Mariia Lepneva – Page 4 – Ghent Centre for Buddhist Studies

Lecture “Bringing Buddha Down to Earth: Celebrating Śākyamuni’s Life in Mogao Cave 61 in Dunhuang”, by Christoph Anderl at Foguang Univesity, May 30, 2024

Centre for Buddhist Studies of Fo Guang University welcomes a guest lecturer from Ghent University in Belgium, who gives a talk about his research on Śākyamuni’s Life in Mogao Cave 61 in Dunhuang. Professor Christoph Anderl is a linguist specializing in classical Chinese and an expert in Dunhuang studies, particularly in textual studies.

Mogao Cave 61 is the main subject of today’s talk. The uniqueness of this cave lies in the wall painting representing a map of Wutai Mountain (五台山) instead of the Buddhist motifs typically found in other caves. Another highlight of this cave is the depiction of Śākyamuni’s life painted on the room’s bedrock, which includes captions containing Chinese texts from the 佛本行集經 (Sūtra of Buddha’s Life).

In the presentation, Professor Anderl begins with a visual tour of Cave 61 using a 3D reconstruction from the Digital Dunhuang website and introduces the basic information about this cave. Cave 61 was commissioned by Cao Yuan Zhong (曹元忠), an official of the Dunhuang area, for family use. The donors’ figures are painted at the entrance, including Cao Yuan Zhong, his wife, and their family members, mostly female.

The panels depicting Śākyamuni’s life in the cave cover stories from Buddha’s birth to his death. Unlike the common representation of Buddha’s life through the eight junctures (八相成道), much of the content focuses on Buddha’s princely life. It appears that the donors of this cave were particularly interested in Buddha’s life in the palace.

Professor Anderl then presents the texts written in the captions alongside the 佛本行集經, using two examples from panel 13, which describes the selection of Buddha’s stepmother, and panel 28, which describes Sujata’s offering of milk porridge. Comparisons between the Chinese text in the Taisho Canon and the captions show that the authors of the captions deliberately abbreviated the text with shorter key phrases to create a condensed version for storytelling within limited space. This condensation slightly changes the emphasis of the story and alters its understanding in a different way.

This finding leads to a discussion between Professor Hsin-Yi Lin and Professor Anderl regarding whether the authors intended to manipulate the original text and create a new reading material, effectively ending the presentation with many potential research questions.

GCBS Research Forum meeting, May 27, 2024, presentations by Jiahang Yu and Massimiliano Portoghese

On March 27, 2024, two talks for the Research Forum were given by Ph.D. students Yu Jiahang于佳航 and Massimiliano Portoghese who presented parts of their ongoing research projects at the Ghent Centre for Buddhist Studies. Please find the relevant details below:

Yu Jiahang’s talk:

Working Title: “A Linguistic Study of the Funeral Address for a Donkey in Dunhuang manuscript Or.8210/S.1477.”
Summary: The Dunhuang manuscript Or.8210/S.1477, titled Jilüwen yishou 祭驢文一首 (Funeral Address for a Donkey), was written by a frustrated and impoverished scholar during the late Tang dynasty and served as a tribute to his recently deceased donkey. The text adopts a semi-vernacular style remarkable for this period and genre, containing many colloquial words and phrases, thereby ensuring its accessibility to contemporary readers. This study examines S.1477 from multiple linguistic perspectives, including genre features, syntactic constructions, as well as the author’s use of classical allusions.
Context: The presentation is based on ongoing research that will eventually be presented at the EACS conference. Since Jiahang also aims to submit her paper for publication in the future, she would like to discuss aspects related to the structure of her presentation and article. In addition, she will introduce similar materials from Dunhuang to make connections with her larger research project.

Massimiliano Portoghese’s talk:

Working Title: “Why Did Śramaņas Take the Tonsure? Perceptions and Symbolism of Hairstyles in Ancient and Early Medieval China.”
Summary: This talk examines the symbolic and social significance of hair in pre-Buddhist China to enhance our understanding of the Buddhist-Confucian disputes during the Six Dynasties period regarding the practice of monastics shaving their heads.
Context: The presentation is based on ongoing research that will eventually be presented at the EACS conference. However, the talk is not meant as a mock talk in preparation for the venue. Instead, Massimiliano will try to show the material that he has collected so far and the new research paths he intends to address. He also intends to submit his paper for publication in the future.

