Buddhist Sanskrit

2016 Madison South Asia Conference Abstract - Indian Buddhist ritual texts (ca. 6th-7th centuries CE) detail a systematization of mantra families (kulas) through which female deities gain new importance in Mahāyāna ritual and soteriological contexts. These systems consist of a minimum of three ritual families: the Buddha (headed by the Buddha Śākyamuni or Vairocana), the Lotus (headed by the Bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara), and the Vajra (headed by the Bodhisattva Vajrapāṇi). They are populated by a range of male and female deities who both effectuate practitioners' mantras and personify the physical and mental attributes of their kula leaders. The Mañjuśriyamūlakalpa, perhaps the earliest of these kula-system texts to survive in Sanskrit, characterizes the kula goddesses as female Bodhisattvas who respond to the mantras of their respective families and simultaneously work to establish beings on the path to Enlightenment. This paper focuses on the structure of a specific maṇḍala (sacred deity diagram) that encompasses all or most of these three kulas. It examines the ritual functions of a little-studied class of mantra goddesses (vidyārājñīs) including their processes of embodiment, personification, and positioning in relation to their kula leaders and male counterparts (vidyārājas). Navigating issues of erosion and absence, my analysis compares cognate forms of this early maṇḍala across mediums. Examples include: a stone relief sculpture in situ at the Pandavleni caves in Nāsik, Maharashtra (with figures missing), the sole remaining complete redaction of the Sanskrit Mañjuśriyamūlakalpa, and the Mahāvairocana Abhisaṃbodhi Tantra (a text that survives only its Chinese and Tibetan translations). Therefore, within this process of text-image comparison, my study emphasizes methodological points of difficulty due to the decay or erasure of my primary source materials (including lost sections of manuscript, manuscripts no longer extant, and the wearing away of sculptural imagery).

In this study the data were collected from Guoyu Ribao's Loanwords Dictionary (1985). There are 112 Sanskrit words, which have been rendered into 293 Chinese lexical items. We found that of the 293 items, only 20, that is, less than 7%, are not phonetic loans. In fact, out of the 20 loanwords, 18 are hybrids, namely, one part of the compound loanword is a phonetic loan, and the other part is a translated morpheme, or an added semantic marker. In Section 2, we introduce some scholars' classifications of loanwords, and then classify the 293 Sanskrit loanwords according to , and studies. The Sanskrit loanwords are classified into three groups: (1) phonetic loans, for example, illOJmr~J; (2) hybrids: which include (a) half-transliteration and half-translation, for example, i:g~WJ, (b) translation plus a semantic marker, for example, i~JBi~J and (c) double renditions, for example, ifDi1~J; (3) renditions plus added information, for example, illOJ5iWe filtJ In Section 3, several kinds of phonological nativization are presented to show how Chinese scholars transliterated the Sanskrit words. Phonological nativization refers to the use of the most similar native sounds to transliterate the borrowed sounds if the foreign sounds cannot be found in the borrowing languages. We discuss the phon~logical nativization of the vowels and the phonological nativization of the consonants; the latter is divided into seven aspects: voicing, aspiration, palatal stops, retroflexes, nasals, semivowels and fricatives. Section 4 displays two other processes of the Sinicization of Sanskrit terms: syllable structure Sinicization and syllable length Sinicization. Finally, Section 5 gives a brief summary of the paper.

