GCBS member and FWO postdoctoral fellow Mariia Lepneva recently completed a one-week research visit to Vietnam. Below is her brief report.
My research visit to Vietnam began with consulting primary sources at the Institute of Hán-Nôm Studies in Hanoi. I identified a work by an abbot of Baohua Mountain—the site I am studying in my ongoing FWO postdoctoral project on its transformation into a new center of the Vinaya tradition in China—that was long considered lost in China but has been preserved in Vietnam. I also discovered early editions of two additional Vinaya texts, as well as another Vinaya commentary written in Nanjing in the seventeenth century.
On December 4, I delivered a talk at the Trần Nhân Tông Institute—a research institute dedicated to Chán studies under the umbrella of Vietnam National University. In her lecture, she introduced the activities of the Ghent Centre for Buddhist Studies, presented an overview of her research project, and highlighted the crucial role of Vietnam in the regional circulation and preservation of Buddhist texts.
On December 5, I visited two monasteries in Hanoi. Chùa Quán Sứ (舘使寺) is famous for its repository of Buddhist text, and Chùa Bà Đá ̣̣(formerly known as Linh Quang tự 靈光寺), where a number of Buddhist texts that I am interested in was printed in the nineteenth century. My last day in Vietnam, December 6, was dedicated to fieldwork in Hải Phòng, a major port city in the northern part of the country, kindly arranged by my host Dr. Nguyễn Tô Lan (), Institute of Philosophy, Vietnam Academy of Social Sciences. In the morning, we visited Phúc Lâm Tự (福林寺), a monastery that preserves a remarkable set of sutra woodblocks. We also stopped by the Haiphong City Museum as well as two nearby communal houses, which served roles similar to city god temples (城隍庙) and functioned as local council halls where community affairs were traditionally decided. In the afternoon, we traveled to one more Buddhist monastery Khánh Vân Tự (慶雲寺)—better known as Chùa Quảng Luận—where we had a meaningful and engaging conversation with Venerable Thích Quảng Nghĩa.
