Categorie: Publicatie

De Clercq, Eva, et al., editors. Literary Transcreation as a Jain Practice. Vol. 13, Ergon, 2025, doi:10.5771/9783987401602

Title

Literary transcreation as a Jain practice

Editor

Eva De Clercq (UGent) , Heleen De Jonckheere (UGent) and Simon Winant (UGent)

Abstract

A vast corpus of Jain texts lies unexamined in manuscript libraries, several of them new versions of earlier works. Though the prevalence of literary transcreation in Jain communities is striking, it is by no means a practice exclusive to them. The field of South Asian Studies has increasingly dealt with the creative engagement of authors with an authoritative literary object. Although these studies have brought to the fore important conclusions, the Jains as a literary community have remained absent from these discussions. This volume addresses this gap, highlighting the influential role of Jain authors in the multilingual literary world of South Asia.

Full references

http://hdl.handle.net/1854/LU-01JJKW7XG73BBFBMHHDTAA21GS

 

DiSimone, Charles, and Nicholas Witkowski, editors. Buddhakṣetrapariśodhana : A Festschrift for Paul Harrison. Vol. 63, Indica et Tibetica Verlag, 2024.

Title

Buddhakṣetrapariśodhana : a Festschrift for Paul Harrison

Editor

Charles DiSimone (UGent) and Nicholas Witkowski

Abstract

Buddhakṣetrapariśodhana is a volume in honor of the Buddhologist and Philologist, Paul M. Harrison, George Edwin Burnell Professor of Religious Studies at Stanford University. The contributions of twenty-nine of his colleagues, students, and friends from across the globe are dedicated to his academic interests and represent a cross-section of the disciplines that have been so heavily influenced by Paul Harrison’s scholarship in the past decades: Buddhist Studies, Indology, Sinology, Tibetology, and Art History.

Full references

https://biblio.ugent.be/publication/01JE37YM79QDJ591SSF8BXDRCJ

DiSimone, Charles. Perfect Awakening : An Edition and Translation of the Prāsādika and Prasādanīya Sūtras. Vol. 1, Wisdom Publications, 2024

Title

Perfect awakening : an edition and translation of the Prāsādika and Prasādanīya sūtras

Author

Charles DiSimone (UGent)

Abstract

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.

Full references

http://hdl.handle.net/1854/LU-01HZ7MHDZF3K6EXXFQG7AAW75W

Pastore, Rosina. Vedānta, Bhakti, and Their Early Modern Sources : Philosophical and Religious Dimensions of Brajvāsīdās’ Prabodhacandrodaya Nāṭaka. Vol. 14, De Gruyter, 2023, doi:10.1515/9783111063836

Title

Vedānta, Bhakti, and their early modern sources : philosophical and religious dimensions of Brajvāsīdās’ Prabodhacandrodaya Nāṭaka

Author

Rosina Pastore (UGent)

Abstract

This volume considers the Prabodhacandrodaya Nāṭaka (c. 1760 CE), an allegorical drama composed by Brajvāsīdās in Brajbhāṣā. It contributes to the study of vernacular nāṭakas with its first complete English translation. Moreover, the critical analysis shows that the foundational Sanskrit texts for Vedānta and those for Bhakti play a part in the Prabodhacandrodaya Nāṭaka’s philosophical and religious edifice. At the same time, the investigation demonstrates that Brajvāsīdās expresses several philosophical ideas by adaptively reusing the Rāmcaritmānas by Tulsīdās (c. 1574 CE). Brajvāsīdās composes a dohā by combining one line of his invention with a line from the Mānas. This method is employed throughout all the personified metaphysical concepts. That Brajvāsī not only read Bhakti but also Vedānta through the Rāmcaritmānas highlights the philosophical and literary creativity in 18th c. North India. It points to the necessity to rethink the sources of Vedānta philosophies, by including works non-conventional for language and genre, because not in Sanskrit and not śāstras. Such sources may not be original in their contribution per se but are essential to understand how early modern philosophy was done, conceived and transmitted.

Full references

http://hdl.handle.net/1854/LU-01GZGJTA9Q1JQ9KDB48SQ1H8JS

DiSimone, Charles. “Manuscript Discoveries at Mes Aynak.” JOURNAL OF THE INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF BUDDHIST STUDIES, vol. 46, 2023, pp. 121–76, doi:10.2143/JIABS.46.0.3293161

Title

Manuscript discoveries at Mes Aynak

Author

Charles DiSimone (UGent)

Abstract

In the past few years important manuscript discoveries have been uncovered in the course of the excavation of the archeological site at the ancient city of Mes Aynak in Afghanistan. This article, the first of a series, examines this new manuscript evidence providing an analysis of seven groups of manuscript fragments found at Mes Aynak consisting of only a part of the total material uncovered at the site. The fragments under the scope of this article are all copied on birch bark folios in the Gilgit/Bamiyan Type I script and date from the 6th-7th centuries of the Common Era. Works identified include witnesses of the Maitreyavyākaraṇa, Bahubuddhāvadāna verses, the Saddharmapuṇḍarīkasūtra, and the Aṣṭasāhasrikāprajñāpāramitā. Several unidentified fragments are also analyzed. Transliterations are given for all fragments and reconstructions or parallels and translations are supplied for all identified works. It is hypothesized that the bundle containing the Maitreyavyākaraṇa and Bahubuddhāvadāna verses represents the first witness discovered of the heretofore lost Mūlasarvāstivāda Kṣudrakapiṭaka. The Aṣṭasāhasrikāprajñāpāramitā fragments discussed are also of great interest, representing the first example of that work discovered within the area of Greater Gandhāra from this period, placing it among the earlier witnesses of this work discovered to date. It also appears to mark an earlier transmission of the work that differs from later, known transmissions.

