Sanskritic civilization · Tantric studies · Newar & Nusantaran Buddhism
Trent Thomas Walker. 2018. ‘Unfolding Buddhism: Communal Scripts, Localized Translations, and the Work of the Dying in Cambodian Chanted Leporellos.’ PhD diss., University of California, Berkeley. 2+xix+1628 pp. [PDF view] [dissertation website] [author’s website]
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”
Nicolas Revire. 2016. ‘The Enthroned Buddha in Majesty: An Iconological Study’. PhD diss. (Religions), Université Sorbonne Paris Cité. 2 vols., 410+299 pp. HAL ID: <tel-01552082>. [PDFs: vol.1, vol.2] [author: academia.edu]
From the Abstract: This dissertation consists of a detailed study of a particular representation of the Buddha, in which he sits on a prominent throne, i.e. a bhadrapīṭha or bhadrāsana, in a majestic posture with two legs pendant, that is, in bhadrāsana or the “auspicious pose.” This pendant-legged imagery, generally associated with a throne, has been found widely depicted in ancient religious art associated with early urban complexes and is, as a rule, mostly associated with kingship, fertility, and even divinity. […] Continue reading “Revire (2016), The Enthroned Buddha”
Four groups, formed around each of the four major canonical languages of Buddhism — Sanskrit, Chinese, Tibetan and Pāli — are now meeting at Mahachulalongkorn Vidyalaya, Bangkok, under the sponsorship of the International Association of Buddhist Universities. There they are hammering out plans to create a Union Catalogue of Buddhist Texts (UCBT), to be made freely available online.
More information (and snapshots of possibly familiar faces) can be found at the University’s website, here.
Jens Braarvig and Fredrik Liland, with contributions by Jens-Uwe Hartmann, Kazunobu Matsuda, Richard Salomon, and Lore Sander. Traces of Gandharān Buddhism. An Exhibition of Ancient Buddhist Manuscripts in the Schøyen Collection. Oslo: Hermes Publishing, in collaboration with Amarin Printing and Publishing Public Co. Ltd, Bangkok. 2010. xxxiv+101pp. [PDF (80 MB)].
This lavishly illustrated — and even more importantly, thoroughly researched — catalogue, published to accompany an exhibition of Afghan Buddhist manuscripts in Thailand, will surely be of interest to any serious scholar of Buddhism. Braarvig notes: “it is thus an important task to help preserve this dharmakāya [manuscript heritage] of the Buddha”. (One could add that Thailand, where a formerly practiced Sanskritic tradition has been completely lost, is probably not the place to find a receptive audience for such sentiments.)