Publication highlights (Q2 2024): “Perfect Awakening: An Edition and Translation of the Prāsādika and Prasādanīya Sūtras”, by Charles DiSimone

The Long Discourses, or Dīrghāgama, is a collection of the Buddha’s most well-known sermons that has circulated widely in the Buddhist world. Parallel collections in Pali and Chinese have long been known to scholars and practitioners, but it was not until the 1990s that a Mūlasarvāstivāda manuscript transmitted in Sanskrit was discovered, a major find with the potential to reshape our understanding of Buddhism in India and Central Asia. The present volume is the first in a three-volume series to present this rare manuscript, with a study, translation, and critical edition of two of the sūtras in the collection.

Around thirty years ago, a rare bookseller in London parceled out birchbark leaves of a manuscript bundle representing an ancient scripture that had likely been unearthed in the Gilgit region of Pakistan. Even as the fragile folios entered collections in Japan, Norway, and the United States, they were identified by a scholar as belonging to the previously lost Sanskrit Dīrghāgama, the Collection of Long Discourses of the Buddha, of the Mūlasarvāstivādins. Although the forty-seven separate sūtras in this āgama have parallel transmissions extant in the Pali Digha-nikāya and the Chinese Chang ahan jing, this Sanskrit witness, copied in the eighth century, was previously known only from partial quotations and from translations in Tibetan and Chinese. The discovery was thus one of major significance in the study of Buddhist literature.

Charles DiSimone‘s book, one of the first presentations of this manuscript in English, provides a translation, critical reconstruction, and study of two of the sūtras in the Dīrghāgama: the Prāsādika-sūtra and the Prasādanīya-sūtra. Both sūtras offer what appears to have been late teachings of the Buddha on the nature of faith and the preeminence of the Buddha over all other teachers. The Buddhist community was evidently concerned about the coming passing of the Buddha and, in these scriptures, laid the foundation for the tradition to continue with the Buddha at the center. The Prasādanīya-sūtra, in particular, is the locus classicus for the doctrine that only one Buddha and his teachings can exist in a world system at a time, ensuring that the Buddhist community would not be tempted to follow any other teacher who had not realized perfect awakening but would hold true to the Dharma of the Buddha.

These sūtras from the Mūlasarvāstivāda tradition are made available to the public for the first time in over a thousand years with philological reconstructions and translations. They are accompanied by synoptic parallels from the corresponding Pali Long Discourses of the Theravāda tradition and the Chinese Long Discourses of the Dharmaguptaka tradition along with citations and related passages from elsewhere in Buddhist literature. In addition, the work contains a full transliteration of the birchbark folios, an introduction to the two sūtras with a study providing paleographic and textual analysis of the manuscript, and notes providing insight and explanation throughout.

Book information

Hardcover
504 pages, 6 x 9 inches
ISBN 9781614296539
This book will be available in August 2024 from Wisdom Publications

Guest lecture “Dreaming of Buddhahood—Measuring Bodhisattva Progress in Early Mahāyāna” by Yixiu Jiang, May 16, 2024

A guest lecture by Yixiu JIANG of Leiden University will take place on May 16 at 14:30 in Meeting Room Camelot (3.30), Campus Boekentoren, Blandij. The lecture is ogranized by GCBS’s Professor Charles DiSimone.

Title: Dreaming of Buddhahood—Measuring Bodhisattva Progress in Early Mahāyāna

Abstract: The gradual progress toward liberation—the path (mārga)—constitutes a central concern for almost all Buddhist discourse. The bodhisattva path, intended for those who aspire to buddhahood, is commonly presented within a scheme of ten stages or bhūmis. While most scriptures on the ten bhūmis describe a bodhisattva’s progress in terms of his virtues, one unique sūtra—the *Svapnanirdeśa (lit. “Teaching on Dreams”)—instructs bodhisattvas how to determine their current developmental stage through 108 kinds of dreams. This presentation will approach the concept of the bodhisattva bhūmis in early Mahāyāna from the new perspective that the Svapnanirdeśa provides.