laifo;" rL s[ t1tf 1fkg ljifo;" rL kl/R5] b Ps kl/ro !-* !=! ljifo k| a] z !=@ ;d:of syg !=# p2] Zo !=$ cf} lrTo !=% dxTj !=^ cWoogsf] ;Ldf !=& cWoog lalw !=* ?k/] vf !=( k" j{ sfo{ sf] ;ldIff !=!) zf] w sfo{ sf] l;nl;nfdf cfOk/] sf ;d:ofx? kl/R5] b b' O{ M g] jf/ ;d' bfodf b] v] sf wfld{ s cj:yf (-@@ @=! kl/ro @=@ oIfsf] kl/ro @=@=! g] kfndf oIf k" hfsf] k/Dk/f @=@=@ oIf;+ u ;DalGwt ;+ :sf/ / ;+ :s[ lt @=@=# af} 4 wd{ df xf/tLsf] @=# l;tnfsf] kl/ro @=#=! l;tnf / ljkm/sf] ;DaGw @=#=@ l;tnf / hgwf/0ff @=#=# l;tnf / k" hf k4tL kl/R5] b tLg M g] ] kfndf xf/tL clhdf @#-#* #+ =! xf/tLsf] zflAbs cy{ #=@ xf/tL ;DaGwL hgwf/0ff #=# xf/tL ;DaGwdf ;flxlTos u| Gy #=$ xf/tLsf] k" hf k/Dk/f #=$=! lgTok" hf #=$=@ rfk" hf #=$=# snMk" hf #=$=$ s} BMk" hf #=$=% dLt nufpg] k" hf #=$=^ 5fxfo] s] k" hf #=$=& drf k" hf kl/R5] b rf/M :joDe" sf] xf/tLsf] Oltxf; #(-%# $=! P] ltxfl;s kIf $=@ ef} lts kIf $=@=! jfXo :j?k $=@=@ leqL :j?k $=# sf7df8f} + sf xf/tL b] jLsf] ;fdfGo kl/ro $=#=! afnfh' sf] xf/tL $=#=@ kf6gsf] rkfn 6f] nsf] xf/tL $=#=# :joDe" sf] xf/tL $=#=$ >L3 laxf/sf] xf/tL $=#=% kf6g sf] lGtsf] xf/tL $=#=^ af} 4sf] xf/tL $=#=& cGo xf/tLx? kl/R5] b kfF rM xf/tL;+ u ;DalGwt lqmofsnfkx? %$-%( %=! :joDe" sf] xf/tL / BMdf+ %=!=! BMdf+ k| a] z eP kl5sf] :jefa %=!=@ BMdf+ sf] pkrf/ k4tL %=!=# BM df+ x' g' k" j{ sf] cj:yf %=!=$ BM df+ eP kl5 kfngf ug' { kg] { lgodx? %=@ xf/tL / aRrfx? %=# xf/tL / tMs} jf lakm/ %=#=! tMs} sf] nIf0f %=#=@ tMs} sf] pkrf/ %=$ xf/tL / cGo clhdfx? %=% xf/tL / lbbL clh %=^ xf/tL / lztnf kl/R5] b 5M pk;+ xf/ *#-(@ ^=! ;f/ ;+ If] k ^=@ lgisif{ ^=# ;' emfax? ;Gbe{ u| Gyx? kl/lzi6 kmf] 6f] x?

The translation of “Yaowang rulai pin 藥王如來品” of the Zheng fa hua jing 正法華經by Zhu Fahu 竺法護in 286 CE is the earliest translation corresponding to the “Preacher Chapter (Dharmabhāṇakaparivarta)”
of the Saddharmapuṇḍarīkasūtra (SP). The latter half of “Yaowang rulai pin” expounds the doctrine that the sentient beings who study, worship, and demonstrate the SP through their actions will attain Buddhahood quickly.
Zhu Fahu, who was a famous translator in the early Chinese Buddhist period, lived during the Western Jin 西晋(265–314 CE). It is commonly stated that the Zheng fa hua jing is difficult to understand in comparison to the Miao fa lian hua jing 妙法蓮華經 by Kumārajīva, because during his time, Buddhist terminology had not been fixed and he had to translate the SP by employing neologisms. This paper thus
aims to clarify how Zhu Fahu coined words to translate the SP.

This paper discloses the third part of the Kātantra grammar. It deals with verbs and grammatical processes pertaining to the structures of verbal elements. It is divided into eight subchapters... . .              It is a draft. It contains some errors.

