Sanskritic civilization · Tantric studies · Newar & Nusantaran Buddhism
薩迦二祖索南孜莫（作者）, 許明銀（譯者） 《印度西藏密教概論：認識最初之體系性密教概說》 大千出版社 2012年12月22日
Sa skya Bsod rnams rtse mo [b.1142], Xu Ming Yin [b. 1952] (tr.). Yindu Xizang mi jiao gai lun: ren shi zui chu zhi ti xi xing mi jiao gai shuo [*Introduction to Indo-Tibetan Tantric Buddhism: Understanding the first systematic primer on tantra(?)]. Taipei: Darchen, 2012. ISBN: 9789574472673 [books.com.tw]
A partial Chinese translation of the earliest rGyud sde spyi’i rnam par gzhag pa. See Xu’s unofficial introduction.
李学竹 〈《入中论颂》第六章1一97颂校勘〉 《中国藏学》 1, 2012. (ISSN 1671-6043)
Li, Xuezhu. ‘Madhyamakāvatāra-kārikā’. China Tibetology no.1, 2012, pp.1–16.
Slightly late news, but then this publication doesn’t seem to have been mentioned anywhere else (or brought to my attention) by anyone named in the acknowledgements. That isn’t too surprising, though. One of the three other publications mentioned by the author is an edition of Vasubandhu’s “Viṃśatikākārikā” (p.2), yet one of the nominal collaborators has established back in 2008 that this text should properly be titled Viṃśikā.
Continue reading “Li, Madhyamakāvatāra 6.1–97 (2012)”
尼玛但增 (主编) 《罗布林卡珍藏文物辑选》 中国藏学出版社, 2011.
A Newar-copied pramāṇa manuscript? You don’t see those every day—especially in Nepal.
Chandrasekhar, Chaya. Pāla-Period Buddha Images: their hands, hand gestures, and hand-held attributes. PhD Dissertation, Ohio State University, 2004. xvi+375 pp. [official site / PDF (779.3 MB)]
This study identifies and classifies the Buddha images of the Pāla period (ca. eighth-twelfth centuries) of eastern India and Bangladesh. Specifically, the study examines the number of hands—whether a single pair or multiple pairs—hand gestures, and hand-held attributes of the Buddha images, and analyzes these elements in relation to the essential teachings of Mahāyāna and Vajrayāna Buddhism. […]
About 963 Buddha images among the known Pāla artistic corpus serve as the primary documents for the study.
Lee, Eun-Su. On defining Buddhist art in Bengal: the Dhaka region. PhD Dissertation, University of Texas at Austin, May 2009. 498 pp. [official site / PDF (224.3 MB)]
This dissertation addresses the significance of regional developments in Indian art, focusing on the Buddhist art tradition of the Dhaka region in East Bengal from approximately the seventh to twelfth century CE.
Refer to: Anshuman Pandey, ‘N4184 Proposal to Encode the Newar Script in ISO/IEC 10646’, February 29, 2012 [PDF]. Previous discussion: here.
The name ‘Newar’ is preferable simply because most other options can be ruled out. ‘Nepalese’ is untenable, because it falsely implies a one-to-one relationship with the present-day nation-state, even though it is accurate within a certain (historically earlier) context. ‘Newari’ is a (now deprecated) name for the language – not the script, nor anything else; ‘Nevārī’ is quite meaningless, except to some Indologists.
The proposal, as I understand it, indeed deals with the Pracalita script, but has enough hooks to allow unification with proposals for other Newar scripts, such as Bhujiṅmola – hence ‘Newar’. (NB: It is not yet clear whether unification with Rañjanā – which is, strictly speaking, Indo-Nepalese, and which has a user base that includes many non-Newars, such as Tibetans – is feasible. In any case, much of the present and previous discussion about the Pracalita script is also applicable to Rañjanā.)
11442 NEWAR FINAL ANUSVARA: Although this mark originates with the m-virāma mark used by East Indian scribes, in Nepal it has multivalent significance and in many contexts has nothing to do with nasalization (often being interchangeable with 1144B NEWAR GAP FILLER). Recommendation: Minimise phonetic/semantic description in favour of graphic description – maybe NEWAR SEMICOLON for want of a better term. Classify under Punctuation or Various Signs.
11443 NEWAR SIDDHI = शुभचिं (Shrestha NS 1132:21). There is no uniform name for this mark in Newar (esp. not the neologism bhiṃciṃ), nor is siddhi/añji recommended (not just because this designation is unknown in Nepal, but because usage may also vary; confusion with NEWAR OM is common). Recommendation: NEWAR AUSPICIOUSNESS MARK or similar.
11448 NEWAR COMMA = अर्धविराम (Shrestha NS 1132:24).
11449 NEWAR DOUBLE COMMA: I now think this mark can be represented with two adjacent NEWAR COMMAs. Its usual behaviour of stacking diagonally (see Fig.3) rather than horizontally should however be specified. Recommendation: Remove from the repertoire.
1144B NEWAR HIGH SPACING DOT = अल्पविराम (ibid.).
1144C NEWAR ABBREVIATION SIGN CIRCLE = संक्षेपीकरण यानाः च्वयातःगु थासय् थुगु चिं (ibid.).
1145A NEWAR FLOWER = स्वांथें ज्याःगु चिं (ibid.).
1145C NEWAR PLACEHOLDER MARK is the line-width equivalent of the NEWAR GAP FILLER (see below). Recommendation: Change name to NEWAR LINE FILLER MARK.
Following comments on earlier drafts of N4184, especially those of Kashinath Tamot, it should be clarified that the primary function of 1144B NEWAR GAP FILLER is not that of indicating a break in a word (as per the previous name SANDHI MARK), but rather of filling space up to the end of a line margin. (A hyphen indeed performs a space-filling operation as well as functioning as a word-breaking mark. However, I suggest that ‘hyphenation’ be dropped from the formal description of this mark to avoid confusion.)
The purpose of this mark has been obvious enough to specialists – recently see, e.g. Ishida (2011:ix), where it is called a ‘line-filler character’, Zeilenfüllzeichen. (In fact, this mark does not fill a line – this is the function of 1145C NEWAR PLACEHOLDER MARK; rather, it fills a space of less than one full glyph-width at the end of a margin, not necessarily the end of a line.) Nonetheless, it is easily seen that the mark could be confused with, e.g., a visarga, daṇḍa or similar. In earlier discussion on the proposal, its purpose has remained unclear to the user community, perhaps due to its unstable shape. Significantly, the NEWAR GAP FILLER MARK changes according to the width of the glyph. Its behaviour may be represented as follows:
Variations in this mark may therefore be regarded as contextual alternatives, rather than separate code points. I suggest, as per the diagram, that no more than three variants need be represented; although the glyph could conceivably incorporate four or more variations (e.g., five vertically stacked dots, at 20% character width), this is probably excessive.
Recommendation: It may be implemented as one code point with contextual alternates, or 3 or more code points corresponding to each quantum of width.
Several glyphs may be alternatively represented with swash forms, created by extending elements of the glyph into surrounding white space. These forms do not require dedicated representation in an encoded repertoire; however, they should be included in any full description of Indo-Newar scribal culture, and font designers might want to incorporate them. Swash forms are often contextually invoked: they are used at the top line of a block of text (upward extension), but may also be seen on the bottom line (downward extension), and even more rarely at the right and left margins, and within interlinear white space. An example:
Characters routinely represented as swash forms include:
11432 NEWAR VOWEL SIGN U, 11433 NEWAR VOWEL SIGN UU, 11439 NEWAR VOWEL SIGN AI, 1143B NEWAR VOWEL SIGN AU, (superscribed) 11428 NEWAR LETTER RA, 1143D NEWAR SIGN CANDRABINDU, 1143E NEWAR SIGN ANUSVARA – upward extension;11402 NEWAR LETTER I, 11403 NEWAR LETTER II, (subscribed) 11417 NEWAR LETTER NYA, 1141D NEWAR LETTER TA, 11423 NEWAR LETTER PHA, 11425 NEWAR LETTER BHA, 11429 NEWAR LETTER LA, 1142D NEWAR LETTER SA, 1142E NEWAR LETTER HA, 1143C NEWAR SIGN VIRAMA – downward extension.The following changes to standard forms are recommended – see glyphs highlighted in Fig.3, in which all glyphs have been redrawn from scratch to accord with common scribal practice. The most widespread change is that the headstroke no longer extends past the right descender (which is inconsistent with almost all scribal practice). Standard forms for VOCALIC R, VOCALIC RR, GA, SHA, dependent VOWEL SIGN II, VOCALIC R, VOCALIC RR as well as *VOCALIC L, VOCALIC LL (these should certainly be specified and named) should be altered accordingly. DIGIT ONE should also be changed in order to avoid confusion with SIDDHI.
5.2 Letter-Numerals: “There are at least 27 such Newar ‘letter numerals’… It may be possible to unify Newar letter-numbers with corresponding Brahmi characters.” The issue here, as far as I can see, is: which letter-numeral conjuncts differ from non-numeral conjuncts of the same letters (all differences should be specified). To put it another way: which letter-numeral conjuncts uniquely signify letter numerals, if any? Perhaps our European colleagues, with their extensive access to funding, institutional support and manuscript sources, could clarify the matter. (Don’t worry, we won’t hold our breath.)
5.3 “Should editorial marks be encoded on a per script basis or would be it reasonable to unify such marks in a pan-Indic block?” (Pandey 2012:13). Out of our hands, but if they aren’t unified, they should be included in the Newar block.
[rev 0.1: 2012/06/19]
Vaziri, Mostafa. Buddhism in Iran: An Anthropological Approach to Traces and Influences. Palgrave Macmillan USA, [forthcoming August] 2012. ISBN-13: 9781137022936.
Any leads on the Tripiṭaka in Persian?
“This study explores the interactions of Buddhism with the dominant cultures of Iran in pre- and post-Islamic times [sic], demonstrating the traces and cross influences as well as the importance of parallel practices, a process which has brought the culture of Iran to its present state.”
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.
若原雄昭 「バングラデシュ国内に保存されるサンスクリット仏教写本 , 他」 龍谷大学アジア仏教文化研究センター
Wakahara, Yusho. ‘Sanskrit Buddhist Manuscripts Preserved in Bangla Desh’. Ryukoku University Research Center for Buddhist Cultures in Asia, Working Paper 1, 2011. [PDF]
Kudos to Prof. Wakahara for getting some good photographs of Buddhist Sanskrit manuscripts out of Bangladesh. So in future reports on these manuscripts there should be no problem with providing full transcriptions of the colophons, including all the information about their Nepalese (and Tibetan, in one case) transmitters and users.
Niels Gutschow. Architecture of the Newars: A History of Building Typologies and Details in Nepal. 3 volumes. Serindia, November 2011. 1030 pp. USD$450 (excluding postage). ISBN 978-1-932476-54-5 [official site]
Architecture of the Newars by Niels Gutschow presents the entire history of architecture in the Valley of Kathmandu and its neighbours over a period of 1,500 years — right up to the present. It is a rare tribute to an urban culture which has preserved fascinating lifestyles to this very day. Gutschow first travelled to Nepal in 1962, returning in 1970 after reading architecture, and has constantly worked since then on the connections between ritual and the city. Since 1980 he has worked with measured drawings to identify the various building typologies, which are documented in three volumes with 862 photos and 939 drawings.
The first volume presents the complexity of the sacred landscape of the Valley and the urban context as well as the early periods, Buddhist votive structures (caityas), architectural fragments and temples from the early periods (5th–14th century). The second volume presents the Malla period (1350–1769) with a host of drawings documenting caityas, maths, tiered temples, shrines and monasteries. The third volume presents the modern period with temples and palaces of the Shaha kings and the Ranas; a variety of new caitya types; domestic architecture of the early 20th century; modern architecture and urban planning. The final chapter presents selected architectural details populated by airborne spirits in a transcultural perspective.
[preview]
Update: Book signing by the author at Vajra Books, Kathmandu, 2pm 14 December 2011.