GCBS Research Forum meeting, April 29, 2024, presentation by Nguyễn Khuông Hồng Ngọc

The meeting of the GCBS’s Research Forum took place on April 29, 2024. Our Ph.D. student Nguyễn Khuông Hồng Ngọc (a.k.a. Ruby) presented a draft paper of a research project submitted for consideration to the European Association for Chinese Studies (EACS) 25^th Biennial Conference 2024 in Tallinn, and which will lay the groundwork for her Ph.D. dissertation. The working title of Ruby’s paper is as follows:

“Practical Learning (實學) and Its Influence on Educational Transformation in Eighteenth-Century Vietnam.”

Ruby’s primary objectives were: (1) to elucidate the mechanisms and resources through which Practical Learning was introduced to Vietnam, and (2) to elaborate on how Vietnamese confucians, on the basis of Practical Learning, criticized and transformed the state of education in the eighteenth century. She will focus on Lê Quý Đôn 黎貴惇 (1726–1784) who is at the center of her research, and try to bring an overall understanding about the context of education in eighteenth-century Vietnam.

PhD opportunity at the Ghent Centre for Buddist Studies

We are hiring! A four year doctoral fellowship is available in the European Research Council funded Gandhāra Corpora project led by Professor Charles DiSimone.

Please consider applying or sharing this with any recent MA graduates who are looking to continue their academic career in Buddhist Studies with a focus on Buddhist texts in classical languages. The fellow will join a great and welcoming team of international scholars. The application deadline is May 24. For further information and application guidelines, please visit the website of the Ghent University.

Titled “Corpora in Greater Gandhāra: Tracing the Development of Buddhist Textuality and Gilgit/Bamiyan Manuscript Networks in the First Millennium of the Common Era”, Professor Di Simone’s project centers on the study of large, recently discovered caches of highly significant early Buddhist manuscripts and their place in the body of works from Greater Gandhara. The philological, paleographical, codicological, and critical research conducted in this project will examine textual and material production, transmission, and relationship networks in the Buddhist manuscript cultures of Greater Gandhara and beyond in the first millennium of the Common Era.

Fieldwork of GCBS researcher Wen Xueyu

GCBS researcher Wen Xueyu just returned from China where she surveyed the Yungang and Longmen grottoes in the framework of her project on the development of apsara (feitian 飛天) iconography. During the fieldwork she collected a large number of photographs, including many 3D images.

Here, she kindly shares a few photos with us.

The Longmen cave complex as seen from the Yangtze River.

Main statue in Yungang Cave 13 (Maitreya).

The Southern wall of Yungang Cave 13.
The photo was taken inside Cave 13 of the, which was built between 471 and 494 CE. Between the window on the south wall and the entrance, in a large house-shaped niche, there are seven standing Buddha statues (the seven Buddhas of the past?).

Fieldwork concluding session (Cluster 3.4 of the FROGBEAR project), April 20, 2024

In April, final meetings of the various Research Clusters of the FROGBEAR project hosts the final meetings of its various Research Clusters under the general title “From the Ground to the Cloud: Insights from Seven Years of Fieldwork, Training, and Data Collection”. Among these is the concluding session of the Cluster 3.4 “Typologies of Text-Image Relations”, led by GCBS’s Prof. Christoph Anderl, which will convene on April 20th. If you are interested to participate, please register as soon as possible.

