Jacob Paul Dalton. Taming of the Demons: Violence and Liberation in Tibetan Buddhism. New Haven: Yale University Press, forthcoming (2011). ISBN 9780300153927.
The near-omniscient WorldCat (no relation to LOL-), one of many great online resources unavailable through Google, has Jacob Dalton’s tenure prerequisite on its slate of forthcoming titles. With a pre-order price tag of USD$31.58, I might even be able to afford this one.
Giuseppe Tucci Symposium, Monash University (Caulfield), 2010
The Giuseppe Tucci Symposium jointly convened in Melbourne by Monash University, IsIAO and the Istituto Italiano di Cultura over September 29 to October 1, 2010 has successfully concluded. In my estimation, the quality of presentations was quite high, with a great deal of new material coming forth regarding Giuseppe Tucci’s life, times and scholarly legacy.
Two volumes of proceedings are planned. In the meantime, a foretaste is available in the booklet of the abstracts in downloadable PDF form.
Saptavidhānottarapūjā performed by Badrīratna Vajrācārya, 1957 CEA slew of photographs taken by the late anthropologist Christoph von Fürer-Haimendorf (1909–1995) have been placed in an online digital archive hosted by SOAS. Hundreds of these photographs are purposive records of Newar life, taken just after the opening of Nepal to foreign visitors in the late 1950s. Shown here is a worship of Āryatārā performed in Kathmandu by Badrīratna Vajrācārya who, although a well-known figure in Kathmandu, is not identified by name in the archive.
Dozens of other Himalayan and South Asian ethnic groups are represented in the collection, which is a real mine of information for researchers in the field, well worth the cost of digitization. The copyrights — yes, they still matter — are reserved by SOAS and Nicholas Haimendorf.
Mathias Fermer. The Life and Works of Gong dkar rDo rje gdan pa Kun dga’ rnam rgyal (1432-1496) (གོང་དཀར་རྡོ་རྗེ་གདན་པ་ཀུན་དགའ་རྣམ་རྒྱལ་༼༡༤༣༢-༡༤༩༦༽གྱི་ལོ་རྒྱུས་དང་གསུང་རྩོམ་།). M.A. Thesis, Department of Indian and Tibetan Studies, University of Hamburg, 2009. 415 pp.
From the Preface:
Gong dkar rDo rje gdan pa Kun dga' rnam rgyalGong dkar Kun dga’ rnam rgyal, alias Gong dkar rDo rje gdan pa or Grwa lnga rgyal po (1432-1496), was one of the great scholar-saints who lived in the religiously highly productive period of the fifteenth century. Today, his religious tradition, which had mainly flourished near its original home in the southern part of Central Tibet (dBus), is commonly referred to as the rDzong tradition (rDzong lugs), a lesser known subsect within the Sakya school of Tibetan Buddhism. […]
PART I of this thesis gives a rough overview of the religious and political circumstances of Kun dga’ rnam rgyal’s time (chapter 1) and introduces the noble family lineage into which he was born (chapter 2). In PART II, I summarize this master’s life, beginning with an overview of previous modern research (chapter 3), followed by an account of his eventful life (chapter 4) and a discussion on the practice tradition that emerged from him (chapter 5). The next chapter is dedicated to Kun dga’ rnam rgyal’s writings, which will be provided in a composite catalogue of his works and a descriptive catalogue of those texts that have been available to me (chapter 6). PART III consists of the edition (chapter 7) and the translation (chapter 8 ) of the eleventh chapter of his main biography. The translated text gives an impression of how he was perceived as a religious teacher and provides a detailed list of his disciples. In addition, the final section contains several appendices.
Mr. Fermer’s thesis is an impressive piece of work; it won the 2009 Peter Lindegger Preis for graduate students of Tibetan Studies. Plans are, or were, in place to publish the thesis as a monograph. (Here I should disclose my own interest: I receive a mention in the Acknowledgements.)
Moreover, an e-text of the biography is available at Hamburg’s promising Sakya Resource Centre (sakya-resource.de/).
Dagyab, Namri. Vergleich von Verwaltungsstrukturen und wirtschaftlichen Entscheidungsprozessen tibetisch-buddhistischer Klöster in der Autonomen Region Tibet, China und Indien [A comparison of administrative structures and economic decision-making processes of Tibetan buddhist monasteries in the Tibetan Autonomous Region, China, and India]. PhD diss., Univ. Bonn, 2009, 278 pp. [/PDF]
This dissertation focuses on dGe lugs pa monasteries “not only as especially important centres of Buddhist doctrin[al teaching], but also in terms of their regional social and economic [importance]”, and includes a useful glossary (pp.216–227).
Arthur McKeown. From Bodhgayā to Lhasa to Beijing: The Life and Times of Śāriputra (c.1335–1426), Last Abbot of Bodhgayā. PhD diss., Harvard University, 2010. 570 pp.
According to a note kindly sent by Dr. McKeown, whom I first met in Kathmandu a couple of years ago, the dissertation “includes the transcription and translation of all three biographies of Śāriputra, as well as transcription and translation of the three siddha biographies (Virūpakṣa, Goraknātha, Golenātha) he dictated to Jñānaśrī.”
NB: A detailed catalogue of the collection was published by Kimiaki Tanaka 田中公明: 『詳解河口慧海コレクション―チベット・ネパール仏教美術』, 佼成出版社, 1990) [OCLC: 673702954; amazon.co.jp].
In Kathmandu there are worse places to hang out than in Jana Bahā, majestic home to one of the Valley’s four famed Lokeśvaras. Like many icons of the Valley, it is sacred not only to Newar Buddhists, who control the ritual and institutional complex connected with the deity, but also for Tibetans (as Jo bo dzam gling dkar mo) and a sizeable number of non-Buddhists (in the guise of ‘White Matsyendranātha’).
It so happens that tomorrow is an important day in the ongoing renovation of Jana Bahā. Formally this began with expeditions to the nearest forest (vanayātrā) to seek suitable lumber, much along the lines prescribed in Kuladatta’s Kriyāsaṃgraha (itself almost certainly a Newar composition). As almost the entire Valley has been deforested these days, the builders’ Getting of Wood took place on the mountains on the Valley’s rim. Nevertheless, chronicles record that timber was also scarce in the not-too-distant past; it would take several weeks or months to drag the chosen log(s) to their destination in the city.
What makes this renovation qualitatively different from its many predecessors in the Newar tradition is a new level of transparency. The organizers have taken the startling but commendable step of documenting much of the process online, in English, at janabahaa.blogspot.com.
Ekai Kawaguchi (26.3.1866–24.3.1945) Collection 「河口慧海請来チベット資料」. Tohoku University: http://webdb2.museum.tohoku.ac.jp/data_base/tounitibi/ekai/.
It so happens that tomorrow is an important day in the ongoing renovation of Jana Bahā. Formally this began with expeditions to the nearest forest (vanayātrā) to seek suitable lumber, much along the lines prescribed in Kuladatta’s Kriyāsaṃgraha (itself almost certainly a Newar composition). As almost the entire Valley has been deforested these days, the builders’ Getting of Wood took place on the mountains on the Valley’s rim. Nevertheless, chronicles record that timber was also scarce in the not-too-distant past; it would take several weeks or months to drag the chosen log(s) to their destination in the city.