Full references

http://hdl.handle.net/1854/LU-01J3J5YA9C4HZ5N5V5KJZQ07YQ

Verardi, Giovanni, et al. Harigaon Revisited : Chronicle and Outcomes of an Excavation in Kathmandu. Vajra Publications, 2023

Title

Harigaon revisited : chronicle and outcomes of an excavation in Kathmandu

Author

Giovanni Verardi, Dániel Balogh, Daniela De Simone (UGent) and Elio Paparatti

Abstract

The idea of writng this book stemmed out from the need to rethink an excavation carried out in Kathmandu in years now distant from the people who took part in it and even more distant from the recent history of Nepal. Today the Valley of Kathmandu is a profoundly different place from what it was in the 1980s, and in many ways unrecognisable. The idea of the book, however, is also due to the long-term consequences of the situation created in Italy between 2008 and 2011, the year in which the Istituto Italiano per l’Africa e l’Oriente (IsIAO), sonship of the Istituto Italiano per il Medio ed Estremo Oriente (IsMEO), closed down. The latter had been established in 1933 by Giovanni Gentile and then directed for a long time by Giuseppe Tucci. Both Institutes, as far as field activities in Asia were concerned, were in close relationship with the Museo Nazionale di Arte Orientale, where the documentation of the excavations was deposited, in particular the graphic and photographic material (drawings of all kinds, negatives and prints). In 2016 the Museum left its headquarters in the very central Via Merulana in Rome and was joined to the Museo Nazionale Preistorico Etnografico Luigi Pigorini, merging into the new Museo delle Civiltà, where today the largest part of the documentation of the archaeological undertakings of the past is kept, waiting to be rearranged and made usable.

Full references

http://hdl.handle.net/1854/LU-01HRZ26YJ65NY0PSAKTPABD9DK

De Clercq, Eva. The Life of Padma, Volume 2. Vol. 35, Harvard University Press, 2023

Title

The life of Padma, volume 2

Author

Eva De Clercq (UGent)

Abstract

The first English translation of the oldest extant work in Apabhramsha, a literary language from medieval India, recounting the story of the Ramayana. The Life of Padma, or the Paümacariu, is a richly expressive Jain retelling in the Apabhramsha language of the famous Ramayana tale. It was written by the poet and scholar Svayambhudeva, who lived in south India around the beginning of the tenth century. Like the epic tradition on which it is based, The Life of Padma narrates Prince Rama’s exile, his search for his wife Sita after her abduction by King Ravana of Lanka, and the restoration of his kingship.
The second volume recounts Rama’s exile with Sita and his brother Lakshmana. The three visit various cities—rather than ashrams, as in most versions; celebrate Lakshmana’s marriages; and come upon a new city built in Rama’s honor. In Dandaka Forest, they encounter sages who are masters of Jain doctrine. Then, the discovery of Sita’s disappearance sets the stage for war with Ravana.

Full references

http://hdl.handle.net/1854/LU-01GQ4T00CW0TJY75WTA7BVSMZE

Loewen, Nathan R. B., and Agnieszka Rostalska, editors. Diversifying Philosophy of Religion : Critiques, Methods and Case Studies. Bloomsbury Academics, 2023

Title

Diversifying philosophy of religion : critiques, methods and case studies

Editor

Nathan R. B. Loewen and Agnieszka Rostalska (UGent)

Abstract

Much philosophical thinking about religion in the Anglophone world has been hampered by the constraints of Eurocentrism, colonialism and orientalism. Addressing such limitations head-on, this exciting collection develops models for exploring global diversity in order to bring philosophical studies of religion into the globalized 21st century. Drawing on a wide range of critical theories and methodologies, and incorporating ethnographic, feminist, computational, New Animist and cognitive science approaches, an international team of contributors outline the methods and aims of global philosophy of religion. From considering the importance of orality in African worldviews to interacting with Native American perspectives on the cosmos and investigating contemplative studies in Hinduism, each chapter demonstrates how expertise in different methods can be applied to various geographical regions, building constructive options for philosophical reflections on religion. Diversifying Philosophy of Religion raises important questions regarding who speaks for and represents religious traditions, setting the agenda for a truly inclusive philosophy of religion that facilitates multiple standpoints.

Full references

http://hdl.handle.net/1854/LU-8699887

Vekemans, Tine. Digital and Diaspora : Intertwined Frontiers of Contemporary Jainism. Vol. 12, Ergon, 2022, doi:10.5771/9783956508899

Title

Digital and Diaspora : Intertwined Frontiers of Contemporary Jainism

Author

Tine Vekemans (UGent)

Abstract

Based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork in the UK, the US, and Belgium, as well as an analysis of a wide array of digital sources, this volume compellingly conceptualizes the digital and the diaspora as separate but intertwined frontier-spaces in which religious adaptation and change can be expected to occur. Touching upon a variety of aspects of Jain socio-religious experience and practice, the volume succeeds in shedding light on the diversity of Jain diasporic experiences and practices, and underscores the different roles digital media can play in individual religiosity and identity formation, community building, and the dissemination of traditional as well as innovative ideas.

Full references

http://hdl.handle.net/1854/LU-8770159