Projects

Current Projects

• Long-term project in the Academy Program: „Buddhistische Handschriften aus Gandhāra: religiöse Literatur an der Schnittstelle von Indien, Zentralasien und China“/"Buddhist manuscripts from Gandhāra: religious literature at the interface of India, Central Asia and China" (since 2012; projection duration: 21 years). The discovery of the oldest Buddhist manuscripts – written between the first century BC to the fourth century AD in the Gāndhārī language and Kharoṣṭhī script – has put our understanding of this formative phase of Buddhism on a completely new footing. The aim of the project is to complete the edition of all known Gāndhārī manuscripts, to contribute to the compilation of a Gāndhārī dictionary, and to produce a comprehensive Historical Grammar of the Gāndhārī language, a palaeography of the Kharoṣṭhī, and a history of Gandhāra literature and Buddhism.
• "Buddhist Manuscripts of the Schøyen Collection" (together with Jens Braarvig, Oslo, Paul Harrison, Stanford, Kazunobu Matsuda, Kyoto, and Lore Sander, Berlin, since 1997): In the 1990s, several thousand fragments of Indian Buddhist manuscripts from Afghanistan entered the European art market. They all date from the 2nd to the 8th century AD and contain mainly works whose Indian original had previously been considered lost. A large number of these fragments have found their way into a Norwegian private collection. The aim of the project is to make the manuscripts accessible for Buddhist research. Previously published: Buddhist Manuscripts in the Schøyen Collection, Vol. I (Oslo 2000), Vol. II (Oslo 2002), Vol. III (Oslo 2006), Vol. IV (in preparation).

Completed Projects

• DFG project "Literary history of Tibet in the 17th century based on the colophons of the Tibetan historian A-mes-zhabs Ngag-dbang-kun-dga'-bsod-nams (1597-1659)" (May 2000 to May 2003) by Dr Jan-Ulrich Sobisch. A-mes-zhabs, a representative of the Sa-skya-pa school, is regarded as one of the greatest scholars of his time, having made a name for himself especially as a historiographer. His complete works comprise the enormous number of over seven hundred individual titles. Despite his fame, only a few of his writings have been printed, and his work has thus remained largely inaccessible to scholarly research to this day. Of unique importance are the colophons of his writings, which contain unusually detailed descriptive and also evaluative information about the sources used. These colophons may be considered a veritable treasure trove for the historian and the literary historian. They provide a valuable insight into the religious literature studied at the beginning of the 17th century in Sa-skya, one of the most important monastic centres in Tibet. The aim of the project is to evaluate the information in the colophons from a literary-historical point of view and to bring them together to form an overall picture.
• Completed with the publication: Jan-Ulrich Sobisch: Life, Transmissions, and Works of A-mes-zhabs Ngag-dbang-kun-dga'-bsod-nams, the Great 17th Century Sa-skya-pa Bibliophile, Stuttgart 2007 (VOHD, Supplement vol. 38). IX, 607 pp.
• DFG project „Neuedition des Sanskrit-Textes des Mahāparinirvāṇasūtra“/"New edition of the Sanskrit text of the Mahāparinirvāṇasūtra" (together with Prof. Heinz Bechert) by Dr Klaus Wille-Peters. The tradition of the end of the Buddha's life is at the heart of the Buddhist tradition. The present edition of the Mahāparinirvāṇasūtra, one of the great canonical sutras (i.e. the Buddhist doctrinal texts of Hinayana Buddhism in Sanskrit) was published about five decades ago. According to the state of research at that time, only part of the manuscripts could be consulted, since the Turfan collection and the other collections of Central Asian manuscripts were only incompletely indexed. Moreover, it was not yet sufficiently known that there were considerable differences between the Sarvāstivāda version of these texts that had survived in Central Asia and the version in the Mūlasarvāstivāda canon. Also, at that time, research into so-called Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit was still in its infancy; F. Edgerton's grammar had not yet been published. Since August 2001, the Sanskrit texts of this probably most important testimony to canonical Buddhist tradition, which have been preserved in Central Asia, have been newly edited to reflect the scholarly status quo.
