Mariia Lepneva – Ghent Centre for Buddhist Studies

Publication highlights (Q4 2025): Papers by GCBS members in T’oung Pao, JEACS, and Journal of Chinese Religions

At the end of 2025, three early-career scholars affiliated with the Ghent Centre for Buddhist Studies — Dr. Laurent Van Cutsem, Dr. Mariia Lepneva, and Massimiliano Portoghese — published new research articles in leading international peer-reviewed journals. Their work reflects the methodological diversity and scholarly depth of current research at the GCBS and contributes to ongoing debates in Buddhist and Chinese studies. Below, we briefly present each publication in turn.

Revisiting Huairang: The Fragments of the Baolin zhuan Preserved in the Keitoku dentō shōroku and Their Implications for Tang-Song Chan Historiography

Author: Laurent Van Cutsem

T’oung Pao

Volume 111: Issue 5-6

Online Publication Date: 16 Dec 2025

Publisher: Brill

Pages: 584–662

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/15685322-11105003

The Baolin zhuan 寶林傳 is a cornerstone in the formation of Chan historiography, yet it survives today only in two incomplete historical textual witnesses. Its tenth and final fascicle, likely covering the lives and teachings of Huineng 慧能 (638–713) and his first- and second-generation successors, is lost. Building on earlier Japanese scholarship, Shiina Kōyū 椎名宏雄 further identified and explored fragments of this missing fascicle preserved in five later works. This article examines the fragments concerning Huairang 懷讓 (d. 744) preserved in the Keitoku dentō shōroku 景德傳燈鈔錄 and investigates the influence of the Baolin zhuan’s account on Chan historiography in the Five Dynasties and early Song periods.

Keywords: Nanyue Huairang; Chan/Zen Buddhism; Buddhist historiography; Baolin zhuan; Zutang ji; Jingde chuandeng lu; Tiansheng guangdeng lu; Keitoku dentō shōroku

The Dynamics of Chinese Buddhism in the Ming and Qing: Social Network Analysis Based on a Combined Dataset

Author: Mariia Lepneva

Journal of the European Association for Chinese Studies

Volume 6, Issue 2

Online Publication Date: 29 December 2025

pp. 77–99

https://doi.org/10.25365/jeacs.2025.6.2.lepneva

The revival of Buddhism during the late Ming and early Qing has long captivated scholarly interest. Recently, a significant methodological advancement has emerged through the application of social network analysis, leverag-ing the extensive “Historical Social Network of Chinese Buddhism” dataset. This paper seeks to further refine scholarly understanding of this revitalisation by incorporating monks of the Vinaya tradition, largely absent from the original dataset. To achieve this, it proposes an innovative approach that integrates period-specific data from the original dataset with newly collected data. The analysis corroborates scholarly emphasis on the centrality of Chan master Miyun Yuanwu 密雲圓悟 (1567–1642) in the late Ming, employing both degree and betweenness centrality. However, the integration of the Vinaya segment reconfigures the arrangement of Chan lineages vis-à-vis the High Qing imperial cluster, providing new perspectives on the early Qing and eighteenth century, particularly emphasising the role of Vinaya monks who served as Mount Baohua (Baohua shan 寶華山) abbots. These findings underscore the significance of the Vinaya tradition through quantitative metrics, enhancing scholarly understanding of the history of the Buddhist community during this period.

Exploring the Cultural Perceptions and Symbolism of Tonsure in Early Buddhist China

Author: Massimiliano Portoghese

Journal of Chinese Religions

Volume 53, Number 2

Online Date: December 2025

pp. 185-212

Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/jcr.2025.a975819

The practice of tonsure, an essential component of Buddhist ordination rituals, faced significant disapproval from Chinese society from the very advent of Buddhism in China. Beginning in the Han dynasty, shaving one’s head emerged as a powerful marker of identity that challenged established etiquette norms and directly opposed the state’s control over ceremonial practices. This article aims to explain why, among the various Indian customs that entered China, the act of shaving the head became such a contentious issue. To achieve this, it will first analyze the arguments both for and against monastic tonsure that are found in Buddhist apologetic sources. Additionally, the article will attempt to place this specific body modification in the broader cultural context of hair in pre-Buddhist China in order to explore several perspectives beyond the well-known charge of monastics lacking the virtue of filial piety.

