Events
Fall Term 2009
Monday, November 23, 2009, 5:00 pm
Osmund Bopearachchi, Paris IV-Sorbonne University
The Buddha Sakyamuni and the Courtesan Utpalavarna in Gandhâran Buddhist Art
IEAS Conference Room, 2223 Fulton Street, 6th Floor
Gandhâran Buddhist Sculpture depicting the Buddha's Descent from the Heaven of the Thirty-three Gods (Private collection Tokyo).
The Buddha Sakyamuni, having preached Abhidhamma in the Trayastrimsa heaven to the gods and to his mother who was then reborn as a deva, descended to Jambudvipa at Samkasya on a triple ladder with Brahma to his right and Indra to his left. At the bottom, the Buddha was greeted by Utpalavarna, a Buddhist nun who had been a courtesan in Rajagriha. Pali, Sanskrit, Chinese and Japanese sources, relate how Utpalavarna came to renounce the secular world. While giving birth to a daughter, to her utter dismay, she discovered that her husband was having an illicit affair with her mother. She then ran away from home, leaving her newborn child behind. Sometime later she became the wife of a wealthy man in Varanasi, only to discover one day that the second wife he brought home was her own daughter. Disappointed with life, she became a courtesan in Rajagriha. After a chance encounter with Maudgalyayana, she became a disciple of the Buddha, engaging in Buddhist practice under the guidance of Mahaprajapati until she attained arhatship. The story of Utpalavarna has been a favorite legend among Buddhists, as attested not only by literary sources but also by Buddhist art in which the depiction of Utpalavarna, transformed by magic power into a great emperor (Chakravartin) and admitted with her chariot and troops into the foremost row to pay tribute to the Buddha upon descent from the Trayastrimsa heaven, was a popular theme. Very few art historians have paid attention to representations of the encounter between Utpalavarna and the Buddha. In his lecture, Prof. Bopearachchi will reexamine previously identified reliefs depicting this event in the light of newly discovered unpublished Gandharan reliefs where Utpalavarna is shown both as a Chakravartin and a Bikshuni.
Osmund Bopearachchi is a Director of Research at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (C.N.R.S. Paris), where he oversees the 'Hellenism and Oriental Civilisations' program of the C.N.R.S. UMR 8546/5, and also teaches Central Asian and South-Asian archaeology and art history at the Paris IV-Sorbonne University. This academic year, he is a visiting professor at Yale University. Prof. Bopearachchi holds a B.A. from the University of Kelaniya (Sri Lanka), and B.A. honors, (M.A.), M.Phil., Ph.D. from the Paris I-Sorbonne University, and a Higher Doctorate (Habilitation) from the Paris IV-Sorbonne University. He has published nine books, edited six books and published more than a hundred articles in international journals. Prof. Bopearachchi currently serves as the director of the Sri Lanka-French Archaeological Mission, and also has launched a joint project with the Department of Near-Eastern Studies of the University of California at Berkeley focusing on Sri Lanka's role in ancient maritime trade in the Indian Ocean.
Monday, December 14, 2009, 7:00 pm
Pre-release screening of "Journey to Zanskar" and discussion with director/writer Frederick Marx
PFA Theater, 2575 Bancroft Way between College and Telegraph
Donations appreciated
Spring Term 2010
Thursday, January 21, 2010, 5:00 pm
Wendi Adamek, Stanford Humanities Center
Practicescape at Bao shan
IEAS Conference Room, 2223 Fulton Street, 6th Floor
Lanfeng shan image of the nun Faguang 法光. Photo credit: Frederick M. Smith
The site known as Bao shan (Treasure Mountain) in Henan reveals a rich web of complex relationships: gender relations, lay and ordained relations, successive reshapings of the environment, human and non-human relations, and images and texts of various kinds. Dr. Adamek illustrates these relationships with slides and selected inscriptions from the site's treasures. Drawing from Tim Ingold's notion of a given environment as a rhizomatic "taskscape," she will discuss her current work on Bao shan in terms of "practicescape," a multi-directional reinscription of the landscape in Buddhist terms. The notion of "practicescape" allows us to examine the relationships noted above within the context of key co-dependent representations of practice space: empty peaks and caves with images, mountain and city temples, sites of ascetic "escape" and socioeconomic networks.
Dr. Adamek is a China religions scholar who received her Ph.D. in Religious Studies from Stanford University and has taught at Barnard College and Columbia University. Her book The Mystique of Transmission (Columbia University Press, 2007) centers on an 8th century Chan/Zen group in Sichuan and won an Award for Excellence from the American Academy of Religion. Works in progress include a book on the Buddhist community at Bao shan and a book on issues in environment and culture. Dr. Adamek's research interests include Buddhism of the Tang dynasty, donor practices, Buddhist art, and network theory.
