2018-2019 Events

Monday, April 29, 2019, 5pm
A Tantric Theology from 12th century Tibet
Matthew T. Kapstein, Professor Emeritus, École Pratique des Hautes Études, Paris
Numata Visiting Professor of Buddhist Studies, University of Chicago
3335 Dwinelle Hall, UC Berkeley

The teachings of the tantric lineage of the Zur clan, which flourished in West Tibet during the early second millennium, have remained a missing element in the history of the “ancient,” Nyingma school of Tibetan Buddhism. While the historical importance of the clan is well known and significant lines of transmission are attributed to it, few authentic works stemming from the Zur and detailing their tradition have appeared. The recent discovery of a major synthetic treatise, The All-Encompassing Lamp of Awareness, by a 12th century successor to the Zur and treating all major aspects of their doctrinal heritage, permits us for the first time to consider their contribution in substantial detail.

Matthew T. Kapstein received his PhD from Brown University and specializes in the history of Buddhist philosophy in India and Tibet, as well as in the cultural history of Tibetan Buddhism more generally. He regularly teaches Contemporary Theories in the Study of Religion in the History of Religions program, and Introduction to the Philosophies of India in Philosophy of Religions. His seminars in recent years have focused on particular topics in the history of Buddhist thought, such as Buddha Nature, idealism, and epistemology (pramāṇa), or on broad themes in the study of religion including the problem of evil, death, and the imagination. Kapstein has published over a dozen books and numerous articles, among the most recent of which are a general introduction to Tibetan cultural history, The Tibetans (Oxford 2006), an edited volume on Sino-Tibetan religious relations, Buddhism Between Tibet and China (Boston 2009), and a translation of an eleventh-century philosophical allegory in the acclaimed Clay Sanskrit Series, The Rise of Wisdom Moon (New York 2009). With Kurtis Schaeffer (University of Virginia) and Gray Tuttle (Columbia), he has completed Sources of Tibetan Traditions, published in the Columbia University Press Sources of Asian Traditions series in 2013. Kapstein is also Director of Tibetan Studies at the École Pratique des Hautes Études, Paris and current Numata Visiting Professor of Buddhist Studies at the University of Chicago.

This event is supported by a generous gift from the Tianzhu Global Network

Thursday, April 11, 2019, 5pm
2019 Chao Lecture
Buddhist Contemplation and Higher Education: 
Researching and Adapting Contemplation in Modern Universities 
David Germano, University of Virginia
Goldman Theater, Brower Center
2150 Allston Way, Berkeley

Buddhist contemplation has a long history with complex educational institutions, namely Buddhist monasteries all across Asia. In recent decades, there has been a surge of interest in the American academy in such practices, including scientific research on their efficacy and mechanism, possible adaptation for new pedagogical approaches in the classroom, and inspiration for fresh perspectives on co-curricular programming for students. This talk will reflect on such developments by considering both the promise and peril involved across multiple registers as modern academics revisit the fault lines of the ancient emergence of universities out of monastic institutions and their contemplative lifestyles.

David Germano is professor in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Virginia where he also serves as the director of the Tibet Center (www.uvatibetcenter.org), director of the Contemplative Sciences Center (www.uvacontemplation.org), and director of SHANTI (Sciences, Humanities, and the Arts Network of Technological Initiatives, (www.shanti.virginia.edu). He also is the founder and director of the Tibetan and Himalayan Library (THL, www.thlib.org), the largest international initiative using digital technology to facilitate collaboration in Tibetan Studies across disciplines. His personal research interests are focused on the Nyingma and Bön lineages of Tibetan Buddhism, tantric traditions overall, Buddhist philosophy, and Tibetan historical literature and concerns, particularly from the eighth to fifteenth centuries. He also does research on the contemporary state of Tibetan religion in relationship to China, and non-monastic yogic communities in cultural Tibet, and has broad intellectual interests in international philosophical and literary traditions, including hermeneutics, phenomenology, literary criticism, systems theory, among others.  He  served as the 2019 Chao Visiting Professor in Buddhist Studies at UC Berkeley.