Greek Abstract

Ο βουδισμός ξεκίνησε τον 5ο αιώνα πΚΕ από την Ινδία και απλώθηκε σταδιακά σε όλη την Ασία, αποκτώντες τοπική χροιά καθώς εξελίχθηκε στην κάθε χώρα ξεχωριστά, περιλαμβάνοντας μεταξύ άλλων την Ταϊλάνδη, το Θιβέτ, την Κίνα και την Ιαπωνία. Εκδοχές του βουδιστικού Κανόνα σώζονται στην παλική, σανσκριτική, κινεζική και θιβετανική γλώσσα. Όλες τους γλώσσες-κλειδιά στη διαμόρφωση της βουδιστικής ορολογίας όπως μας μεταφέρεται σήμερα κυρίως μέσω των αγγλικών κειμένων.
Καθώς ο βουδισμός είναι ένα εκτενέστατο φιλοσοφικό και ψυχολογικό σύστημα με πολυάριθμες κατηγοριοποιήσεις, βρίθει ειδικής ορολογίας και συχνά, ενώ μεταφράζει κανείς από τα αγγλικά, αναγκάζεται να ανατρέξει στους όρους σε γλώσσες όπως η παλική, η σανκριτική και η θιβετανική.
Για παράδειγμα, για τον σανσκριτικό όρο pratītyasamutpāda (τη βουδιστική σύλληψη του νόμου της αιτιότητας) υπάρχει μια σωρεία αποδόσεων στα αγγλικά: conditioned co-production, conditioned co-arising, dependent arising, interdependent arising, dependent origination, dependent and simultaneous origination, mutual causality.
Και τα πράγματα μπορεί να γίνουν ακόμη πιο περίεργα, με όρους όπως thusness και suchness (απόδοση του σανσκριτικού tathātā).
Ελλείψει «κανονικοποιημένης» ορολογίας, ο μεταφραστής αναγκάζεται συχνά όχι μόνο να αξιολογεί τις διαθέσιμες ορολογικές λύσεις αλλά και να δημιουργεί δικές του για όρους που δεν έχουν αποδοθεί στην ελληνική βιβλιογραφία.
Ένα επίσης μεγάλο πρόβλημα είναι η προφορά. Κι εδώ πολλές φορές δημιουργούνται προβλήματα που προκύπτουν από ενδιάμεσες γλώσσες, όπως τα αγγλικά. Για παράδειγμα οι σανκριτικές λέξεις prajñā και jñāna έχουν περάσει εσφαλμένα στις δυτικές γλώσσες με την προφορά πράτζνα / πράζνα και τζνάνα / ζνάνα. Και θα ήταν μικρό το πρόβλημα αν η ρίζα -jñā δεν ήταν κοινή στις ευρωπαϊκές γλώσσες: know, gnosis, conoscere (ιταλικά), kennen (γερμανικά), känna (σουηδικά), κ.ο.κ.
Και σαν να μην έφτανε αυτό, έχουμε διαγλωσσικά ομόφωνες λέξεις που σκανδαλίζουν: το όνομα του ιστορικού Βούδα είναι «Βούδας Σακυαμούνι» όπου muni στα σανσκριτικά σημαίνει «σιωπηλός ασκητής». Εξ ου και το γνωστό μάντρα om muni muni maha muniye soha.

English Abstract

Buddhism has its origins in India in the 5th century BCE, gradually spreading all over Asia and continuously evolving and acquiring elements of local cultures in countries like Thailand, Tibet, China and Japan to name but a few. Different versions of the Buddhist Canon are extant in Pali, Sanskrit, Chinese and Tibetan. All of these are key languages in the evolution of Buddhist terminology as it is received today mainly through the medium of the English language.
As Buddhism is an extensive philosophical and psychological system with numerous lists and categorizations, it is terminology-intensive and the translator (usually translating from English) may need to refer to the original terms in Pali, Sanskrit or Tibetan.
For example, for the Sanskrit term pratītyasamutpāda (the Buddhist concept of causality) there is a plethora of English renderings: conditioned co-production, conditioned co-arising, dependent arising, interdependent arising, dependent origination, interdependent origination, dependent and simultaneous origination, mutual causality.
And things can get even more difficult when struggling with terms like thusness and suchness (Sanskrit: tathātā). Due to the lack of standardized terminology, the translator needs not only to evaluate currently available options, but also to neologize.
Another issue is the pronunciation. For example the Sanskrit words prajñā και jñāna are often mispronounced as /pradʒna/ or /prazna/ and /dʒnana/ or /znana/. This is quite problematic as not only it goes against standard Sanskrit pronunciation, but is also a common Indo-European seed syllable (-jñā) readily found in most European languages, i.e. know (English), γνώσις (Greek), conoscere (Italian), kennen (German), känna (Swedish).

