预告：人大—UBC—慈济大学暑期佛学课程安排

SPB2101

Lineage and Kinship Factors in Medieval Chinese Buddhism: New Perspectives in Light of Epigraphic Evidence
見諸金石之中古佛教法統與血脈

Instructor: Jinhua Chen 陳金華 (UBC)

Course Outline:

Assuming that a Buddhist monk or nun automatically and permanently severed ties with his or her family as soon as s/he entered the samgha by “abandoning his/her household life,” scholars are prone to study a Buddhist monk or nun mainly only in terms of connections and positions within the monastic world. Little attention has been paid to the role that family background played in shaping a monastic career on the one hand, or the ways in which the monastic career might have affected the fortunes of one’s secular family, on the other. Evidence shows that a Buddhist cleric’s family background was influential throughout the whole of his or her monastic life. To be more specific, family background exercised influence mainly on two major fronts. First, through family a Buddhist priest maintained and developed ties with the powerful in the secular world — ties of crucial significance to the monk or nun, to their secular family members, and to the sectarian group to which he or she belonged. While it is almost self-evident that a Buddhist priest easily created and fostered relationships with secular people within his clan or other clans tied to his in one form or another (most typically through intermarriage), it requires some explanation to demonstrate the other similarly important fact: a Buddhist monk’s success (or lack thereof) in the samgha had a great deal to do with the earlier, secular, family. In connection with these two facts, we should also recognize the considerable extent to which the family background of a Buddhist cleric (especially a leader) affected the rise or fall of his or her sect, especially when that family’s gain or loss was fixed to the contemporary political arena. On the other hand, the monastic significance of family background should be discerned not merely between samgha and state, but also within the samgha itself. Some Buddhist monks were grouped together not merely by their common doctrinal and practical orientations, but also through their kinship relationships.

SPB2102

A Philological Approach to Early Māhāyana Scriptures
早期大乘經典之文獻學剖析

Instructor: Seishi Karashima 辛嶋靜志 (Soka University)

Course Outline:

Each Mahāyāna text must have its own complex background and history. Most likely early Mahāyāna scriptures were originally transmitted in Middle Indic and later, translated gradually into (Buddhist) Sanskrit. Such (Buddhist) Sanskrit texts are, in other words, the result of constant sanskritisation, wrong back-formations, additions and interpolations over the centuries. This means that when we attempt to understand the early Mahāyāna scriptures and draw nearer to their original landscapes, if we limit ourselves only to extant Sanskrit manuscripts, most of which date from the eleventh century onwards, the explanatory value of such studies is rather limited. Besides Sanskrit manuscripts, we should investigate all other available materials, such as Sanskrit manuscript fragments from the ancient Greater Gandhāra (Northwest Pakistan and East Afghanistan) and Central Asia, Khotanese texts, Tibetan and Chinese translations. Among the Chinese translations, those, which were made from the second to the sixth century, thus antedating many of the extant Sanskrit manuscripts, may particularly provide substantial clues to the origin and development of Buddhist scriptures. In addition to written evidence, we should also consult the results of various researches conducted on archaeological and art historical materials. By considering all such materials together, we may be able to attain new perspectives on early Mahāyāna scriptures. We need to reconsider what we have understood through eyeglasses, called common sense, by removing them and looking anew at primary materials. In this way, we may be able to draw nearer to the original features of the early Mahāyāna scriptures.

SPB2103

The Sacred Geographies of Asia
亞洲聖地學

Instructor: James Robson 羅柏松 (Harvard University)

Course Outline:

Historians of religion have long noted how the category of sacred space is a fundamental component of most religious traditions, alongside of issues of sacred time, ritual and doctrines. This course aims to understand the constitution and transformation of Buddhist sacred sites in Asia. The earliest Buddhist sacred sites were primarily associated with the historical Buddha or various Bodhisattvas and located within the regions where Buddhism developed in India. The power and importance of Buddhist sacred sites was, to a great extent, derived from their connections—no matter whether historical or legendary—to the Buddha and Buddhist saints. Those sacred sites came to figure in pilgrimage networks where followers wanted to literally follow the path and walk in the footsteps of the Buddha. After the Buddha's death those sacred sites were marked with his enduring presence through stūpas that housed his corporal relics. The institution of an Indian Buddhist sacred geography tethered to sites that were in some way connected to the biography of the Buddha, illustrates well the connection that would ensue throughout Asia between eminent people and particular sacred sites. Wherever Buddhism traveled outside of that cultural sphere new sacred sites were produced. Indeed one of the primary ways to track the geographical and historical spread of Buddhism in Asia is by focusing on the creation, use, and transformation of sites that were characterized as sacred. The spread of Buddhism in Asia may be viewed from one perspective as a protracted and complex process in which numerous sacred sites were continually created and recreated in different cultural settings. This seminar will introduce students to important theoretically and methodologically engaging works in the study of sacred geography and will approach Buddhist sacred sites from a number of perspectives. How were Buddhist sacred sites conceptualized throughout Asia? What kinds of meanings were perceived to be encoded in sacred sites? What kinds of narratives are used to describe those sites? How were new Buddhist sacred sites created and consecrated in geographical (and cultural) contexts at some remove from India, where the sacred sites associated with the historical Buddha were all located? What was the relationship between Buddhist sacred sites and the sacred sites of pre-Buddhist religious traditions? The readings for this course will be comprised of primary sources (in Chinese or English translation) and secondary sources in English or Chinese.

SPB2201

Module and Serial Production in Chinese Art
中國藝術品之模式及系列生產

Instructor: Lothar Ledderose (University of Heidelberg)

Course Outline:

One of the most amazing phaenomena in the history of Chinese art is the large number of objects that Chinese craftsmen could produce: twenty tons of bronze objects in the tomb of Marquis Zeng around 433 BC, more than seven thousand terracotta warriors for the tomb compound of the First Emperor (died 210 BC), around two hundred and fifty thousand copper type for printing the encyclopedia in the 18th century, and more than a hundred million pieces of porcelain that were made for export between 1600 and 1800. In all these cases Chinese artisans developed systems of production that allowed them to manufacture practically limitless numbers of objects of high quality at low cost. These systems of serial production have been studied in my "Ten Thousand Things," Princeton UP, 2000. A Chinese translation was published as "Wanwu," Beijing: Sanlian, 2005. Using these two publications as text books we will discuss the material presented in them as well as adduce and study further examples.

SPB2202

The Emperor and/or the Saṃgha:
Court Buddhism in Ancient and Medieval China
廟堂之高與叢林之深：上,中古朝廷佛教

Instructor: Antonello Palumbo 白安敦 (SOAS, London University)

Course Outline:

Buddhism in China shows its first traces at the court of the Han 漢 dynasty (206/202 BCE – 220 CE). They predate by more than one century the oldest evidence of Buddhist communities and canonical translations outside the Palace, a circumstance that immediately calls into question the relationship between the imperial and monastic spheres. Did Buddhism at the Chinese court originate from some kind of exposure to the activities of the monks, or was it rather independent from and earlier than them? To what extent were the aims of the Buddhist worship inside and outside the court consistent with each other? And what was the role of the clergy in the vision of the emperors who upheld Buddhism as a state ideology?

This seminar will explore the origins, nature and development of court Buddhism from the 1st to the 8th centuries. The course will initially follow the growth of the knowledge and use of the Buddhist religion in the imperial circles, and then focus on three exemplary figures of Buddhist rulers: Emperor Wu 武帝 of the Liang 梁 (r. 502-549), Empress Wu Zetian 武則天 of the Zhou 周 (r. 690-705) and Emperor Daizong 代宗 of the Tang 唐 (r. 762-779). Primary documents will be read and analyzed in class, and students will be invited to engage with the textual materials and contribute to the general discussion.

SPB2203

Seeking the Dharma from the West:
Chinese Pilgrims to Early Medieval India
求法於西方：早期中古來自中土之朝拜天竺者

Instructor: Tansen Sen 沈丹森 (City University of New York)

Course Outline:

This seminar will be devoted to the reading of selected sections of the works by Chinese pilgrims Faxian, Xuanzang, and Yijing, as well as the records concerning the missions of the Tang envoy Wang Xuance to India in the seventh century. These readings will be analyzed in the context of the Buddhist relations between India and China during the early medieval period. The issues examined will include the concept of pilgrimage in ancient and medieval China, the perception of India as a holy land among the Chinese Buddhist clergy, the significance of pilgrimage activity to the Buddhist interactions between India and China, and the contribution of Buddhist pilgrimages to commercial and political exchanges. Relevant secondary sources will be used to deal with some of the textual and conceptual issues.

SPB2204

Buddhism and the Contemporary World:
Issues and Solutions from Buddhist Perspectives
當代社會之癥結：佛家之解讀與解答

Instructor: TBA

Course Outline:

TBA