Fieldwork of GCBS researcher Mengqiu Tian in Dunhuang, Septemeber-October, 2025

FWO PhD student Mengqiu Tian spent two months conducting fieldwork in Dunhuang, one of the key Buddhist sites in northwestern China. Below, she reports on her research experience:

Dunhuang is one of the most important sites for the study of Buddhist art and visual culture along the Silk Road, renowned above all for the Mogao cave complex and its exceptionally rich corpus of mural paintings spanning several centuries. Between September and October this year, I conducted two months of fieldwork in Dunhuang, supported by an FWO Long Stay Abroad grant, with the primary aim of studying mural representations of Maitreya’s paradise dating from the eighth to the tenth centuries, with particular attention to compositions that incorporate narrative vignettes from the Buddha’s life.

The core of my research was carried out at the Mogao Grottoes, supplemented by a one-day research visit to the Yulin Grottoes. During my stay, I commuted daily by shuttle bus between my apartment in Dunhuang city and the Dunhuang Academy. Mornings were typically devoted to on-site examination of murals, often conducted in collaboration with a colleague from the Institute of Archaeology at the Dunhuang Academy, while afternoons were spent consulting secondary literature and visual materials at the Academy’s library. I benefited greatly from the library’s outstanding holdings, which include a remarkably rich collection of monographs, journals, painting albums, and manuscript reproductions related to Dunhuang Buddhist art and cave temples.

Beyond access to primary materials and research infrastructure, the Dunhuang Academy also offers an excellent platform for international scholarly exchange. During my stay, I participated in several academic activities, including The Workshop on New Directions in the Study of Silk Road Material Culture, jointly organized by the Dunhuang Academy and Fudan University. I also visited The First Exhibition of Reproductions of Dunhuang Polychrome Sculpture and delivered a lecture entitled “Chinese influence on the 絵過去現在因果経 (Illustrated Sūtra of Cause and Effect in the Past and Present).” These activities allowed me to engage with specialists from a wide range of disciplines, thereby not only deepening my expertise in Buddhist art history but also broadening my scholarly perspective.

In sum, this fieldwork period proved to be immensely productive. The combination of direct engagement with mural material, access to exceptional research resources, and opportunities for academic exchange has laid a solid foundation for future publications, and I am confident that the research conducted in Dunhuang will lead to concrete scholarly outcomes in the near future.

New member: Xiaoming Hou

We are welcoming a new member of the Ghent Centre for Buddhist Studies: FWO junior postdoctoral fellow Dr. Xiaoming Hou. Her research focuses on scholastic practices in medieval Chinese Buddhism and the cross-cultural transmission of Buddhism, with particular interest in exegetical traditions. Her current FWO-funded project, Visualizing Doctrine: A Study of Exegetical Diagrams in Medieval Chinese Buddhism (8th–10th Centuries), examines exegetical diagrams (fenmen tu 分門圖 and kewen 科文) from Dunhuang and their role in the transmission of scholastic knowledge. It investigates how diagrammatic and material practices shaped scholastic reasoning and pedagogical methods in local Buddhist communities, reframing these diagrams as epistemological tools situated between text and image.

She received her Ph.D. in 2022 from EPHE/PSL (École Pratique des Hautes Études/Université Paris Sciences et Lettres) in Paris, Department of Religions and Systems of Thought. Her doctoral thesis, Pratiquer le bouddhisme en chinois: traduction et reconstruction des enseignements sur la méditation bouddhique du IIe au VIe siècles en Chine, explores the interdependent dynamics between meditation and exegesis in early medieval China.

Fieldwork of GCBS researcher Mariia Lepneva in Vietnam, December 1-6, 2025

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.

Entrance of the Institute of Hán-Nôm Studies

Library of the Institute of Hán-Nôm Studies

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.

Observing a prayer in the monastery Chùa Quán Sứ, Hanoi.

Sutra woodblocks at Phúc Lâm Tự, Haiphong

Buddha statue at the monastery Chùa Quảng Luận, Haiphong

Discussion with Venerable Thích Quảng Nghĩa at the monastery Chùa Quảng Luận, Haiphong

Guest lecture “The Last Words of a God-King: A Corpus of Tibetan Buddhist Narrative Histories” by Dr. Reinier Langelaar, November 25, 2025

We are excited to announce the next lecture in our ongoing “Gandhāra Corpora Project Lecture Series,” featuring Dr. Reinier Langelaar (IKGA, Austrian Academy of Sciences). The Gandhāra Corpora Project Lecture Series is organized by Prof. Charles DiSimone, leader of the ERC-funded project “Corpora in Greater Gandhāra: Tracing the development of Buddhist textuality and Gilgit/Bamiyan manuscript networks in the first millennium CE” at the Ghent Centre for Buddhist Studies.