• DFG project "Converted by the Buddha: a study in art and literary history on the function of conversion stories in the Buddha legend" by PD Dr. Monika Zin (November 2003 to January 2006). The figure of the Buddha has an inherent ambivalence that manifests itself already at his birth: depending on his choice, a future as world ruler or as Buddha is predestined for him. This ambivalence remains part of the Buddha legend and is evident in many motifs borrowed from the topoi of the figure of the worldly ruler. One such motif is that of submission; as with a ruler the subjugation of powerful enemies, in the Buddha legend the conversion of the most aggressive and difficult opponents serves to illustrate the spiritual power of the Buddha and thus to establish his religious prestige. This function and how it is conveyed will be investigated. One starting point will be the pictorial representations of the conversion stories; they will be recorded in their entirety and examined to determine which scene(s) from a story was/were preferably depicted and whether form and selection allow general conclusions to be drawn about the visual construction of religious prestige in ancient India. Concluded with the publication: Monika Zin, Mitleid und Wunderkraft. Schwierige Bekehrungen und ihre Ikonographie im indischen Buddhismus, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2006, VII+225 pages, 76 black and white illustrations, 267 line drawings.
• DFG project "Die 'Dokumente der Überlieferungslinien' (gsan yig) der Sa-skya-pa: Bedeutung, Struktur, literarische Entwicklung und historisch-biographischer Gehalt“/"The 'Documents of the Lineages of Transmission' (gsan yig) of the Sa-skya-pa: Meaning, Structure, Literary Development and Historical-Biographical Content" by Dr. Jowita Kramer (July 2004 to June 2006). Although the "Documents of the Lineages of Transmission (gsan yig)" have been described as veritable treasure troves before and occasionally used in scholarly works, there has been no systematic study of this unique genre of Tibetan literature to date. Such a study is expected to provide essential insights into the structure of the gsan yig and its historical development, but also into its specific problems. By recording the sources of scholarship and religious practice of a spiritual personality, they have a prestige-building effect, and this function has an impact on content and design. Central gsan yig of the Sa-skya-pa tradition are to be worked on exemplarily; at the same time, a database is to be created that documents the literature of the Sa-skya-pa almost completely and provides information about a large number of scholars and masters of this tradition about whom little or nothing was known until now. The project has now been completed and documented in a database.
• DFG project "Narrative and Image: An Investigation of the Reliefs of the Amarāvatī School in Comparison with the Literary Tradition" (February 2006 to August 2010). According to the common view, Amarāvatī art (1st century BC - 4th century AD) follows the Theravāda tradition. This assumed dependence on southern Buddhism is admittedly not based on geographical or cultural circumstances, but only on the basic assumption of C. Sivaramamurti, the author of the standard publication published in 1942. He identified the reliefs on the basis of the Pali texts and explained the countless discrepancies between narrative and image as peculiarities of the artists. In this project, the reliefs will be systematically analysed, identified and republished. Preliminary work shows that they can be explained much better on the basis of the texts of Northern Buddhism without recourse to "artistic idiosyncrasies".
• DFG-Projekt „Versenkung und Askese: Eine neue Sanskrit-Quelle zur Buddha-Legende“/"Immersion and Asceticism: A New Sanskrit Source on the Buddha Legend" by Liu Zhen, M.A. (October 2007 to July 2008). The description of the Buddha's life follows certain forms of hagiography. It is segmented by characteristic turning points. One such point is marked by enlightenment, with which spiritual efficacy begins. Another, earlier, turning point occurs when the prince relinquishes his status and leaves the palace. This marks the beginning of the spiritual quest phase; here the Buddha tries out various forms of immersion and extreme ascetic practices. When these practices threaten his life, another break occurs, namely the turning away from asceticism, and thus the phase of spiritual quest is concluded. A new canonical source is now available for this section, in which the Buddha gives a retrospective autobiographical account of his practices of contemplation and asceticism. The source will be opened up in terms of language and content, compared with the parallel traditions and examined in terms of its specific contribution to the construction of the hagiography of the Buddha. Completed with the publication Liu Zhen: Chanding yu kuxiu: dhyānāni tapaś ca. Guan yu fozhuan yuanchu fanben de faxian he yanjiu, Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 2010.