Thursday, April 4, 2019, 5 pm
2019 Numata Lecture
Avalokitasvara / Avalokiteśvara, Amitābha / Amitāyus and pratyekabuddha / pratyayabuddha: 
Misinterpretations of Gāndhārī Buddhism by Sanskrit Composers of the Mahāyāna Scriptures
Seishi Karashima, Soka University, Tokyo
Location: 180 Doe Memorial Library
UC Berkeley

Śākyamuni seems to have preached in a colloquial language, namely Māgadhī. The scriptures of early Buddhism were transmitted also in various colloquial languages, e.g. Pāli. Probably, many of the early Mahāyāna scriptures were originally transmitted in colloquial languages as well, e.g. Gāndhārī, which were later gradually translated into (Buddhist) Sanskrit. There are quite a few instances where later Sanskrit translators and composers misunderstood the meanings of Gāndhārī forms and created hyper-sanskritised ones, from which new interpretations also appeared. Avalokitasvara, meaning “One Who Surveys Sounds”, Amitāyus (“Infinite Life”), pratyayabuddha (“one who has become a buddha by [understanding] causes”) are some such instances. We shall trace the misinterpretations of Gāndhārī Buddhism by Sanskrit composers by means of comparing Sanskrit texts and the early Chinese translations whose underlying language is probably Gāndhārī.

Seishi Karashima is Professor of Sino-Indian Buddhist Philology at The International Research Institute for Advanced Buddhology, Soka University, Tokyo. From 1976 to 1994, he studied Indology, Buddhist Studies and Sinology at the University of Tokyo (B.A. and M.A.), Cambridge University, Beijing University (Ph.D.) and at Freiburg University. Areas of publication and research include philological studies of early Buddhist Sanskrit Texts and early Chinese Buddhist translations. Among his publications are: A Glossary of Lokakṣema’s Translation of the Aṣṭasāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā, 2010; A Critical Edition of Lokakṣema’s Translation of the Aṣṭasāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā, 2011; Die Abhisamācārikā Dharmāḥ, 2012, 3 vols.; Buddhist Manuscripts from Central Asia: The British Library Sanskrit Fragments, ed. with Klaus Wille, vol. 1 (2006), vol. 2 (2009), vol. 3 (2015); Buddhist Manuscripts from Central Asia: The St. Petersburg Sanskrit Fragments, vol. 1 (2015) ed. with M. I. Vorobyova-Desyatovskaya; Mahāyāna Texts: Prajñāpāramitā Texts,(1) (2016), (2) (2019) (Gilgit Manuscripts in the National Archives of India Facsimile Edition Volume II.1, 2).

Thursday, February 28, 2019, 5pm
2019 Khyentse Lecture
Recently discovered ancient Tibetan manuscripts and what they reveal about old cultures of ritual and some Tibetan Buddhist innovations 
Toni Huber, Humboldt University, Berlin
Location: Toll Room, Alumni House
UC Berkeley

In recent years, two sets of unique 11th century Tibetan manuscripts have been discovered - a sensational development according to many scholars. Texts and paintings in these manuscripts allow new insights into the cultural outlook of the little-known transition period between the 9th century fall of the Tibetan empire, and the radical socio-religious project of forging a thoroughly Buddhist society across the Tibetan Plateau that begun in earnest during the 11th century. These obscure texts mostly record previously unknown types of non-Buddhist rites. They address a range of concerns, including culturally problematic deaths of pregnant and birthing mothers and their infants, and of accident victims, offer solutions to those afflicted by psychic torment, or ensure that new human lives safely enter the world following deaths. One manuscript is richly illustrated with coloured miniatures that count among the oldest paintings from the Tibetan Plateau not directly related to organized religions. This lecture introduces results of new research on these old manuscripts and rites, outlines the previously unknown worldview they represent, and investigates cases where this ancient ritual system influenced some later innovations in Tibetan Buddhism.