Thursday, January 28, 2010, 5:00 pm
Paul Copp, University of Chicago
Buddhist Seal Manuals and the Nature of Dunhuang Buddhism: The Case of P. 3835v.#9
IEAS Conference Room, 2223 Fulton Street, 6th Floor
Instructions for the carving and use of a Buddhist seal-amulet included on P.3835 v.#9
Chinese Buddhist uses of fu-talismans 符 and talisman-bearing seals (fuyin 符印) are among the most characteristic practices of the form of medieval Chinese religiosity known lately as "Buddho-Daoism." Yet aside from being a rather vague label, "Buddho-Daoism," as Christine Mollier has recently pointed out, implies a non-sectarian orientation on the part of the sources that is not always present. In the case of the text that will be the focus of this talk, "Dhāranī Methods of the Great Wheel Vajra" (Foshuo dalun jin'gang zongchi tuoluoni fa 佛說大輪金剛總持陀羅尼法), found as the ninth text on the verso of the Dunhuang manuscript Pelliot # 3835, seals are presented unmistakably as Buddhist – in fact, as forms of Buddhist incantation known as dhāranī (tuoluoni 陀羅尼, zongchi 總持, etc). I will thus take this text's seals as straightforwardly Buddhist and ask what close analyses of dhāranī-seal manuals may tell us about the deep doctrinal and practical natures of the forms of Buddhism practiced at Dunhuang in the ninth and tenth centuries. I will pay special attention to P. 3835v. #9's invocations of Manibhadra (Monibatuo 摩尼跋陀; often a protector of travelers) and Great Wheel Vajra (Dalun jin'gang 大輪金剛), a deity featured in such native Chinese Buddhist productions as the Pseudo-Śūraṃgama Scripture (Lengyan jing 楞嚴經) and the esoteric imagery found in Song Dynasty Sichuan.
Paul Copp is Assistant Professor in the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago. He received his Ph.D. in 2005 from the Department of Religion at Princeton University and spent a year as a postdoctoral researcher at the Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften, in Heidelberg, Germany, working on Buddhist inscriptions from Northern Dynasties China. He recently finished a monograph entitled Incantatory Bodies: Spells and Material Efficacy in Chinese Buddhist Practice, 600-1000, which explores amuletic and philosophical traditions of Chinese Buddhist incantation practice. He is currently beginning a large-scale study of personal forms of esoteric Buddhist practice in medieval Dunhuang.
Thursday, February 11, 2010, 5:00 pm
Robert Brown, University of California, Los Angeles
The Gupta Connection: The Buddha Image in India, Sri Lanka, Southeast Asia, and China
IEAS Conference Room, 2223 Fulton Street, 6th Floor
Buddha, Stone, Sarnath Museum, 5th c. CE.
In the second half of the fifth century a new type of Buddha image was invented at Sarnath. This image type interested Buddhist worshippers across Asia, and was used by artists to create local versions of the Gupta Buddha image type. The talk traces the timing of the relationships among images from India to Sri Lanka, Southeast Asia, and China. It argues that the impact of the new Sarnath style image in Asia was rapid, by the mid-sixth century. It also suggests that the Buddha image in Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia begins only in the sixth century, a radically later dating than has been accepted by scholars up until now. Possible reasons for the popularity of the Gupta style of Buddha image are proposed.
Robert Brown graduated from UCLA with a Ph.D. in Indian art history in 1981. Immediately after graduation he worked at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, being promoted to Curator of Indian and Southeast Asian Art in 1984. In 1986 he began teaching at UCLA where he is presently Professor of art history. In 2000 he was reappointed as Curator in the Department of South and Southeast Asian Art at LACMA, a position he holds with his UCLA professorship. His publications include a number of books and articles on Buddhist and Hindu art, on the nature of Indian artistic influence in Southeast Asia, and on the colonial and western basis for art historical understanding of India. He is presently writing a book on the Gupta-period Buddha images from Sarnath (India). Three recent publications include edited books: Art from Thailand (Marg 1999).
Thursday, March 11, 2010, 5:00 pm
2nd Annual Khyentse Foundation Lecture in Tibetan Buddhism
David Jackson, Rubin Museum of Art
IEAS Conference Room, 2223 Fulton Street, 6th Floor
Reception to follow
Thursday, April 1, 2010, 5:00 pm
Masaki Matsubara, Visiting Scholar, UC Berkeley
IEAS Conference Room, 2223 Fulton Street, 6th Floor
Thursday, April 15, 2010, 5:00 pm
2009-2010 Numata Lecture
Christian Luczanits, Numata Visiting Professor in Buddhist Studies
IEAS Conference Room, 2223 Fulton Street, 6th Floor
Reception to follow
Tuesday, May 4, 2010, 5:00 pm
Nobuyoshi Yamabe, Tokyo Nogyo Daigaku
IEAS Conference Room, 2223 Fulton Street, 6th Floor
Thursday, May 6, 2010, 5:00 pm
Robert Gimello, University of Notre Dame
IEAS Conference Room, 2223 Fulton Street, 6th Floor