Title: The Last Words of a God-King: A Corpus of Tibetan Buddhist Narrative Histories

Speaker: Dr. Reinier Langelaar (IKGA, Austrian Academy of Sciences)

Timing: Nov 25, 2025 @ 17.00 CET

Location: Faculteitszaal, Blandijn
Faculteit Letteren en Wijsbegeerte
Blandijnberg 2
9000 Gent

All are welcome. The Gandhāra Corpora Lecture Series is in-person and hybrid online. Please register for the series through this Google Form: https://forms.gle/TwffQCPuVipUpMvk6

Abstract:

This lecture will present a highly influential corpus of Buddhist historiographies, composed and expanded upon from perhaps the 12th c. CE onward. These works are attributed, as so-called ‘treasure texts,’ to the 7th-c. emperor Songtsen ‘the Profound’ (Tib. srong-btsan sgam-po), himself claimed to be an emanation of the bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara. This corpus constitutes a literary meeting ground for a series of pivotal developments in the realm of Tibetan Buddhist religion, political philosophy, and perceptions of Tibet and its people at large. Weaving compelling tales of Tibetan society’s history, it played a central role in formulating and propagating understandings of Tibet as a Buddhist realm under Avalokiteśvara’s special protection. Though eminently focused on Tibet, these works are also embedded in interregional webs of cultural exchange, potentially drawing inspiration from Indian sūtra literature, Newari Buddhism, Chinese and Khotanese notions of bodhisattva kingship, and more. This talk will introduce this body of works, discuss the particular text-historical and methodological challenges it presents, and show what we may hope to gain from its study.

Bio:

Reinier Langelaar is a researcher at the Institute for the Cultural and Intellectual History of Asia (IKGA) at the Austrian Academy of Sciences (AAS). His research interests include religious history, pre-modern ethnic identity, religious history, as well as kinship and genealogy. His work has employed historical, text-critical, ethnographic and comparative methods, and has appeared in journals such as Inner Asia, The Medieval History Journal, the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, and the Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies. At present, he is key researcher in the FWF-funded Cluster of Excellence ‘EurAsian Transformations.’ In 2025, he was awarded an ERC starting grant for the project FOUNT: ‘The Narrative Foundations of Tibetan Buddhism,’ to be hosted at the AAS (2026-31).

Guest lecture “Sustaining Digital Heritage Beyond Funding: Building on the DiGA Project” by Jessie Pons, November 20, 2025

We are excited to announce the fourth lecture in our ongoing “Gandhāra Corpora Project Lecture Series,” featuring Professor Jessie Pons (Ruhr-Universität Bochum) and other esteemed guests! The Gandhāra Corpora Project Lecture Series is organized by Prof. Charles DiSimone, leader of the ERC-funded project “Corpora in Greater Gandhāra: Tracing the development of Buddhist textuality and Gilgit/Bamiyan manuscript networks in the first millennium CE” at the Ghent Centre for Buddhist Studies.

Title: Sustaining Digital Heritage Beyond Funding: Building on the DiGA Project

Speakers: Prof. Jessie Pons (CERES, Ruhr-Universität Bochum)

&co.:
Serena Autiero (Thammasat University, Bangkok), Frederik Elwert (CERES, Ruhr-Universität Bochum), Cristiano Moscatelli (Independent Researcher), Abdul Samad (KPDOAM)

Time: Nov 20, 2025 @ 17.00 CET

Location: Faculteitszaal, Blandijn
faculteit Letteren en Wijsbegeerte
Blandijnberg 2
9000 Gent

All are welcome. The Gandhāra Corpora Lecture Series is in-person and hybrid online. Please register for the series through this Google Form.

Abstract:
From 2021 to 2024, the DiGA project (“Digitization of Gandharan Artefacts: A project for the preservation and study of the Buddhist art from Pakistan”) documented a collection of approximately 1,500 Gandharan sculptures preserved at the Dir Museum in Chakdara, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Province (KP), Pakistan. These sculptures originated from a dozen archaeological sites in the Shah-kot/Talash zone (around present-day Chakdara), excavated by the Directorate of Archaeology and Museums, KP, and the Department of Archaeology at Peshawar University in the 1960s and 1970s. As one of the few Gandharan sculptural corpora with established archaeological provenance, this collection provides a solid foundation for reassessing key questions in Gandhara studies, particularly regarding the history of Buddhism on the right bank of Swat River. The database of the collection is now available on the heidICON platform, ready to lend itself to exciting research avenues.