『法華経』流通分の一部をなす「提婆達多品」は、聖仙提婆達多・国王・龍女それぞれの『法華経』の説示・聴聞・尊崇による成仏物語を説いたものである。「提婆達多品」という章題は漢訳『妙法蓮華経』の章立ての名に由来する。この「提婆達多品」は後代の編入であり、現在流布しているサンスクリット原典においては、「見宝塔品」の最後に位置し、独立の章節として立てられていない。本稿は、『法華経』「提婆達多品」の成立論を分析し、「提婆達多品」とその前
後品（「法師品」、「提婆達多品」を欠く「（元）見宝塔品」及び「勧持品」）の文脈上の連結に着目し、『法華経』流通分の役割という視点からそれら両者の呼応を解析し、もって「提婆達多品」の編入意図を明らかにするものである。

The paper presents novel resources and experiments for Buddhist Sanskrit, broadly defined here as including all the varieties of Sanskrit in which Buddhist texts have been transmitted. We release a novel corpus of Buddhist texts, a novel corpus of general Sanskrit and word similarity and word analogy datasets for intrinsic evaluation of Buddhist Sanskrit embeddings models. We compare the performance of word2vec and fastText static embeddings models, with default and optimized parameter settings, as well as contextual models BERT and GPT-2, with different training regimes (including a transfer learning approach using the general Sanskrit corpus) and different embeddings construction regimes (given the encoder layers). The results show that for semantic similarity the fastText embeddings yield the best results, while for word analogy tasks BERT embeddings work the best. We also show that for contextual models the optimal layer combination for embedding construction is task dependent, and that pretraining the contextual embeddings models on a reference corpus of general Sanskrit is beneficial, which is a promising finding for future development of embeddings for less-resourced languages and domains.

Did Sanskrit ratna evolve into
Eratna in Anatolia?
Notes on the etymology of the word Eratna
Abstract: In some scholars’ opinions, Eretna which is the
title of one of Turkish principalities founded in Anatolia is
cognate with Sanskrit ratna meaning “jewel”. In this paper,
the word in question will be scrutinized semantically, lexically
and etymogically by drawing attention to some points
like its ortography in historical texts, use of jewel names in
personal names, quality of dublettes, pedigree of the person
in question and it will be claimed that the word comprises er
and tana words.
Key words: Old Uyghur, Sanskrit, Eratna, personal names,
etymology
**
Özet: Anadoludaki Türk beyliklerinin biri adı olan Eratna kimi
bilim adamlarına göre Sanskritcede mücevher anlamına gelen
ratna kelimesinden gelmektedir. Bu çalışmada söz konusu kelimenin
tarihi kaynaklardaki imlası, mücevher adlarının kişi
adlarında kullanımı, dublet kelimelerin niteliği, söz konusu
kişin şeceresi gibi hususlar dikkate alınarak kelimenin semantik,
leksik ve etimolojik incelemesi yapılacak, kelimenin er ve
tana kelimelerinden oluştuğu tezi savunulacaktır.
Anahtar sözcükler: Eski Uygurca, Sanskritçe, Eratna, Kişi
Adları, Etimoloji

“Indic Buddhist Manuscripts in the People’s Republic of China: The Peking University Project.” In Paul Harrison and Jens-Uwe Hartmann, eds., From Birch Bark to Digital Data: Recent Advances in Buddhist Manuscript Research. Papers Presented at the Conference Indic Buddhist Manuscripts: The State of the Field Stanford, June 15–19 2009. Beiträge zur Kultur-und Geistesgeschichte Asiens 80; Denkschriften der philosophisch-historische Klasse 460, pp. 291–300. Vienna: Austrian Academy of Sciences, 2014.