Toni Huber has been Professor of Tibetan Studies at the Humboldt University in Berlin, Germany, since 2003. His research interests and published oeuvre focus on ethnography and cultural history of Tibetan Plateau and eastern Himalayan highland societies, environment and society, ritual and religion, and nomadic pastoralism. His major monographs include Source of Life. Revitalisation Rites and Bon Shamans in Bhutan and the Eastern Himalayas (Vienna, In Press), The Holy Land Reborn. Pilgrimage and the Tibetan Reinvention of Buddhist India(Chicago, 2008), and The Cult of Pure Crystal Mountain. Popular Pilgrimage & Visionary Landscape in Southeast Tibet(New York & Oxford, 1999).

Monday, February 25, 2019, 4-6 pm
American Sutra: Buddhism and the Incarceration of Japanese Americans during WWII
Speaker: Duncan Williams, USC 
Discussant: Mark Blum, UCB 
Discussant: Carolyn Chen, UCB
180 Doe Memorial Library
UC Berkeley

Duncan Ryūken Williams (USC) will discuss his new book “American Sutra” about Buddhism and the WWII Japanese American internment. The fact that the vast majority of Japanese Americans were Buddhist was responsible for why nearly 120,000 persons of Japanese ancestry, two-thirds of whom were American citizens, were targeted for forcible removal from the Pacific coast states and incarcerated in remote interior camps surrounded by barbed wire. Ironically, their Buddhist faith was also what helped the Japanese American community endure and persist at a time of dislocation, loss, and uncertainty. Based on newly translated Japanese-language diaries of Buddhist priests from the camps, extensive interviews with survivors of the camps, and newly declassified government documents about how Buddhism was seen as a national security threat, Williams argues that Japanese American Buddhists launched one of the most inspiring defenses of religious freedom in U.S. history.

Sponsored by the Center for Japanese Studies.

Thursday, February 21, 2019, 5 pm
Mongol ‘Translations’ of a Nepalese Stupa:
Architectural Replicas and the Cult of 
Bodnāthe Stūpa/Jarung khashar in Mongolia
Isabelle Charleux, CNRS, Paris
180 Doe Memorial Library
UC Berkeley

The cult of the Nepalese stupa of Bodnath (Tib. and Mo. Jarung Khashor) was very popular in 19th and early 20th century Mongolia and especially in Buryatia, as testifies the translation into Mongolian of a famous guidebook to Bodnath, a corpus of Mongolian oral narratives, the many thang-kas and amulets depicting the Bodnath Stupa along with a Tibetan prayer, and the existence of architectural replicas in Mongolia, probably to create surrogate pilgrimages to Bodnath. I will focus on these architectural replicas and try to explain how the Nepalese architecture was ‘translated’ to Mongolia, and try to understand whether the differences between the original and the replicas are due to local techniques and materials, to the impossibility of studying the original, or to the distortions induced by their mode of transmission. Has the original building been reinterpreted to the point of transforming its meaning? Is the replica of an architecture accompanied by the replica of possible cultic practices associated with it?

Isabelle Charleux is director of research at the CNRS (National Centre for Scientific Research, Paris) and deputy director of the GSRL (Group Societies, Religions, Laicities, National Centre for Scientific Research – Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes-PSL, Paris). Her research interests focus on Mongol material culture and religion. She published Nomads on Pilgrimage. Mongols on Wutaishan (China), 1800-1940 (Brill, 2015) and Temples et monastères de Mongolie-Intérieure (Paris, 2006), as well as scholarly articles on various topics such as miraculous icons in in Mongolia, Inner Mongolian mural paintings, and visual representation of past and present figures of authority in the Mongol world.

Co-sponsored by the Tang Center for Silk Road Studies and the Mongolian Initiative.

Friday-Sunday, February 15-17, 2019
Multiplicity of Asian Modernities
2019 Sheng Yen Conference
370 Dwinelle Hall 
UC Berkeley

The conference will explore examples of Buddhist modernism that have arisen in Asia since the late 19th century up through the present day. Buddhist modernism, broadly speaking, refers to forms of religiosity, identity, belief, and practice born out of the Buddhist engagement with the modern world. Recent scholarship has called into question the notion that “modernization” is tantamount to “Westernization”—that Asian Buddhist modernities are simply examples of demythologized protestant Buddhism. However, interdisciplinary exchange between scholars of Asian Buddhist modernities has been limited to date. The primary aim of this conference is to develop new ways to explore Asian Buddhist engagements with modernity. To this end, this conference will include scholars specializing in modern Buddhist phenomena from Buddhist traditions in East, South, and South East Asia.