Time: 6:00-8:00am Vancouver | 9:00am-11:00am New York | 3:00pm-5:00pm Brussels | 9:00pm-11:00pm Beijing

Among else, the session includes presentations by three GCBS members:

Prof. Christof Anderl’s introductory talk “From the virtual to the physical, and back to the digital: Redefining fieldwork during and after the epidemic” will sum up the activities and research results of Cluster 3.4 during a period characterized by unpredictability and severe restrictions on physical mobility. The emphasis will be on the experiences made during the “virtual fieldwork” which was organized as response to severe travel restrictions during the lock-down periods. This will be contrasted to our “physical” presence in Bangkok when the research objects could be experienced with all our senses, rather than being projected on a two-dimensional screen. Both types of fieldworks naturally necessitated different approaches, as well as modifications in the scholarly and pedagogical methodologies applied in radically different contexts. However, both approaches eventually merged in the form of the digital data produced during and after the fieldwork activities, eventually being integrated in the Frogbear Database of Religious Sites in East Asia housed at the UBC Library.

Anna Sokolova and Massimiliano Portoghese will share their impressions from conducting fieldwork in Bangkok. In this presentation, actual “fieldworkers” will share their manifold experiences during their 10-day stay in Bangkok and – on a more objective level – reflect more generally on the status quo and future of Chinese temples in contemporary Thailand. We will discuss how Chinese temples are integrated into the urban landscape of contemporary Bangkok, how the temples link the interests of multiple social groupings in the area (such as between local residents and administrative units), how the temples have developed multiple extra-religious functions (such as turning into social gatherings/festivities/commemorative spots), and how the temples have engaged highly syncretic repertoires of the lore of deities and of their related ritual practices. Based on our field work experience, we will reflect on how the data that we have collected during our visits to the Chinese temples in Bangkok on the ground can be used to present the evolution of certain religious traditions in Thailand in a diachronically perspectives: in particular, we can trace how certain traditions commonly thought of as “authentically Chinese” have declined in certain areas over the last few decades, while other such traditions have flourished and/or merged with diverse popular believes and practices.

Doctoral school “Chinese Buddhist Iconography and Manuscript Culture: Fieldwork Data and their Use in Pedagogical Contexts, with an Emphasis on Digital Resources”, June 17-21, 2024

Abstract: Field work activities and the study of manuscripts are vital aspects of conducting research in East Asian Buddhist Studies, and both the fields of analysing iconography and deciphering and contextualizing manuscripts have undergone rapid changes during the last decade, mainly driven by innovations in the field of Digital Humanities. This course aims to provide participants with first-hand insights concerning fieldwork activities conducted in the context of the long-term FROGBEAR project “From the Ground Up: Buddhism and East Asian Religions”, and to discuss how the collected data can be used in research and teaching environments.

Doctoral school: Call for applications

“Chinese Buddhist Iconography and Manuscript Culture: Fieldwork Data and their Use in Pedagogical Contexts, with an Emphasis on Digital Resources”

June 17-21, 2024

Venue: Simon Stevin room (Ghent University campus)

We are happy to announce an upcoming Doctoral School (DS), organized by Ghent University and co-sponsored by the FROGBEAR project “From the Ground Up: Buddhism and East Asian Religions”. The DS, lasting for five days (June 17-21, 2024), and the additional two days with public lectures (June 22-23, 2024), are related to the concluding events of the FROGBEAR project (which will end in September 2024), and previous fieldwork activities and collected fieldwork data will be the main topics discussed during these seven days.

Whereas the participation in the DS is restricted to local PhD and Postdoctoral researchers (in addition to five international PhD students), the subsequent two-day event is targeted at a general audience. The schedule and the programme of these two days will be announced at a later date.

Thanks to the generous support provided by the FROGBEAR (UBC) project, we are pleased to award up to five scholarships for international PhD students. This money can be used for travel, accommodation, and meals. To apply for this travel grant, please send a one-page cover letter and your CV to christoph.anderl@ugent.be by March 31st, 2024.