本文主要探討《慧琳音義》中玄奘所譯《藥師經》的38個語詞，找出其梵文對應詞，並進行梵漢詞彙對比。本文有幾項發現：第一，《慧琳音義》收錄的詞彙有一大部分是其意思與傳統中國古典文獻有所不同，如「偏袒」、「稠林」、「無明」、「所翫」和「軒窓」等。第二，透過梵漢對比，本文發現一些詞語經過翻譯後，意思跟梵文有不一致的地方，如「熊羆」、「鞭撻」、「蠱道」等。第三，本文修正梵文本兩處的錯誤，如「白癩」應翻自śvitrāḥ kuṣṭhāḥ，而不是śvitrāḥ kuṇḍāḥ；「懸險」應翻自prapāta，而不是 pratāpa。總之，在透過梵漢對比研究玄奘《藥師經》38個詞彙的過程中，筆者發現了許多有趣的議題，也可藉此釐清漢譯詞的一些意義，並比較中印文化之不同。

關鍵詞：《慧琳音義》、《藥師經》、梵漢詞彙對比、梵文、中印文化

The present book explores a revelatory Andharan style relief recently discovered in Sri Lanka. This groundbreaking work adds to the growing body of archaeological evidence of important exchanges between the Buddhists of Sri Lanka and their co-religionists in the Krishna Valley. This relief is the most ancient document attested to date depicting the events that took place during the first seven weeks following the enlightenment of the Buddha. Its unique iconography leads the author to closely examine contradictions between literary evidence and visual representations of what is known as the sambodhi, or “perfect awakening” of the Buddha. According to the classic Buddhist texts the Mahāvastu and the Lalitavistara, the Buddha spent seven weeks after his enlightenment near the Bodhi tree. By contrast, the Buddhist canonical text the Vinaya-Piṭaka describes this period as only four weeks long. Sri Lankan and Burmese artists have preferred to depict the seven-week account. Furthermore, the “seven-week” motif depicted in this Andharan relief follows the chronological order given in the important Pāli texts the Nidānakathā and the Mahābodhi-Vaṁsa. The textual confusions and artistic contradictions excavated by this book uncover a bigger picture of the complex ways in which the story of the Buddha’s story was imagined in the earliest period of recorded Buddhist history. The present study is the first in a series of books by this author on Buddhist art.

While at SOAS, David Snellgrove undertook considerable research on the Sarva-tathāgata-tattva-saṃgraha. In 1981, he contributed an extremely useful Overview and Introduction to the STTS in the preface to the "FACSIMILE REPRODUCTION OF A TENTH CENTURY SANSKRIT MANUSCRIPT FROM NEPAL" Sata Pitaka  Vol. 269 by Lokesh Chandra and David Snellgrove.

As I have found Snellgrove's work to be very helpful with understanding the STTS, I have scanned and reproduce it here with kind permission of the publisher Aditya Prakashan, Delhi. It is otherwise difficult to find and there is not, so far, an electronic edition of it. As to the STTS itself, it still has not been translated into any modern languages, (Potential PhD students take note!)

As this is a complicated document to proof-read, I'm sure there will still be transcription errors. Please let me know when/if you find them.               

Keywords:
Sarva-tathāgata-tattva-saṃgraha
Sarvatathāgatatattvasaṃgraha
Sarva-tathagata-tattva-samgraha
Sarvatathagatatattvasamgraha

A fresh and original translation from Sanskrit of the dashrajnya hymn (hymn 7.18 of Rig Veda) describing this defining battle between Aryan king Sudas and his Aryan as well as non-Aryan foes. The decisive battle led to the uprooting of many tribes from the Sapta Sindhu area.

Many existing beliefs are shown to be merely due to misunderstandings. Further, it is shown that the existing translations fall well short of the true meaning.
For example, no Matsya tribe was involved in this battle.

