Sūn Bójūn. Xīxià xīnyì Fójīng Duóluóní de duìyīn yánjiū [Researches on the newly transcribed Dharanis in Xixia]. Beijing: China Social Sciences Press, 196 pp. 2010. ISBN 9787500488903.
Mori, Masahide. Chibetto no Bukkyō bijutsu to mandara [*Buddhist Art and Mandalas of Tibet]. Nagoya: The University of Nagoya Press, 2011. 315 pp. ISBN 978-4-8158-0670-5. [official site]
Carmen Meinert (ed.) with contributions from Andrey Terentyev. Buddha in der Jurte: Buddhistische Kunst aus der Mongolei (Buddha in the Yurt: Buddhist Art from Mongolia). Hirmer Verlag, forthcoming (October 2011). “~750” pp., ~550 Illus. ISBN: 978-3-7774-4231-0.
Official Description
As Buddhist art reached 17th Century Mongolia, it became an established element in the life of believers. These volumes show a representative selection of exquisite objects from a singular private collection and reflect the range of influences from Tibet to the Manchurian Qing dynasty.
[Multi-volume set; to be published in English/Russian and German/Mongolian]
Sakuma, Ruriko. Indo Mikkyō no Kanjizai Kenkyū [*Studies on Avalokiteśvara in Indian Tantric Buddhism]. Tokyo: Sankibo Busshorin, 2011. 620 pp. ISBN 978-4-7963-0015-5.
Liu, Zhen. *Meditations and Asceticisms: On the discovery and study of Buddhist Sanskrit Manuscripts. Shanghai Guji Publishing House, 2010. 299 pp., 58 yuan. ISBN 9787532556670. [WorldCat]
刘震(著)《禅定与苦修—关于佛传原初梵本的发现和研究》上海古籍出版社
This book, as far as I am able to tell from internet gleanings (I’ve not seen it at the time of writing), is a revised and expanded (修订、增补) version of Zhen Liu’s PhD dissertation on a unique Sanskrit manuscript of the Kāyabhāvanāsūtra 《修身经》 of the Dīrghāgama submitted to Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München.
Further information can be found in this startlingly rich Chinese writeup by an editor at a Chinese publishing house:
Mori, Masahide. Indo mikkyō no girei sekai (The Rituals of Tantric Buddhism in India). Sekai Shisōsha, 2011, 340pp. ISBN 978-4-7907-1498-9. [official site / amazon.co.jp]
森 雅秀〮著 『インド密教の儀礼世界』 世界思想社 7140円
“The iconology of tantric Buddhist ritual.
[This book] makes the full picture of tantric Buddhist ritual emerge through elucidation of the structure and semiology of ritual in Indian tantric Buddhism. Its illumination of [a previously] unknown ritual world, Buddhist studies and Indology, as well as religious studies, anthropology, history, archaeology and art history and so on will have a wide impact on several areas.” [translated blurb]
Astrid 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)”
Dipak Kumar Barua. New Vajrayāna Mystic Songs from Nepal. A study on the Nava Caryāpada with texts and translations. Saarbrücken: Verlag Dr. Müller, 2010. 308 pp. ISBN-13: 978-3-639-30784-9.
[blurb and official site]
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).