With the project officially coming to an end, however, new questions emerge: how can such a project remain active and relevant beyond its institutional and financial framework? How can its data continue to be curated, enriched, and mobilized for research and public engagement once the funding period ends? This presentation will report some of the project’s activities in the post-funding phase. It will share results from recent research based on the DiGA corpus, sketch the outline of a research program building on the project’s legacy, and discuss ongoing initiatives with KPDOAM on community engagement. Ultimately, this talk invites reflection on the broader question of how digital heritage projects can evolve sustainably once their formal lifecycle has ended.

Bios:
Jessie Pons (CERES, Ruhr-Universität Bochum):
Jessie Pons is Professor for the History of South Asian Religions at the Center for Religions Studies at Ruhr-Universität Bochum. Trained as an art historian, Jessie Pons explores how religion and art intersect and how material objects shape religious communication, lived experiences, and scholarly interpretation.

Serena Autiero (Thammasat University, Bangkok):
Serena Autiero is an archaeologist and material culture historian. She is currently a researcher at Thammasat University. Her research interests include cultural exchange in Afroeurasia in pre-modern times, globalization studies, and a special focus on the Indian Ocean World. She authored several publications in international journals and co-edited Globalization and Transculturality from Antiquity to the Pre-Modern World for Routledge.

Frederik Elwert (CERES, Ruhr-Universität Bochum):
Frederik Elwert is associate professor at the Center for Religious Studies, Ruhr University Bochum. His background is in religious studies and sociology. He has applied digital humanities methodologies in different areas of the study of religions.

Cristiano Moscatelli (Independent Researcher):
Cristiano Moscatelli specialises in Gandharan studies. His research interests focus on Buddhist visual and material culture and on the interactions between Buddhism and local religious systems in the ancient north-western Indian subcontinent. In addition to his work with DiGA, he was a research fellow with the eartHeritage project – A cultural rescue initiative for earthen heritage, investigating clay and stucco Buddhist sculpture from Central Asia through the development of a digital database for the collection, preservation, and dissemination of archaeological data.

Abdul Samad (KPDOAM):
Abdul Samad is Secretary of Tourism, Culture, Archaeology and Museums, Government of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (KP) Pakistan as well as Director General of Archaeology & Museums KP. He has two decades of experience in South Asian archaeology, history, and culture, extensively exploring Pakistan’s rich heritage, focusing particularly on the Gandhara and Kalash civilizations. As the Director of the Directorate of Archaeology and Museums in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, he has led numerous initiatives to preserve and promote the cultural legacy of KP through national and international Projects.

Reading group meeting, presentation by Wushi Lin, October 23, 2025

The next phase of the Reading Group convened on October 23, 2025, marking the first of three sessions dedicated to the study of materials prepared by Wushi Lin, a joint PhD student of Professor Bart Dessein (Ghent Centre for Buddhist Studies) and Professor Weijen Teng (Department of Buddhist Studies, Dharma Drum Institute of Liberal Arts). The materials focus on the epistemological interpretation of the no-self doctrine by the influential late Ming dynasty Buddhist monk Zibo Zhenke (紫柏真可, 1543–1603), and are part of Wushi Lin’s PhD project, “Comprehending Everything as Oneself: The No-Self Doctrine of Zibo Zhenke in Ming Dynasty Buddhism.”

Guest lecture “Resituating the Yogācārabhūmi Corpus: Potential Gandhāran Links and Sūtra-Grounded Practice” by Keiki Nakayama, November 13, 2025

We are delighted to announce that the fourth lecture in our ongoing “Gandhāra Corpora Project Lecture Series” will be delivered by Keiki Nakayama from the University of Leipzig. The lecture series is organized by Prof. Charles DiSimone, leader of the ERC-funded project “Corpora in Greater Gandhāra: Tracing the development of Buddhist textuality and Gilgit/Bamiyan manuscript networks in the first millennium CE” at the Ghent Centre for Buddhist Studies.

“Resituating the Yogācārabhūmi Corpus: Potential Gandhāran Links and Sūtra-Grounded Practice”

Keiki Nakayama, University of Leipzig

Nov 13, 2025 @ 17.00 CET

Location: Faculteitszaal, Blandijn
faculteit Letteren en Wijsbegeerte
Blandijnberg 2
9000 Gent

To attend remotely, please register through this Google Form.