Two 800 Euro scholarships for long distance (outside Europe) attendance

Three 600 Euro scholarships for short distance (inside Europe) attendance

Organizers

Prof. Dr. Christoph Anderl

Prof. Dr. Ann Heirman

Ghent University, Faculty of Arts and Philosophy

Department of Languages and Cultures

Contact E-mail: Christoph.anderl@ugent.be

Course description

Title: Chinese Buddhist Iconography and Manuscript Culture: Fieldwork Data and their Use in Pedagogical Contexts, with an Emphasis on Digital Resources

Dates: June 17-21, 2024

Number of contact hours: ca. 25

Abstract:

Field work activities and the study of manuscripts are vital aspects of conducting research in East Asian Buddhist Studies, and both the fields of analysing iconography and deciphering and contextualizing manuscripts have undergone rapid changes during the last decade, mainly driven by innovations in the field of Digital Humanities. This course aims to provide participants with first-hand insights concerning fieldwork activities conducted in the context of the long-term FROGBEAR project “From the Ground Up: Buddhism and East Asian Religions”, and to discuss how the collected data can be used in research and teaching environments.

Objectives of the course (learning outcomes):

The objectives of the course are to offer an overview of new developments in fieldwork-based research, especially:

• the use of new technologies (e.g., 3D photography) and the preparation of data for large-scale publicly accessible databases;

• to train the students to adapt fieldwork techniques and approaches to specific locations and environments;

• to approach research goals based on multiple sources and resources, e.g., the combined study of iconography and manuscript materials, indispensable for research in many areas of China, especially in the north-western regions;

• to provide the participants with practical knowledge of how various digital tools and databases can be used in teaching and other pedagogical environments;

• to concretely discuss the above aspects in the context of ongoing PhD projects involving the study of iconography and manuscripts, with the aim of increasing the feasibility and effectivity of fieldwork, production, and use of data in these projects.

Relevance of the course to the PhD research conducted at Ghent University:

This course is highly relevant for PhD and postdoctoral projects conducted at the Department of Languages and Cultures. Several PhD projects directly deal with image and manuscript materials from the north-western region of China, in particular from Dunhuang and Turfan situated at the medieval Silk Road, in addition to other sites such as Sichuan Buddhist cave and cliff temples, and the monumental cave and cliff sites of Longmen and Yungang.

Teaching methods:

Lectures: 10 hours

Discussions and exercises: 5 hours

Source analysis / seminars / readings: 5 hours

PhD students’ presentations: 6+ hours

Evaluation criteria:

Attendance and output (active participation and presentations)

Lecturers:

Michelle C. Wang

Name and affiliation: Michelle C. Wang, Professor at the Department of Art and Art History, Georgetown University

Michelle C. Wang 王慧蘭 is a specialist in the Buddhist and Silk Road art of Northwestern China, primarily of the 6th-10th centuries. Her first book Mandalas in the Making: The Visual Culture of Esoteric Buddhism at Dunhuang (Brill, 2018) examines Buddhist mandalas of the 8th-10th centuries at the Mogao and Yulin Buddhist cave shrines in northwestern China. As the first scholarly monograph on Buddhist mandalas in China, this book considers the religious, cultural, and architectural contexts in which they appeared. In addition to her research on mandalas, she has also written about art and ritual, miracle tales of animated statues, the transcultural reception of Buddhist motifs, Buddhist materiality, and text and image. She co-organized the 2014-2015 Mellon Foundation-funded Sawyer Seminar “Critical Silk Road Studies” and co-directed the Luce Foundation-funded Georgetown-International Dunhuang Project for North American Silk Road Collections in 2016-2017, which continued in 2020-2022 with support from the Dunhuang Foundation. She is one of the founding board members of the Association for Chinese Art History and faculty PI for the open access resource Digital Index of Dunhuang Art. Her current book project, tentatively titled Desert Ruins, Colonial Exploration, and the Silk Road Imaginaire, examines the reception of medieval Silk Road sites in the photographs of explorer Marc Aurel Stein (1862-1943) and their intersections with colonial discourses of climate change, linguistics, and ethnography.