Participants:

• Cody Bahir, Postdoctoral Fellow, UC Berkeley
• Johannes Beltz, Museum Rietberg
• Thomas Borchert, University of Vermont
• Jack Chia, Postdoctoral Fellow, UC Berkeley
• Kate Crosby, King’s College
• Erik Davis, Macalester College
• Penny Edwards, UC Berkeley
• Christoph Emmrich, University of Toronto
• Richard Jaffe, Duke University
• Justin Ritzinger, University of Miami
• James Shields, Bucknell University
• Alexander Soucy, St. Mary’s University
• Alexander von Rospatt, UC Berkeley
• Erick White, University of Michigan

CLICK HERE FOR FULL PROGRAM

Thursday, February 7, 2019, 5 pm
Chinese Animal Gods
Meir Shahar, Tel Aviv University
3335 Dwinelle Hall
UC Berkeley

Our ancestors depended upon beasts of burden for a living. In the Chinese case this dependence was reflected in the religious sphere. Chinese religion featured deities responsible for the wellbeing of draft animals. The two principal ones were the Horse King (divine protector of equines) and the Ox King (tutelary deity of bovines). This lecture will examine the ecological background and historical evolution of these animal-protecting cults. I will survey the Horse King's and Ox King's diverse clientele, from peasants who relied upon the water buffalo to plough their rice fields to cavalrymen whose success in battle depended upon their chargers' performance. Particular attention will be given to the theological standing of animals as reflected in their tutelary divinities' cults. In some cases the animal itself was regarded as a deity who chose to sacrifice itself for humanity's sake. Chinese Buddhist scriptures described the ox as a bodhisattva who out of pity for the toiling peasant chose to be incarnated as his beast of burden.

Meir Shahar is Professor of Chinese Studies at Tel Aviv University. His research interests span Chinese religion and literature, Chinese Buddhism, and the impact of Indian mythology upon the Chinese imagination of divinity. Meir Shahar is the author of Crazy Ji: Chinese Religion and Popular Literature; Oedipal God: The Chinese Nezha and his Indian Origins; and The Shaolin Monastery: History, Religion, and the Chinese Martial Arts, (which was translated into numerous languages). He is the co-editor (with Robert Weller) of Unruly Gods: Divinity and Society in China; the co-editor (with John Kieschnick) of India in the Chinese Imagination: Myth, Religion, and Thought; and the co-editor (with Yael Bentor) of Chinese and Tibetan Esoteric Buddhism.

Supported by a generous gift from the Tianzhu Global Network .

Thursday, January 31, 2019, 5pm
The Veda, Indian Grammarians, and the Language of Early Buddhism
Oskar von Hinüber, Albert-Ludwigs Universität, Freiburg
370 Dwinelle Hall
UC Berkeley

Connections between the Vedic language and that of early Buddhism were observed already during the beginnings of Buddhology in Europe. After a brief survey of research, some features of syntax and vocabulary are discussed, while concentrating on the Vedic meaning of certain words and terms such as grāma or saṃkakṣikā partly unrecognized so far and preserved only in the oldest Buddhist texts. Particular attention is paid to the formation of the Vinaya term pārājika used to designate the first group of offenses, the transgression of which entails expulsion from the Saṃgha. Lastly, a verse from the first part of the Samyuttanikāya is interpreted to demonstrate, how the original form of this Buddhist verse can be reconstructed and the meaning understood only by referring to a Vedic text.

Oskar von Hinüber is professor emeritus for indologie of the Albert-Ludwigs Universität, Freiburg. He is ordinary member of the Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur, Mainz, associé étranger (Membre de l’Institut) of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, Paris, and corresponding member of the Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Vienna.

