BERKELEY — The Center for Buddhist Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, is pleased to announce that the winners of the 2015 Toshihide Numata Book Award are Lothar Ledderose and Sun Hua for their edited volume, Buddhist Stone Sutras in China, Sichuan Province, Volume 1 (Wiesbaden/Hangzhou: Harrassowitz Verlag/China Academy of Art Press, 2014).
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. The members of this year's committee were enthusiastic in their praise of Buddhist Stone Sutras in China. One member wrote that it is "opening a new chapter in the study of Chinese Buddhist 'Stone Sutras', by establishing a very fruitful methodological approach to these complex sources. As such, it has far-reaching positive implications for the field at large and represents (especially as part of a general project) an important contribution to the study of Chinese Buddhism as a whole, encompassing areas as diverse as textual studies, archaeology, religious practices and material culture." Another commented that it "represents a model of successful cooperation between Chinese and Western scholars; the bilingual presentation is particularly noteworthy from this point of view, as it makes the book accessible to a wider scholarly public."
Professors Lothar Ledderose and Sun Hua will be presented with the Toshihide Numata Book Award on the afternoon of Friday, October 30, 2015, at the Alumni House on the UC Berkeley Campus. The award ceremony will begin at 2 PM, and will include keynote addresses by both authors. This will be followed by a symposium on stone sutras that will include presentations by Martin Bemmann, Manuel Sassmann, Jessica Rawson and Claudia Wenzel (all affiliated with the Stone Sutra research project at Heidelberg University), as well as Ryan Overbey (Wesleyan University) and Dorothy C. Wong (University of Virginia).