Donations to the Centre of the World: The Chinese Inscriptions from Bodhgaya
Dear Friends of the Center for Buddhist Studies,
Please join us on Tuesday, April 9 at 1 pm (Arizona Time) in S215 at Environment and Natural Resources 2 Building (ENR2) for the next lecture of the Ōbaku Ingen/Lingyin/Puyin Lecture Series! This is a hybrid in-person/online event.
Time and Location:
Time: 1:00 pm - 2:30 pm (Arizona Time), April 9, 2024
Location: S215, ENR2 (1064 E Lowell St, Tucson, AZ 85719)
Suggested parking: Sixth Street Garage (1119 E 6th St, Tucson, AZ 85719)
Talk title: Donations to the Centre of the World: The Chinese Inscriptions from Bodhgaya
Speaker: Dr. Max Deeg, Professor of Buddhist Studies, Cardiff University
Abstract: This lecture will revisit the few Chinese inscriptions which had been discovered in the second half of the 19th century by the British archaeologist Alexander Cunningham at Bodhgaya, the site of the Buddha’s Enlightenment. Since the French Sinologist Edouard Chavannes has made a translation and study of the inscriptions in the year 1896 from photos and rubbings, only a few studies have appeared of this only set of inscriptions from the Song period unearthed in India. Most of the original steles were brought to the Indian Museum in Kolkata where they disappeared in the Museum’s catacombs until they were recovered from the storage a couple of years ago. The lecture will introduce the inscriptions and discuss them in their wider Song Chinese contexts.
Speaker Bio: Max Deeg is Professor in Buddhist Studies at Cardiff University Wales, United Kingdom. His research focuses on the spread of Buddhism from India to China and Chinese sources on India. He has worked and published extensively on the Chinese Buddhist travelogues and, at the moment, is preparing a new multi-volume translation and commentary of Xuanzang’s Datang-xiyu-ji (“Record of the Western Regions of the Great Tang”). He is one of two PIs on the “Xuanzang Trail Project”, supported and funded by the Bihar Heritage Development Society in Bihar, India, which identifies and explores Buddhist sites recorded in the Datang-xiyu-ji.
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This lecture is cosponsored by UArizona Center for East Asian Studies.
Lingyin/Puyin lecture series are made possible thanks to the generous support from Wanfu Temple in Fuqing, Lingyin Temple in Hangzhou, Puyin College and Matcha.com.