Wednesday, January 30, 2019, 5pm
From the Upper Indus to the East Coast of China: 
On the Origin of the Pictorial Representation of the Lotus Sūtra
Haiyan Hu-von Hinüber, Peking University
180 Doe Memorial Library
UC Berkeley

In Chinese Buddhist art, there is an image of two sitting Buddhas, Śākyamuni and Prabhūtaratna, which can be traced back to the Saddharmapuṇḍarīkasūtra. Because (until 2012) no image of the “Two Sitting Buddhas” had been found outside China, it has been assumed that the depiction of this pair of Buddhas is of Chinese origins. Drawing on four images that have been discovered since 2012, this talk will argue that the depiction of the “Two Sitting Buddhas” originated in the ancient Indian cultural area and then spread along the Silk Road to China.

Trained in Indology and Buddhist Studies in China (Peking University, MA) and Germany (Göttingen, PhD), Haiyan Hu-von Hinüber has held professorial appointments, teaching and serving as research scholar at the universities of Freiburg, Copenhagen, Vienna and Erfurt. She has also been visiting scholar in France, Japan and China, and she has served as Professor-at-large at the Faculty of Historical and Cultural Studies, Shandong-University (China). Recently she has served as senior researcher at Shenzhen-University (China), and currently she is attached in the same capacity to the Center of Buddhist Studies, Peking University.

Co-sponsored by the Tang Center for Silk Road Studies 
and supported by a generous gift from the Tianzhu Global Network.

Thursday, January 24, 2019, 5pm
Is the Śaiva Source of the Buddhist Herukābhidhāna's Treatment of Initiation pre-Tantric?
Alexis Sanderson, University of Oxford
180 Doe Library
UC Berkeley

In his work, Alexis Sanderson has maintained that the treatment of the topic of initiation found in the Buddhist Tantra Herukābhidhāna, also known as the Laghvabhidhāna or Laghuśaṃvara, has been adopted with some light editing from a Śaiva source. In this lecture he puts forward the hypothesis that this source, though surviving within a Tantric Śaiva work, shows archaic features that suggest that it has been drawn in from the lost scriptural literature of the pre-Tantric Kāpālikas.

Alexis Sanderson is Spalding Professor Emeritus of Eastern Religions and Ethics, and Emeritus Fellow of All Souls College, University of Oxford. He is a scholar of Sanskrit, specializing in early medieval religion in India and Southeast Asia, with a focus on the history of Śaivism (including esoteric Śaiva tantra), its relations with the state, and its influence on Buddhism and Vaiṣṇavism.

Monday, December 3, 2018, 5 pm
The History and Science of Paper in Manuscripts of Central Asia
Agnieszka Helman-Ważny, University of Hamburg & University of Warsaw
180 Doe Memorial Library
UC Berkeley

Manuscripts from the Silk Road have been used as a key source in the study of religions, literature, and the cultural history of Central Asia. However, they have hardly ever been viewed as artifacts in their own right. As one of the most important physical features of a manuscript, paper serves as a means to distinguish one type of manuscript from another, and can help to determine the origin of a manuscript. This lecture, based on selected collections of paper and manuscripts found in the caves of Western Nepal, Tibet and Central Asia, surveys a variety of analytical techniques in comparison to codicological methods traditionally applied to manuscript studies. By broadening the scope of methods and ways of thinking, we may gain greater precision of temporal and regional attribution of excavated artifacts.

Agnieszka Helman-Ważny (Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures, University of Hamburg, and the Department of Books and Media History, Faculty of Journalism, Information and Book Studies, University of Warsaw) is a paper scientist and the author or co-author of four books and over forty scholarly articles.

Co-sponsored by the Tang Center for Silk Road Studies.

Tuesday, November 13, 2018, 4pm 
Presence and Memory: Commemorating the Buddha in Late Burmese Wall Paintings 
Alexandra Green, British Museum
180 Doe Memorial Library
UC Berkeley

Step into a Burmese temple built between the late seventeenth and early nineteenth centuries and you are surrounded by a riot of color and imagery. The majority of the highly detailed wall paintings displays Buddhist biographical narratives, inspiring the devotees to follow the Buddha’s teachings. Yet, the temples and their contents must be viewed as a whole, with the wall paintings mediating the relationships between the architecture and the main Buddha statues and thereby forging a unified space for devotees to interact with the Buddha and his community. These temples were a cohesively articulated and represented Burmese Buddhist world to which the devotees belonged and which aimed to transform practitioners’ lives in the present and future. This presentation draws upon art historical, anthropological, and religious studies methodologies to analyze the wall paintings and elucidate the contemporary religious, political, and social concepts that drove the creation of this lively art form.

