Editor:
Nicholas Sims-Williams
Publication:
2019
Publisher:
Turnhout: Brepols Publishers
Abstract:
Containing a variety of texts ranging from liturgy to pharmacology via hagiography, calendars and ascetical works by Isaac of Nineveh, this volume completes the publication of all known Christian Sogdian texts. This volume completes the publication of the Christian Sogdian texts of the Berlin Turfan Collection begun by F. W. K. Müller in 1907. Several Syriac texts are also included, in particular a series of liturgical texts in Syriac with Sogdian rubrics (edited in collaboration with J. F. Coakley).
The texts edited here are mostly short but extremely varied and interesting. The Syriac liturgical fragments are some of the earliest surviving witnesses to the liturgy of the "Church of the East", though the Sogdian rubrics which accompany them show that those who performed them were not native speakers of Syriac. Other texts connected with the liturgy include a Sogdian version of the Gloria in excelsis and a text explaining how to calculate the date of Easter or Lent. Hagiographical texts include fragments of the martyrdoms of St George and of Cyriacus and Julitta as well as part of the so-called "Six Books" on the Dormition of the Virgin Mary. Two pharmacological fragments (edited in collaboration with Dieter Maue) show familiarity with Indian medicine, while a "prayer-amulet" belongs rather to a Syriac tradition. Finally, a chapter contributed by Adrian Pirtea contains the re-edition of a well-preserved folio identified by him as a Sogdian version of a work by Isaac of Nineveh.
The edition and translation of the texts is accompanied by a detailed commentary. The volume is completed by a full glossary, a bibliography, and a word-index covering all five of the author’s volumes of Christian Sogdian texts in the series BTT.
Authors:
Ann Heirman & Mathieu Torck
Publication Year:
2013
Publisher:
Gent: Academia Press
Abstract:
Buddhist monasteries, in both Ancient India and China, rightfully attract the attention of many scholars, discussing historical backgrounds, institutional networks or influential masters. Still, some aspects of monastic life have not yet received the attention they deserve. This book therefore aims to study some of the most essential, but often overlooked, issues of Buddhist life, namely, practices and objects of bodily care. For monastic authors, bodily care primarily involves bathing, washing, cleaning, shaving and trimming the nails, activities of everyday life that are performed by lay people and monastics alike. In this sense, they provide a potential bridge between two worlds that are constantly interacting with each other: monastic people and their lay followers.
Authors:
Sen, Tansen
Duara, Prasenjit
Publisher:
Rowman and Littlefield
Publication Year:
2015
Abstract:
Relations between China and India underwent a dramatic transformation from Buddhist-dominated to commerce-centered exchanges in the seventh to fifteenth centuries. The unfolding of this transformation, its causes, and wider ramifications are examined in this masterful analysis of the changing patterns of the interaction between the two most important cultural spheres in Asia.
Tansen Sen offers a new perspective on Sino-Indian relations during the Tang dynasty (618-907), arguing that the period is notable not only for religious and diplomatic exchanges but also for the process through which China emerged as a center of Buddhist learning, practice, and pilgrimage.
Before the seventh century, the Chinese clergy-given the spatial gap between the sacred Buddhist world of India and the peripheral China-suffered from a borderland complex. A close look at the evolving practice of relic veneration in China (at Famen Monastery in particular), the exposition of Mount Wutai as an abode of the bodhisattva Manjusri, and the propagation of the idea of Maitreya's descent in China, however, reveals that by the eighth century China had overcome its complex and successfully established a Buddhist realm within its borders. The emergence of China as a center of Buddhism had profound implications on religious interactions between the two countries and is cited by Sen as one of the main causes for the weakening of China's spiritual attraction toward India.
At the same time, the growth of indigenous Chinese Buddhist schools and teachings retrenched the need for doctrinal input from India. A detailed examination of the failure of Buddhist translations produced during the Song dynasty (960-1279), demonstrates that these developments were responsible for the unraveling of religious bonds between the two countries and the termination of the Buddhist phase of Sino-Indian relations.
Sen proposes that changes in religious interactions were paralleled by changes in commercial exchanges. For most of the first millennium, trading activities between India and China were closely connected with and sustained through the transmission of Buddhist doctrines.
The eleventh and twelfth centuries, however, witnessed dramatic changes in the patterns and structure of mercantile activity between the two countries. Secular bulk and luxury goods replaced Buddhist ritual items, maritime channels replaced the overland Silk Road as the most profitable conduits of commercial exchange, and many of the merchants involved were followers of Islam rather than Buddhism.
Moreover, policies to encourage foreign trade instituted by the Chinese government and the Indian kingdoms contributed to the intensification of commercial activity between the two countries and transformed the China-India trading circuit into a key segment of cross-continental commerce.
Table of contents:
Introduction: China's Encounter and Predicament with the Indic World
Chapter One: Military Concerns and Spiritual Underpinnings of Tang-India Diplomacy
Chapter Two: The Emergence of China as a Central Buddhist Realm
Chapter Three: The Termination of the Buddhist Phase of India-China Interactions
Chapter Four: The Reconfiguration of India-China Trade and its Underlying Causes
Chapter Five: The Phases and the Wider Implications of the Reconfiguration of India-China Trade
Conclusion: From Buddhism to Commerce: The Realignment and Its Implications