This paper identifies for the first time the Old Tibetan version of the Kāśyapaparivarta preserved in fragments from Dunhuang. The currently known extant versions of the Kāśyapaparivarta are in Sanskrit in two Central Asian manuscripts, five Chinese versions, Khotanese fragments, and a ninth century Tibetan version preserved among Tibetan Kanjur
collections. The following comparative collation identifies for the first time seven Old Tibetan fragments of the Kāśyapaparivarta found among the Stein and Pelliot collections from the ancient city-state of Dunhuang. Jonathan Silk previously identified an eighth Tibetan fragment, Pelliot tibétain 676. These fragments comprise a version of the Kāśyapaparivarta preserved in Old Tibetan that was previously unknown. This article, Part 1, examines and collates the Old Tibetan fragments that correspond to sections §00–63 of the Staël-Holstein (1926) edition. Part 2 consists of the fragments that correspond to sections §98–135.

Download “Der vergoldete Buddha” in high resolution (168 MB): https://edoc.unibas.ch/56017/

Dieses Buch handelt in Wort und Bild vom traditionellen Metallhandwerk, das die Schöpfer religiöser buddhistischer Statuen in Nepal seit über 1000 Jahren ausüben. Die kunsthandwerklichen Fertigkeiten werden mit grossem Bewusstsein für die Tradition gepflegt – sowohl in religiöser und ikonographischer als auch in technologischer Hinsicht. Die der Volksgruppe der Newar angehörenden Spezialisten sind Wachsmodelleure, Formenbauer, Giesser, Ziseleure und Feuervergolder. Ihre Arbeit zeichnet sich – teilweise bis heute – durch eine innige Mischung aus uralter Technologie, grossem Geschick, Religiosität und Kontemplation aus.

Bücher und Ausstellungskataloge zur buddhistischen Religion, Kunst und Ikonographie gibt es sehr viele. Zum handwerklichen Aspekt der Künstler, welche die religiösen Bildnisse im Metallguss schaffen, fehlte jedoch eine umfassende Dokumentation mit einem historischen Rückblick auf die Entwicklung dieser «archaischen» Technologien. Der fundierte Text und der umfangreiche Bildteil stellen die einzige aktuelle und komplette Dokumentation eines wohl aussterbenden, 1300 Jahre alten Kunsthandwerks dar: der «rituellen» Herstellung von buddhistischen Statuen im cire-perdue-Guss («Wachsausschmelz-
verfahren»).

Der Autor Dr. Alex R. Furger ist Archäologe und erforscht seit vier Jahrzehnten die antike Metallurgie und alte metallverarbeitende Techniken. Während 25 Jahren hat er die Römerstadt Augusta Raurica geleitet und lebt in Basel (Schweiz). Er ist Autor von über 130 Artikeln in Fachzeitschriften und zwölf kulturgeschichtlichen Büchern. Für die Feldstudien zu diesem Band war er wiederholt in Nepal und hat dort Dutzende von Kunsthandwerkern in ihren Werkstätten besucht und befragt.

Issues surrounding the theories and practices of translation of Buddhist texts have been an interest for modern scholars from early on, and accordingly have been the main topic of sundry academic gatherings. In February 1990, Tibet House, based in New Delhi, organized an international seminar with the title "Buddhist Translations: Problems and Perspectives," the proceedings of which were edited and published under the same title. * After a somewhat lengthy interval, in July 2012, the Khyentse Center for Tibetan Buddhist Textual Scholarship (KC-TBTS), Universität Hamburg, organized a three-day international symposium on "Cross-Cultural Transmission of Buddhist Texts: Theories and Practices of Translation" (July 23-25, 2012, Hamburg). This symposium has been followed by a series of international events focusing on various aspects of translation of Buddhist texts: Shortly after the Hamburg symposium, in December 2012, the K. J. Somaiya Centre for Buddhist Studies in Mumbai organized an international conference on "Cross-Cultural

Chapter 1 of:
Baier, K., Maas, P. A. and Preisendanz, K. (2018) Yoga in Transformation. Göttingen: Vienna University Press through V & R unipress. doi: 10.14220/9783737008624.

The full book is released under a Creative Commons BY-SA license and can be freely downloaded from https://www.vandenhoeck-ruprecht-verlage.com/themen-entdecken/theologie/religionswissenschaft/16133/yoga-in-transformation



The earlier upload here was a  2016 pre-publication draft of the paper.