Alexandra Green is Henry Ginsburg Curator for Southeast Asia at the British Museum. Her recent publications include Buddhist Visual Cultures, Rhetoric, and Narrative in Late Burmese Wall Paintings (Hong Kong, 2018) and “From Collecting History to Iconography: Southeast Asian Shadow Puppets in the British Museum” in the Journal of the Siam Society. Currently, she is working on an exhibition about Sir Stamford Raffles' Javanese collections that will open in 2019. Her research interests include narrative theory, collecting history, the relationships between word and image, and the role of art in the study of Asia.

This event is made possible by funding from the Ruby Lord Fund for Theravada Studies. It is co-sponsored by the Department of South & Southeast Asian Studies, the Center for Southeast Asian Studies, and the Department of Art History..

Friday, November 9, 2018, 3 - 8 pm
2018 Toshihide Numata Book Award Presentation and Symposium
‘Meaning in the World and in Texts’: Thoughts on Buddhist Philosophy of Language
Jodo Shinshu Center, 2140 Durant Avenue, Berkeley

View webcast of Numata Symposium

The Toshihide Numata Book Award in Buddhism is awarded on an annual basis to an outstanding book or books in the area of Buddhist studies. The selection is made by an external committee that is appointed annually. This year's winner is Professor Roy Tzohar (Tel Aviv University) for his book A Yogācāra Buddhist Theory of Metaphor (Oxford University Press).

Program: 
3:10 pm: Introduction and Award Presentation 
3:30 pm: Keynote by Award Winner Roy Tzohar 
4:30-4:45: Coffee Break 
4:45 pm: Symposium

• Our Talk of the Merely Intentional: 
  On Tzohar’s Analysis of Buddhist Upacāra 
  Jonardon Ganeri, New York University
• How to Bring Words to Life: 
  Apoha as the Transition between Nonconceptual and Conceptual Language in Pratyabhijñā Śaivism 
  Catherine Prueitt, George Mason University
• Metaphors and Realities 
  Evan Thompson, University of British Columbia

6:00 pm: Discussion 

Event Contact: buddhiststudies@berkeley.edu, 510.643.5104

Thursday, October 25, 2018, 5pm
Tianzhu Annual Lecture
Reflections on the Movement to Revive the Precepts in Kamakura Japan: 
With a focus on Eison's 叡尊 Chōmonshū 聴聞集
Paul Groner, University of Virginia
180 Doe Memorial Library
UC Berkeley

Although Japanese monks are renowned for their disregard for the precepts and monastic discipline, serious monks were concerned with whether they actually were proper Buddhists or not. Professor Groner uses a set of fragments from Eison's 叡尊 (1201-1290) lectures to explore how serious monks strove to revive the precepts and ordinations. By delving into the background of some of the fragments of the lectures, he highlights some surprising aspects of the movement.

Paul Groner received his Ph.D. in Buddhist Studies from Yale and taught at the University of Virginia. His research focused on the Japanese Tendai School during the Heian period and the precepts and ordinations, which led to research on Eison, founder of the Shingon Ritsu sect, and the status of nuns in medieval Japan. In recent years, his interests have extended to the Tendai educational system during the Muromachi Period and to the establishment of Japan's first public library at the Tendai temple, Kan'eiji. His publications consist of Saichō: The Establishment of the Japanese Tendai School and Ryōgen and Mount Hiei: Japanese Tendai in the Tenth Century and approximately fifty papers.

