Andrea Acri. 2018. ‘The place of Nusantara in the Sanskritic Buddhist Cosmopolis’. TRaNS: Trans-Regional and -National Studies of Southeast Asia 6 (2), pp. 139-166. doi:10.1017/trn.2018.5 [academia]
From the Abstract
This article synthesizes and links together evidence published thus far in secondary literature in order to highlight the contribution of Nusantara to the genesis and circulation of various forms of Sanskritic Buddhism across Asia from the fifth to the fourteenth century. It places particular emphasis on its expansion via maritime routes. Continue reading “Acri (2018), Nusantara in the Sanskritic Buddhist Cosmopolis”
Emmanuel Francis. 2018. ‘Indian Copper-Plate Grants: Inscriptions or Documents?’ In Alessandro Bausi, Christian Brockmann, Michael Friedrich, Sabine Kienitz (eds.) Manuscripts and Archives: Comparative Views on Record-Keeping.Studies in Manuscript Cultures11. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter, 387–417. ISBN: 9783110541397. DOI: 10.1515/9783110541397-014 [chapter]. [PDF 🔓]
Trần Kỳ Phương, Võ Văn Thắng, Peter D. Sharrock (eds), Paisarn Piemmettawat (photographs). Vibrancy in Stone: Masterpieces of the Đà Nẵng Museum of Cham Sculpture. Bangkok: River Books. 288 pp. + 324 photographs. ISBN 978 616 7339 99 3. 2,000.00 ฿ (within Thailand). [official site] [official launch] [co-editor Peter D. Sharrock: academia.edu]
Description
The collection of the Đà Nẵng Museum of Cham Sculpture, mostly in sandstone, was gathered from the Champa monuments that were collapsed covered by dense tropical flora for centuries. Only in the late 19th century did the ruined mounds began to attract collectors of antiquities and researchers of cultural heritage. The large undertaking of surveying, recording, clearing and scientifically excavating them took place in the first thirty years of the 20th century, when sculptures from this hitherto little studied culture began to be transferred to the Đà Nẵng Museum of Cham Sculpture, then referred to as the ‘Musée Čam’ or ‘Musée de Tourane’. Continue reading “Trần, Võ & Sharrock eds. (2018), Vibrancy in Stone”
The Richard R. & Magdalena Ernst Collection of Himalayan Art. Auction, 22 March 2018, 10:00 AM EDT, Sotheby’s New York. Sale Number N09800. (Part of Asia Week New York.) [official site] [PDF]
Note: This extraordinary collection contains Nepalese paintings that have received little attention or that are otherwise significant. For instance, Lot 907 (below) is identified as a painted icon of Buddhakapāla (?), which would make it the only one known in Nepal.
Buddhakapāla couple (? supplied identification) with four yoginīs and donors, Nepal, early 19th c., Sotheby’s Sale N09800 Lot 907
Simon Cubelic, Axel Michaels, Astrid Zotter (eds). 2018. Studies in Historical Documents from Nepal and India. Documenta Nepalica – Book Series 1. Heidelberg: Heidelberg University Publishing. ISBN 978-3-946054-70-2 (PDF), 978-3-946054-71-9. 535 pp. (Hardcover) DOI:10.17885/heiup.331.454 [PDF 🔓]
Iain Sinclair. 2016. ‘The appearance of tantric monasticism in Nepal: a history of the public image and fasting ritual of Newar Buddhism, 980-1380’. Monash University, Melbourne: PhD diss. 418 pp., 90 illustrations, 27 tables. DOI:10.4225/03/58ab8cadcf152
Ian W. Mabbett (ed). Prācyaprajñāpradīpa: Professor Dr Samaresh Bandyopadhyay Felicitation Volume on Early Indian History and Culture. Franklin, Tennessee: NIOS (North American Institute for Oriental and Classical Studies) and International Forum for Felicitating Professor Dr. Samaresh Bandyopadhyay. 2012. xxii+584 pp. ISBN 978-0-9848617-0-1. Rs 2500 / USD$70.
From the Preface
The volume contains (in Part 1 with 3 sections) a compendium of information about the career and scholarly achievements of Professor Dr. Samaresh Bandyopadhyay along with a large number of tributes written by people who have benefited from their association with him, and also (in Part 2) an exceptional collection of learned research articles; these have been written in his honour by many who have been impressed and inspired by his scholarship and personality, and they mirror the great depth and the diversity of his own research interests. […]
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).
Your comments are invited on a proposal to encode the script ‘prevalent’/’in vogue’ (pracalita) in Nepal since the late fourteenth century, and which since the Shah period has continued in use in the scribal and print culture of the Newars. The proposal under discussion was submitted a month ago by Anshuman Pandey to the international standards body for character sets, WG2 under JTC1 of the ISO. Download it here:
Anshuman Pandey. ‘Proposal to Encode the Newar Script in ISO/IEC 10646’. ISO/IEC JTC1/SC2/WG2 proposal N4184 [PDF]. January 5, 2012. [Supersedes N4038, ‘Preliminary Proposal to Encode the Prachalit Nepal Script’]
Anyone can submit a proposal for consideration by WG2. However, this is not a trivial process; documents need to comply with the group’s requirements, and if I observe correctly, there are very few competing complete proposals for historic scripts. No proposal has come from the Nepalese government, Newar culture having little, if any, official status in the Shah and post-Shah nation-state. The proposal under discussion (hereafter “N4184”) is that of a private individual, in collaboration with the Script Encoding Initiative at Berkeley. Mr. Pandey has graciously agreed to consider informed feedback on his proposal, which I hope will be incorporated into future documents submitted to WG2. It is in this constructive spirit that your feedback is requested; anyone may add comments via the form the end of this post.
1. Intended scope of these comments: focus on repertoire
The present discussion should focus on the completeness and accuracy of the glyph repertoire represented in the present proposal. Matters such as the proposed name and classification of the script, the description of interaction between glyphs (e.g. conjunct formation, §4.8.1), issues related to other Nepalese or Indic scripts (except where strictly relevant) and so on should notbe discussed here. If there is sufficient interest, these matters can be addressed in separate posting(s). Here I will offer some of my own preliminary, informal feedback on the proposal, on which comments are also welcome.
N4184 aims to “encode a core set of Newar characters” (p.17). This invites the question of how “core” should be defined. I will not discuss this in depth, other to say that the standard should include those characters which are most common and most useful in this form of writing. Specifically, I propose that the characters depicted in Figs.6 and 7 below should be part of the standard. This is the repertoire proposed in N4184:
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.
Simon Cubelic, Axel Michaels, Astrid Zotter (eds). 2018. Studies in Historical Documents from Nepal and India. Documenta Nepalica – Book Series 1. Heidelberg: Heidelberg University Publishing. ISBN 978-3-946054-70-2 (PDF), 978-3-946054-71-9. 535 pp. (Hardcover) DOI:
