Di Castro & Templeman (eds), Asian Horizons (2015)

AsianHorizons1000519-3-2Angelo Andrea Di Castro and David Templeman (eds). Asian Horizons: Giuseppe Tucci’s Buddhist, Indian, Himalayan and Central Asian Studies. Serie Orientale Roma CVI / Monash Asia Series. Melbourne: Monash University Publishing, April 2015. xxvi+613 pp. AUD$99. ISBN (pb): 978-1-922235-33-6; (epub): 978-1-922235-34-3.

Contributors …… vii

Preface …… xi

Introduction …… xix

I

Gustavo Benavides. Giuseppe Tucci, Anti-Orientalist …… 3

Francesco D’Arelli. A Glimpse of some Archives on Giuseppe Tucci’s Scientific Expeditions to Tibet: 1929–1939 …… 16

Ruth Gamble. The problem with folk: Giuseppe Tucci and the transformation of folksongs into scientific artefacts …… 45

Alex McKay. ‘A very useful lie’: Giuseppe Tucci, Tibet, and scholarship under dictatorship …… 68

Francesco Sferra. The ‘thought’ of Giuseppe Tucci …… 83

II Continue reading “Di Castro & Templeman (eds), Asian Horizons (2015)”

Tanemura, Śūnyasamādhivajra’s Mṛtasugatiniyojana (2013)

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)”

Steinkellner, Krasser & Lasic, Viśālāmalavatī 2 (2013)

Ernst Steinkellner, Helmut Krasser, Horst Lasic (eds.) Jinendrabuddhi´s Viśālāmalavatī Pramāṇasamuccayaṭīkā Chapter 2. Sanskrit Texts from the Tibetan Autonomous Region, Vols. 15/1, 15/2. Beijing & Vienna: China Tibetology Publishing House Austrian Academy of Sciences Press, 2013. 149+111 pp. ISBN-13: 978-3-7001-7134-8.

斯齐,卡热萨,斯坦因凯勒校勘 (編) 《吉年陀罗菩提《集量论》广大清净疏第二章:全二册 梵文、英文分享到》 中国藏学出版社 2013

[Publisher information updated from provided cover image, 2013/7/3. See also: Series’ official site]

Szántó, Selected Chapters from the Catuṣpīṭhatantra (2012)

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].

Kickstart Michael Slouber’s dissertation to book

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.

Slouber, Śaṅkuka’s Saṃhitāsāra (2011:21)
Slouber, Śaṅkuka’s Saṃhitāsāra (2011:21)

Kragh ed., The Buddhist Yogācārabhūmi Treatise (2013)

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.

From the Summary

“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.)

Saddharmarāja V., Nāmamantrārthāvalokinī (2011)

Vilasavajra-Saddharmaraja-NamamantrarthavalokiniPaṇḍita Kavirāja Saddharmarāja Bajrācārya Śāstrī (tr.) Ārya Mañjuśrī Nāmasaṅgīti: advayaparamārtha nāmasaṅgīti. Ācārya Vilāsavajra kṛta Nāmamantrārthaavalokinī Ārya Mañjuśrī Nāmasaṅgītiyāgu ṭīkāyā lidhaṃsāy, ṭippaṇī va bhāvārthasahita Nepālabhāṣāy saṅkṣipta anuvāda. Lalitapura: Rāmeśa Maharjana saparivāra, VS 2068 [2011 CE]. na+320 pp.

KL Dhammajoti, Reading Buddhist Sanskrit Texts (2012)

Kuala Lumpur Dhammajoti. Reading Buddhist Sanskrit Texts. An Elementary Grammatical Guide. Hong Kong: Buddha-dharma Centre of Hong Kong, 2012. ix + 361 pp. ISBN 978-988-16820-1-7 [available from Swindon Books]

A book that finds and almost fills its niche. Some weirdness is apparent, like the fact that sentences in romanized transcription do not appropriately add white space after finals. There are numerous typos and mistakes in sandhi, and there are no keys to the exercises — always a severe limitation. However, a patient and competent reviewer could easily detect, report and fix most of these problems. Any effort to knock down the high walls erected around the study of Sanskrit in ‘the West’ is, of course, worth encouraging.

From the Preface

“There are many excellent Sanskrit primers […] However, they all share the common feature of being based on non-Buddhist sources […]
many Buddhist students […] need to spend a large amount of time getting acquainted with those texts which are neither their concern proper nor source nor inspiration […]. It is out of this consideration that […] I had been thinking of producing an elementary manual totally based on the Buddhist texts” (p. v).