Prof. Jiang Wu Received a Chiang Chingkuo Foundation Scholar’s Grant
Prof. Wu received a Chiang Chingkuo Foundation Scholar’s grant for the project “Scripture and Modernity: The Ōbaku Buddhist Canon in East Asia and the West” during the year 2021-22. He plans to write a monograph on the subject.
Abstract:
This study focuses on how the East Asian Buddhist textual tradition reinvents itself as a new mode of “textual modernity,” which transforms ancient texts into modern scholarly compilation. The subject matter is the modern fate of the Japanese Ōbaku canon, which became the first complete collection of East Asian Buddhist sacred texts in Europe. This book covers its history in premodern China and Japan, its transfer to the British India Office Library through the diplomatic efforts of the 1872 Japanese Iwakura Mission, and the catalog-making by two modern scholars Samuel Beal (1825-1889) and Max Müller’s Japanese student Nanjō Bunyū (1849-1927).