Wednesday, October 24, 2018, 5pm
Buddhist Textiles Along the Silk Road
Mariachiara Gasparini, University of California Riverside
180 Doe Memorial Library
UC Berkeley

In the field of Buddhist Studies textual sources provide a fundamental ground to analyze and compare philosophical and religious contexts developed in various geographic areas of the larger Asian continent. However, as a non-verbal form of communication, textile material evidence and visual representation may offer a different intercultural perspective that clarifies Buddhist rituals, and monastic and laic lifestyles along the Silk Road. Developed from a larger ontological and interdisciplinary study that will be published in 2019, this paper presents a few case studies from the Turfan Textile Collection in the Museum of Asian Art in Berlin, and the Dunhuang Textile Collections in the British Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

Mariachiara Gasparini received her Ph.D. in Transcultural Studies: Global Art History from Heidelberg University, Germany. Her research focuses on Central Asian textiles, material culture, wall painting, artist's praxis, and Sino-Iranian and Turko-Mongol interactions. She is currently Visiting Assistant Professor of Asian Art at the University of California Riverside. Her book Transcending Patterns: Silk Road Cultural and Artistic Interactions through Central Asian Textiles (7th-14th century) is forthcoming (Hawai'i 2019).

This event is sponsored by the Tang Center for Silk Road Studies.

Friday, September 28, 2018, 6pm
2018 Tang Lecture
Illustrations of the Parinirvāṇa Cycle in Kucha
Monika Zin, University of Leipzig, Germany
Toll Room, Alumni House
University of California, Berkeley

At least 100 caves in Kucha contain (or once contained) murals depicting scenes connected with the Buddha's death. The paintings are typically located in the rear part of the caves, in corridors behind the Buddha in the main niche. The illustrations begin with the episodes from the Buddha's last journey and end with the first council in Rājagṛha. It is solely through comparative analysis of the representations that it becomes possible to discern their programme. Through this programme, we discover the local beliefs these illustrations mirror, and the literary sources they illustrate. Interestingly, the arrangement of the murals in the corridors often follows the principles of symmetry, and not the chronology of the narrative, as if to create a “holy space” rather than to illustrate a chronology of events.

An expert on Indian and Central Asian Art, and Indian drama, Monika Zin began her academic career at the Jagiellon University in Cracow, Poland, in Theater Studies and Polish Language and Literature (M.A. in 1981). This was followed by a doctorate in Indology and Indian Art and post-doctoral studies (habilitation) in Indology at the LMU in Munich. In 2000, she joined the Department for Indology at the LMU Munich as an Associate Professor and also held a position as a Lecturer in Buddhist Art and Literature in the Department for Indology and Central Asian Sciences at the University of Leipzig from 2005 to 2008. From 2010-2014, she was a Visiting Professor in the Department of Art History at the FU Berlin. She is currently a professor at the University of Leipzig working on a project entitled “Buddhist Murals of Kucha on the Northern Silk Road.”

Co-sponsored by the Tang Center for Silk Road Studies.

Thursday, September 27, 2018, 5pm
Thangkas, Texts, and the Silk Route
Ann Shaftel, Dalhousie University
180 Doe Memorial Library
UC Berkeley

In a richly illustrated presentation on the challenges of applying conservation science to Buddhist sacred thangkas and texts, Ann Shaftel will include a discussion of the relationship between thangkas and texts, and the evolving function of thangkas in Buddhist philosophy, textural history and culture. The images accompanying her talk will feature Silk Route thangkas, and others from her 48 years of work in monasteries and museums.

Ann Shaftel’s work is at the forefront in the field of thangka conservation worldwide. She is a renowned teacher of international workshops on the conservation of Buddhist treasures—in the US, Canada, Europe, Bhutan, Nepal, India and China. She is a Fellow of the American Institute for Conservation, and a Fellow of the International Institute for Conservation. Ann’s international work in Treasure Caretaker Training www.treasurecaretaker.com won the prestigious Digital Empowerment Foundation’s Chairman’s Choice award.

Co-sponsored by the Tang Center for Silk Road Studies.

September 21-23, 2018
International Conference: From the Silk to the Book Road(s): 
Networks of Commerce, Artifacts, and Books Between Central and East Asia
Berkeley, California

For more information, please visit: http://frogbear.org/international-conference-from-the-silk-to-the-book-r... 

Saturday, September 8, 2018
Tenth Annual Group in Buddhist Studies Fall Hike and Picnic
Mt. Tamalpais/Stinson Beach