This work examines how one might study religion from a Mahāyāna point of view.  It then proceeds to elaborate a much-disputed topic among all schools of Buddhism:  the nature of consciousness.  This work focuses on the so-called "Cittamātra" section of the siddhānta text of lCang sky II, Mongolian preceptor of the Manchu empire.  point of view (as the Gelukpa pejoratively refer to it) and the Madhyamaka counter-perspective.  lCang skya II homes in primarily on the Mahāyānasaṃgrāha, but we bring in counter-arguments from a number of other sources.  The principle issue homes in on the nature of self-awareness in particular.

Peter Skilling, Saerji, Prapod Assavavirulhakarn, “A possible Sanskrit parallel to the Pali Uruvela-sutta,” in Jens Braarvig, Paul Harrison, Jens Uwe Hartmann, Kazunobu Matsuda, Gudrun Melzer, Lore Sander, ed., Buddhist Manuscripts in the Schøyen Collection, Volume Four (Hermes Academic Publishing (Oslo 2016), pp. 159 182.

The scroll Pelliot chinois 5538 is an exemplar of the multicultural and multilingual social setting of the trade routes linking India, Persia and China, popularly known as the Silk Road. The scroll, which contains a series of words and phrases in Sanskrit and Khotanese, shows how Sanskrit might have been used as a language of trans-regional and cross-community communication among the Taklamakan oasis states in the late first millennium. Phrases of practical usefulness are translated between Khotanese and Sanskrit, in the style of a phrasebook. On the other hand, the scroll is comparable to medieval European colloquies, and like them, may have been used in an educational setting.

This paper argues that semantic elucidation (nirukta) served as a powerful rhetorical technique for authorial communities in the propagation of Mahāyāna texts to transform mainstream Buddhist states of attainment—such as the Stream-enterer (srota-āpanna), Nonreturner (anāgāmin), and Arhant—into spiritual levels embodied by bodhisattvas. The paper argues that this transformation of mainstream Buddhist levels of attainment occurred in early Mahāyāna formations before the structure of the bodhisattva ten stages (daśabhūmi) was established. The paper demonstrates, through drawing upon examples from sūtras such as the Śūraṃgamasamādhi, Saddharmapuṇḍarīka, and Avaivartikacakra, that the ‘method of nairukta’ (nairukta-vidhānena), through processes of transvaluation and substitution, hollowed out mainstream Buddhist understandings of spiritual attainment and reformulated them in terms of the bodhisattva way found among nascent Mahāyāna communities.

The Lotus Sutra, an important Mahāyāna scripture in East Asian history, influenced a great number of scholars and schools in China and Japan. What about the influence and importance of the Lotus Sutra in Indian Buddhism? This paper examines the understanding of the Lotus Sutra found in the works of the Indian Buddhist scholar Candrakīrti (ca. 570-650), an influential commentator in the Buddhist thought of India and Tibet. Candrakīrti’s use of the Lotus Sutra provides a case study for the importance of the Lotus Sutra in the history of Indian Buddhism.

have been content to merely note the form as a hapax, given that Pauly had already offered at least preliminary thoughts. In sum, while the book certainly has much to offer, and will be especially welcomed by those who command no German-and its publication in India at a reasonable price is a great plus-its appearance unchanged after 15 years, and with no effort made to correct even known errors in the German edition, should signal a need for caution. Readers should have a reasonable expectation, I believe, that scholarly publications present them up-to-date information about a field, but this book does not. This is a pity, since to a great extent at least a partial updating could have been accomplished with relatively little effort. Be that as it may, the work is worth reading, even in its imperfect form.

Tensho Miyazaki, Jundo Nagashima and Zhou Liqun, “The Śārdūlakarṇāvadānafrom Central Asia”, in: Buddhist Manuscripts from Central Asia: The St. Petersburg Sanskrit Fragments, ed. Seishi Karashimaet al., vol. 1, 2015, Tokyo: The Institute of Oriental Manuscripts of The Russian Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg, andThe International Research Institute for Advanced Buddhology at Soka University.

