeweled Fish Hook: Monastic Exemplarity in the Shalu Abbatial History’. PhD diss., University of Toronto, 2012. iii+284 pp. [URI: http://hdl.handle.net/1807/34970]
This dissertation is an in-depth study of the nineteenth-century Shalu Abbatial History, a collection of biographies of abbots and other important religious masters, or lamas, from the Tibetan monastery of Shalu, located in the Tibetan region of Tsang.
Michelle Janet Sorensen. ‘Making the Old New Again and Again: Legitimation and Innovation in the Tibetan Buddhist Chöd Tradition’. PhD diss., Columbia Univ., 2013. [URL / PDF]
(Texts translated: Shes rab kyi pha rol tu phyin pa zab mo gcod kyi man ngag gi gzhung bka’ tshoms chen mo; Shes rab khyi pha rol tu phyin pa’i man ngag yang tshoms zhus lan ma bzhugs pa; Shes rab kyi pha rol tu phyin pa’i man ngag nying tshoms chos kyi rtsa ba.)
久保田, 滋子 「チベット仏教の現代的展開に関する一考察 : ドイツとスイスを事例とし」 『哲學』 128 (2012. 3)
Kubota, Shigeko. ‘Thoughts on the modern aspects of Tibetan buddhism: the cases of Germany and Switzerland’. Tetsugaku No. 128, 2012, pp.403–445. [In Japanese; abstract / PDF]
At present, numerous Tibetan Buddhist groups exist in Europe and North America, but the Buddhism of these groups differ from the “customary Buddhism” that is an integral part of daily life for the Tibetans themselves. From the point of view of a Tibetan, the Buddhism of those groups are not a part of Tibetan culture but rather of Western culture, and are a form of Western religion like Christianity. […]
Why complain about Wikipedia? Its output speaks for itself:
Which of the nineteenth-century Kulamāna Vajrācāryas was the confrere of Ekai Kawaguchi (and of Sylvain Lévi,* et al)? Mr. Kazumi Yoshizaki digs into his Index of Personal Names in Newari Historical Materials (forthcoming) to find out:
吉崎 一美 (Yoshizaki, Kazumi). 「河口慧海に梵語文法を教授したクルマン博士」 (Dr. Kulman who Taught Sanskrit Grammar to Rev. Kawaguchi Ekai in Nepal). 『印度學佛教學研究』 第六十一巻第一号 (Journal of Indian and Buddhist studies vol.61 no.1), pp.508–504/(11)–(15), 2012-12-20. [PDF at CiNii]
* “Le vieux pandit Kulamâna, de Patan, gagne sa vie à enseigner des rudiments de catéchisme et à copier des manuscrits” (Lévi, Le Népal: étude historique d’un royaume hindou, 1905 II:27).