We are delighted to announce the launch of our new lecture series, “The Gandhāra Corpora Project Lecture Series”, and share the details for the inaugural hybrid lecture below, marking the beginning of what promises to be an engaging and dynamic program. The lecture series are organized by Prof. Charles DiSimone, who leads the ERC-funded project “Corpora in Greater Gandhāra. Tracing the development of Buddhist textuality and Gilgit/Bamiyan manuscript networks in the first millennium of the common era” at the Ghent Centre for Buddhist Studies.
Title: Visualising Rituals in Gandhara
Speaker: Ashwini Lakshminarayanan, Cardiff University
Timing: Thursday, June 05, 2025 @ 16.00
Location: Faculteitszaal, Blandijn faculteit Letteren en Wijsbegeerte (Blandijnberg 2, 9000 Gent)
In-person and ONLINE
All are welcome. Please register for the series through this Google Form: https://forms.gle/TwffQCPuVipUpMvk6
Abstract:
It has long been recognised that the bases of Buddha and Bodhisattva schist statues from the ancient region of Gandhāra depict to some extent scenes that echo ritual practices that were normative for the region. While they have been the focus of sporadic assessments in the last decades, this paper is a systematic analysis of statue bases coming from ancient Gandhāra, a region located in the Northwest part of the Indic subcontinent, within the wider context of Gāndhārī donative inscriptions and Chinese travelogues. Dating broadly from the second century CE onwards, the statues bases, this paper argues, were a new venue to visually reinforce the ritual efficacy. As part of the systematic analysis, this talk showcases a work in progress, shedding light on the conventions used on statue bases and the actions of figures represented within them.
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