Wendy Yu Sau Ling

Name and affiliation: Wendy Yu Sau Ling, PhD, Research Assistant at the Centre of Buddhist Studies at the University of Hong Kong

Wendy Yu Sau Ling 余秀玲 received her PhD in Buddhist Art from the Centre of Buddhist Studies at the University of Hong Kong in 2024. Her research focuses on exploring the aesthetic aspects of Buddhism as expressed through its art. Wendy Yu is passionate about promoting the aesthetical aspect and beauty ideals found in Buddhist art through her research. Wendy is also an avid birdwatcher, bird artist and serves as an EXCO member of the Hong Kong Birdwatching Society. Her passion for birds extends to her research, where she specifically focuses on the bird imagery found in Buddhist art. One notable highlight of her academic journey is her thesis, which is an innovative, cross-disciplinary investigation of Pure Land birds integrating archaeological materials, textual evidence and ornithological knowledge. Birds preach the dharma in Amitabha’s Pure Land, and Dr. Yu acts as a bridge to share their fascinating narratives and make them accessible to a wider public. Currently, she works as a Research Assistant at the Centre of Buddhist Studies at the University of Hong Kong, where she is responsible for conducting research activities related to Buddhist art. Additionally, she volunteers as a docent at Tsz Shan Monastery Buddhist Art Museum and Hong Kong Palace Museum.

LIA WEI

Name and affiliation: Lia Wei (Associate Professor at Inalco, Paris)

Lia Wei is associate professor in Chinese art history at the Institut national des langues et civilisations orientales (Inalco). She has been conducting research in China since 2009, with a focus on medieval Buddhist epigraphy and cave temples in Northeast China (Shandong, Hebei, Henan provinces) as well as funerary landscapes in Southwest China (Sichuan, Chongqing, Guizhou, Yunnan, Hubei and Hunan provinces). She received her PhD with a thesis entitled ‘Highland Routes and Frontier Communities at the Fall of the Han Empire (2nd to 3rd century CE): A Comparative Study of Cave Burials South of the Yangzi River’ at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS). In 2018-2021, she was based at the Department of Archaeology and Museum Studies in Renmin University of China. In parallel to her activity as an art historian/archaeologist, she practices seal carving and ink paintign, and designs projects that combine academic and artistic research (Ink Art Week in Venice 2018, Lithic Impressions Venice 2018, Ink Brussels 2019, Les cinq couleurs de l’encre 2022, Pratique de l’estampage 2023).

Christoph Anderl

Name and affiliation: Christoph Anderl, Professor at the Department of Languages and Cultures, Ghent University

Christoph Anderl specializes on medieval Chinese manuscript culture, Buddhist Chinese, and various topics related to the development and adaptation of Chinese Buddhism during the Tang and Five Dynasties periods. During the last years, his focus has been on the study of modes of representation of Buddhist narratives in textual and visual media, including methodological and theoretical issues concerning the interrelation of text and image. In this context, he has also acted as leader of the Research Cluster “Typologies of Text-Image Relations” in the large UBC-based interdisciplinary project “From the Ground Up: Buddhism and East Asian Religions”, with ca. 30 participating universities. In order to study text-image relations and modes of representations in specific contexts, he has organized several conferences/seminars, as well as conducted fieldwork in China and Bangkok, leading groups of participants from international universities. Anderl is also the editor-in-chief of a database of non-canonical Dunhuang texts and character variants found in Dunhuang texts and other materials of the medieval period, a long-term project conducted in collaboration with Asian and European universities. For current projects, see Professor Anderl’s profile at the research portal of the Ghent Centre for Buddhist Studies.

Ann Heirman

Name and affiliation: Ann Heirman, Professor at the Department of Languages and Cultures, Ghent University

Ann Heirman, Ph.D. (1998) in Oriental Languages and Cultures, is professor of Chinese Language and Culture, head of the Department of Languages and Cultures and head of the Centre for Buddhist Studies at Ghent University in Belgium. She has published extensively on Chinese Buddhist monasticism and the development of disciplinary rules, including Rules for Nuns according to the Dharmaguptakavinaya (Motilal Banarsidass, 2002), The Spread of Buddhism (Brill, edited volume with Stephan Peter Bumbacher, 2007), A Pure Mind in a Clean Body (with Mathieu Torck, Academia Press, 2012), and Buddhist Encounters and Identities Across East Asia (Brill, edited volume with Carmen Meinert and Christoph Anderl, 2018). Her current research focuses on material culture, and lived experiences in Buddhist monastic life. For a full bibliography, see https://biblio.ugent.be/person/801001019567.

