Sanskritic civilization · Tantric studies · Newar & Nusantaran Buddhism
種村 隆元 「Śūnyasamādhivajra 著作の葬儀マニュアル Mṛtasugatiniyojana: サンスクリット語校訂テキストおよび註」 『東洋文化研究所紀要』 163 (127)–(101).
Tanemura, Ryūgen. ‘Śūnyasamādhivajra’s Mṛtasugatiniyojana: A Critical Edition and Notes’. The memoirs of Institute for Advanced Studies on Asia 163, 2013, pp.110–136. [in Japanese; PDF]
Continue reading “Tanemura, Śūnyasamādhivajra’s Mṛtasugatiniyojana (2013)”
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.
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).
Nepal has earthquakes; Java has volcanoes; the United Kingdom has dreary weather. Is there a geographic correlation between religiosity and catastrophe?
Jeanet Sinding Bentzen. ‘Origins of Religiousness: The Role of Natural Disasters’. University of Copenhagen Department of Economics Discussion Paper 13-02, 2013. [official site / PDF]
[…] Natural disasters are a source for adverse life events, and thus one way to interpret my findings is by way of religious coping. The results are robust to various measures of religiousness, and to inclusion of country fixed effects, income, education, demographics, religious denominations, and other climatic and geographic features. The results hold within Christianity, Islam and Buddhism, and across continents. […]
Kimiaki Tanaka. Mitrayogin’s 108 Maṇḍalas: An Image Database. Jyatha: Vajra Books, 2013. 136 pp. ISBN 978-9937-506-92-2.
(Translated from: 田中公明 『曼荼羅グラフィクス』 山川出版社, 2007 [official site].)
Required reading for tantric studies specialists:
Péter-Dániel Szántó. ‘Selected Chapters from the Catuṣpīṭhatantra’. Vol.1: Introductory study with the annotated translation of selected chapters. Vol. 2: Appendix volume with critical editions of selected chapters accompanied by Bhavabhaṭṭa’s commentary and a bibliography. D. Phil. diss., Oxford University, December 16 2012. Viewable at academia.edu [v.1, 2].
Michael Slouber is doing some of the most interesting work in tantric studies today. His PhD-to-book Kickstarter runs until the first week of June: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1326752800/tantric-medicine.
I can commend the future book solely on the basis of Dr Slouber’s freely available and superbly typeset (see below) Hamburg M.A. thesis. I’m not yet sure that I’ll commit, though. On the one hand, I can’t condone the parading of indebtedness that is at epidemic levels in the West; on the other hand, there is something to be said for a social network that encourages dānapāramitā more than keeping up with the Joneses. It’s also nice that at least one or two people with tenure have committed funds together with the much more numerous impoverished students and recent graduates.
Seishi Karashima. ‘Was the Aṣṭasāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā Compiled in Gandhāra in Gāndhārī?’ Annual Report of the International Research Institute for Advanced Buddhology (ARIRIAB) at Soka University for the Academic Year 2012, vol.XVI, 2013, pp.171–188. [PDF]
This is a remarkable piece of detective work and a milestone in the study of the Mahāyāna, whether or not one thinks (as I do) that Prof. Karashima’s theory nails it. Karashima’s many years of lexicographical toil seem to have finally paid off: the earliest Chinese phonetic transcriptions from the Aṣṭasāhasrikā agree most fully with the newly found Gāndhārī fragments (for which see also Strauch 2007). And that, moreover, is merely one of many compelling indicators pointing to the composition of the text in Gandhāra.
One minor comment: the image of Dharmodgata discovering the Prajñāpāramitā written on gold plates vilīnena vaidūryeṇa — in “melted” lapis, according to Karashima (p.181) — sounds excessively fantastic. The reference is to lapis lazuli pigment, well known to medievalists as ultramarine, ‘beyond the sea’ — i.e., from Afghanistan.
Ulrich Timme Kragh (ed.) The Foundation for Yoga Practitioners: The Buddhist Yogācārabhūmi Treatise and Its Adaptation in India, East Asia, and Tibet. Harvard Oriental Series 75. “Available 07/22/2013”. ISBN 9780674725430.
“The present edited volume, conceived by Geumgang University in South Korea, brings together the scholarship of thirty-four leading Buddhist specialists on the Yogācārabhūmi from across the globe. The essays elaborate the background and environment in which the Yogācārabhūmi was composed and redacted, provide a detailed summary of the work, raise fundamental and critical issues about the text, and reveal its reception history in India, China, and Tibet. The volume also provides a thorough survey of contemporary Western and Asian scholarship on the Yogācārabhūmi in particular and the Yogācāra tradition more broadly.”
(Contains, among others [updated, 2013-05-01]:
H. Sakuma 佐久間秀範, ‘Remarks on the Lineage of Indian Masters of the Yogācāra School: Maitreya, Asaṅga, and Vasubandhu’, pp.330–366.
M. Delhey, ‘The Yogācārabhūmi Corpus: Sources, Editions, Translations, and Reference Works’, pp.498–561.)