Abstract:
The Yogācāra school, together with the Madhyamaka, is well known as one of the two major streams of Indian Mahāyāna Buddhism. Yet its foundational text, the Yogācārabhūmi, contains numerous passages that follow the modes of description characteristic of the Śrāvakayāna tradition. The author(s) of this work are thought to have belonged to a lineage that transmitted the Mūlasarvāstivāda Vinaya. Thus, while the Yogācārins were moving away from the Sarvāstivāda mainstream, they also inherited many of its scholastic and disciplinary elements.
The first part of this presentation reconsiders the position of the Yogācārabhūmi—and hence early Yogācāra—in relation to the Sarvāstivāda tradition. The Yogācāra school appears to have shared doctrinal affinities with internal Sarvāstivādin groups such as the Dārṣṭāntikas and Vibhajyavādins mentioned in the Mahāvibhāṣā. Focusing on the Gandhāra region, I examine evidence suggesting that the “Western Masters” (Pāścāttyas), associated with Gandhāra, held positions that coincide with those of the Yogācārabhūmi, thereby indicating possible intersections between Yogācāra and Gandhāran Buddhism.
Later but related materials include numerous Mūlasarvāstivāda Vinaya manuscripts discovered in Gilgit, part of Greater Gandhāra. These texts notably embed a variety of sūtras. If the sūtras employed in the Yogācārabhūmi correspond to those appeared in the Mūlasarvāstivāda Vinaya, this strengthens the view that the Yogācārabhūmi originated from a tradition closely linked to the transmitters of the Mūlasarvāstivāda Vinaya. The recently studied Dīrghāgama (Long Discourses) manuscripts from Gilgit also deserve attention.
The latter half of the talk examines how the Yogācārabhūmi actively incorporates and reinterprets sūtras within its structure of practice. Focusing on the Śrāvakabhūmi, the earliest stratum of the text, I argue that the Yogācāra school, though renowned as meditative practitioners, grounded their practice in close engagement with the words of the Buddha.

Bio
Keiki Nakayama is a guest researcher and lecturer at the Institute for South and Central Asian Studies, Leipzig University. Having recently fulfilled the requirements for a PhD at Kyoto University, he is currently conducting research on the interpretation of canonical scriptures within the Yogācāra school, supported since 2023 by the Bukkyō Dendō Kyōkai (BDK). His publications include a co-authored article with Jens-Uwe Hartmann, “One Hundred and Eight Distinctions of Craving: The Tṛṣṇā-sūtra of the Saṃyuktāgama,” in Mind, Text, and Reality in Buddhist Studies: Engaging the Scholarship of Rupert Gethin (Bloomsbury, 2025), and a co-authored monograph with Izumi Miyazaki et al., The Seventy-five Elements (Dharma) in the Madhyamakapañca-skandhaka, in Bauddhakośa: A Treasury of Buddhist Terms and Illustrative Sentences, Volume VIII (The International Institute for Buddhist Studies, 2022).

Guest lecture “War Memorials and Religion in Japan: Separation of Religion and Politics and the Role of Scholars” by Akira Nishimura, October 23, 2025

We are pleased to announce an upcoming lecture by Dr. Nishimura Akira (Associate Professor of Religious Studies, University of Tokyo), who has been a visiting scholar with us over the past two months. Dr. Nishimura’s talk will explore the complex intersections of war memorialization, repatriation of human remains, and the pivotal role played by temple communities in these processes—an issue of particular relevance to scholars of Buddhism and religion. He will also address the responsibilities and ethical engagement of religious scholars in such sensitive contemporary debates. The lecture will take place on Thursday, 23 October at 16:30 in the Faculty Room. All are warmly invited to attend.

New member: Dr. Kikee Doma Bhutia

Please join us in welcoming Dr. Kikee Doma Bhutia, who, having won the FWO Junior Postdoctoral Fellowship, will be with the Ghent Centre for Buddhist Studies for the next three years. Her project, “Local Deities, Natural Disaster, and Ritual Waste in Vernacular Buddhist Practices in the Himalayas,” project examines the intersection of local religious practices, environmental policies, and waste management in Sikkim, with a particular emphasis on the influence of Buddhist rituals and beliefs on the community’s approach to sustainability.

Despite its relatively small geographic size, Sikkim has emerged as a leader in environmental initiatives, including the prohibition of plastic and the promotion of eco-friendly practices. However, traditional rituals, such as the tying of prayer flags and the use of synthetic materials in religious offerings, pose significant challenges to environmental conservation. This research investigates the roles of local deities, vernacular Buddhist practices, and monastic institutions in waste management, analyzing how religious concepts are integrated into environmental policies. Utilizing ethnographic fieldwork, interviews, and archival research, this study will explore how communities navigate the complexities of modernization and tradition, thereby contributing to academic discussions on waste, religion, and sustainability in the Himalayas. The project aims to produce scholarly articles, presentations, and public outreach materials, thereby fostering both academic and social engagement.