Program

(updated May 8, 2024)

Monday 17th June: Introductory lectures / Buddhist iconography
10.00 Welcome (Anderl, Heirman)
10.15-12.00 Digital Index of Dunhuang Art and other digital resources for the study of Dunhuang art (Wang)
12.00-13.30 Lunch
13.30-15.00 Lecture: Mural and Portable Painting Iconography: Images of Avalokiteśvara (Wang)
15:00-15:30 Coffee break
15.30-16.30 Lecture: Mural and Portable Painting Iconography: Images of Mañjuśrī (Wang)

Tuesday 18th June: Methodological applications
10.00-12.00 Lecture (with case studies): Working on Dunhuang Transformation tableaux: An introduction (Yu)
12.00-13.30 Lunch
13.30-14.30 Lecture/seminar/discussion: Painting Materials and Workshop Practice at Dunhuang (Wang)
14:30-14:50 Coffee break
14:50-16:00 The Khotanese Presence at Dunhuang (Wang)

Wednesday 19th June: Presentations / digital resources
10.00-12.00 Students’ presentations (with discussions; moderator: Anderl)
12.00-13.30 Lunch
13.30-14.30 Lecture / seminar: An introduction to the DMCT
database: Functions and tools for working with manuscripts / epigraphy (Anderl)
14:30-14:50 Coffee break
14.50-16.00 Lecture / seminar: Sichuan Buddhist sites and the Frogbear Research Database (Yu / Anderl)

Thursday 20th June: Presentations / Pedagogical approaches /fieldwork
10.00-11.00 Presentation: Fieldwork experiences in Bangkok and the work with fieldwork data (Johansen)
11.00-12.00 Fieldwork methods and protocole for epigraphy in mountainous environments and rock-cut sites (Wei)
12.00-13.30 Lunch
13.30-16.00 Students’ presentations (with discussions; moderator: Anderl / Yu / Wei)

Friday 21st June: Material culture / epigraphy
10.00-12.00 Lecture / exercises: Material culture through normative texts: some case studies (Heirman)
12.00.13.30 Lunch
13.30-15.00 Structuring metadata and agreeing on a descriptive vocabulary in the study of epigraphy (Wei)
15:00-15:30 Coffee break
15.30-16.30 Closing discussion (moderator: Anderl / Heirman / Wang / Wei)

GCBS research group previews exhibition at the Royal Museum of Mariemont, March 5, 2024

Members of our research group traveled to the Royal Museum of Mariemont, in order to preview the objects and design of an exhibition on Buddha’s life which will open in the end of September 2024.

GCBS is co-curating the exhibition, and also co-organises a large conference on Buddha’s life narratives taking place in October at the museum. Leading scholars in the field from all over the world have already applied for this conference and soon we will publish a tentative programme.

GCBS is also responsible for the content of the “research room” of the exhibition in which ongoing projects at GCBS will be introduced to a general public, with the help of multi-media installations. Some of our MA interns are currently helping to realise this project. Prof. Christoph Anderl is coordinating the work on the research room which will focus – among other topics – on the Bangkok fieldwork to Chinese temples in collaboration with FROGBEAR, and the international project “Database of Medieval Chinese Texts”. Prof. Ann Heirman is contributing to the catalogues of the exhibition, introducing the main events in Buddha’s life.

Our group approached the museum through the wonderful park that surrounds it and hosts, among else, a magnificent Buddha statue.

Dr. Lyce Jankowski, the curator of the exhibition, with her assistant Lara Bauden, welcomed GCBS team at the museum.

Dr. Jankowski proceeded to introduce the general layout of the exhibition through a virtual preview.

GCBS researchers examined in detail the objects which will be integrated in the exhibition.

After the preview, members of GCBS raised ideas concerning the conceptualisation of the exhibition and presentation of the objects.