"This article examines the occurrence of the phrase dharmaparyāyo hastagato,  “having the enumeration of the teaching in one’s hand,” in a select number of  texts classified as Mahāyāna sūtras and theorizes its occurrence in relation to the use of the book (pustaka) in the religious cultures of middle period (Common Era to fifth/sixth centuries) Indian Mahāyāna Buddhism. In recent scholarly discourse,  the “cult of the book” in Mahāyāna Buddhist formations has been hypothesized to occur in relation to shrines (caitya) or not even to have occurred at all. This article suggests an alternative hypothesis. The paper first analyzes the syntax and composition of the terms dharmaparyāya and the participle hastagata as well as their occurrences within Indian Buddhist literature in Indic languages and in Tibetan and Chinese translations. The paper then identifies the occurrence of the phrase dharmaparyāyo hastagato in a select number of Mahāyāna sūtras and relates this phrase to an observable gradual process of bibliofication, a process where texts increasingly reference themselves as protective objects, that is detectable in the layers of accretion found within the comparative analysis of extant manuscripts. Based on this analysis, the paper concludes that the “cult of the book,” rather than being a stable or local cult phenomena, was comprised of highly mobile and  translocal textual communities who carried their object of veneration with them. "

This paper outlines the history of studies on transliterations of Indian words in Chinese texts—both in Chinese linguistic studies and in Buddhist studies. The author points out the necessity of recognizing the variations of original Indian or Sanskrit sounds reflected in their Chinese transliterations and raises some issues that are yet to be studied in Chinese historical phonology.

This paper argues that the Kṛṣṇa-carita as presented in the Bhāgavata Purāṇa was strongly influenced by biographies of the Buddha, and that Aśvaghoṣa’s Buddha in the Buddhacarita might have been a model for the Bhāgavata’s portrayal of Kṛṣṇa.  It provides evidence that both the Buddha and Kṛṣṇa in these Sanskrit kāvya are depicted as dharmapramāṇa, desireless yogīs, and extremely desirable but unattainable beloveds and thus the objects of unrequited love and passionate viraha-bhakti.  It therefore challenges Friedhelm Hardy’s claims about the South Indian origins of viraha-bhakti and argues to the contrary that highly emotional forms of bhakti are found in Sanskrit literature before the Āḻvārs.

The "Leipzig Kucha Studies" series is part of the project "Wissenschaftliche Bearbeitung der buddhistischen Höhlenmalereien in der Kuča-Region der nördlichen Seidenstraße", a research project of the Sächsische Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Leipzig. This project is funded by the Federal Republic of Germany and the Free State of Saxony within the framework of the Academies' Programme. The Academies' Programme is coordinated by the Union der deutschen Akademien der Wissenschaften.

Western scholarship has long wondered about the reasons that led the Buddhists, or, to be more precise, specific sectarian components of the Indian Buddhist communities (most conspicuously the [Mūla]sarvāstivādins), to abandon the Middle Indic vernaculars as their scriptural, scholarly and probably vehicular language, to turn to Sanskrit, the celebrated and elitist language of Brahmanical scriptures (first and foremost the Veda), ritual, and culture. The fact is all the more intriguing that insistent Buddhist traditions traced to the Buddha himself, apparently a champion of regional languages, a prohibition to use Sanskrit or, at least, to emulate Brahmanical linguistic behavior. The present paper presents a partly new hypothesis concerning one aspect of this important sociolinguistic phenomenon by looking into the legitimations provided by these Buddhists for studying (Sanskrit) grammar.

The argument is that the reception of Indian astronomical methods in Baghdad in the eighth century was conditioned by contact with the Tang court, where astronomers using the same Indian methods were already employed. The explanation sheds light on the connection between the exportation of Indian astrology and interest in esoteric Buddhism in China, on the one hand, and on the early background to the movement to translate Greek works into Arabic on the other.

This paper looks at the ways in which the narratives of Nepalese Buddhist vratakathā literature have been revised since their earliest known versions in other genres in order to account for the influences of local Newar culture, the ritual itself, and how authority is lent to the ritual via the text. Examples used are the Tārā Vrata, Aṣṭamī Vrata, Śṛṇgabherī Avadāna, the story of Siṃhalasārthabāhu, and the Ahorātra Vrata.