• Fritz Thyssen Foundation project „Geographie der Sprachen und Literaturen des Hindi in Literaturgeschichten des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts"/"Geography of Hindi Languages and Literatures in Literary Histories of the 19th and 20th Century" by Dr. Ira Sarma (October 2008 to May 2011). The aim of the project is to re-read the linguistic and literary landscape of Hindi - the official national language of the Indian Union - from the perspective of literary geography, thus making visible and therefore analysable the relationship between the production of texts and their material geographical environment as implied in literary histories. The geography of literature lies hidden in every historiographical account: in the attributions of writers, texts and institutions to individual regions and places or the description of migrations of genres and authors. Revealing these spatial patterns will give us new insights into the processes of literary production, including, for example, spatial hierarchies that dominate the literary field. By looking at the ways in which literature is located and moves in space, we will gain a deeper understanding of the process at work at the intersection of literary culture and society.
• DFG project (together with the Indological Institutes in Bonn and Halle:) "South Asia Research Documentation Services 3 (SARDS 3)" by Oliver von Criegern, M.A., and Ralf Kramer to complete the bibliographic database SARDS2 for the period 1797-2000 (from January 2009 to February 2012). SARDS3 is an online database of bibliographically dependent research literature in the field of Indology and South Asian Studies, which was established with funding from the Helmuth von Glasenapp Foundation, the state of Saxony-Anhalt and the University of Halle-Wittenberg. It contains approx. 67,000 articles and papers, each indexed by several keywords, which were published between 1797 and 2007 in over 950 periodicals and collective journals. Within the framework of the project, the existing database was completed retrospectively up to the year 2000 by recording approx. 26,000 records that were still missing. This database can be accessed via http://www.sards.uni-halle.de/sards/.
• DFG project: „Die Stupa-Anlage von Kanganhalli: kunstwissenschaftliche und religionsgeschichtliche Auswertung der rund sechzig neu entdeckten Reliefs“/"The stupa complex of Kanganhalli: art historical and religious historical evaluation of the approximately sixty newly discovered reliefs" by Prof. Dr. Monika Zin (from August 2010 to January 2015). The Buddhist stupa complex of Kanganhalli (India, State of Karnataka, Gulbarga District), discovered only a few years ago, was probably built between the 1st century BC and the 3rd century AD. It is one of the most magnificent archaeological sites of the 20th century in India. The dome of the stupa was covered with about sixty largely well-preserved relief panels about 10ft in height, containing scenes from the life of the Buddha and from his pre-birth stories. The find is still unpublished; its processing is needed, among other things, by the archaeologists for the reconstruction of the dome, because the stupa is to be rebuilt in the next few years to serve as a tourist attraction for the region.
• DFG project: „Fragmente aus Werken zum buddhistischen Ordensrecht in der ‚Private Collection in Virginia‘“/"Fragments from Works on Buddhist Religious Law in the 'Private Collection in Virginia'" by Dr Masanori Shono (2015-2017). A private collection in Virginia (USA) contains unique manuscript fragments from the Vinaya-vibhanga and the Vinaya-uttaragrantha. Both works belong to the canonical set of rules for the Buddhist monastic order (Vinaya), in the version of the school of the (Mula)sarvastivadins. The Indian originals of these works were previously considered lost. Since the owner of the collection attaches great importance to anonymity, the manuscripts were in danger of remaining permanently inaccessible. Yet through a fortunate circumstance it was quite unexpectedly possible to gain access to the collection and to produce excellent digital copies. The aim of the project is now to philologically process the Sanskrit fragments for the first time and to evaluate them in comparison with their Chinese and Tibetan translations as well as the parallel texts preserved in Sanskrit. This is intended to contribute to the linguistic and textual indexing of Vinaya-vibhanga and Vinaya-uttaragrantha, and at the same time to questions of genesis and variance of the Vinaya texts within the (Mula)sarvastivada school.
• DFG Project „Die Stupa-Anlage von Kanaganahalli: kunstwissenschaftliche und religionsgeschichtliche Auswertung der Darstellungen auf dem rituellen Umschreitungsweg“ by Prof. Dr. Monika Zin and Robert Arlt (from February 2015 until the end of June 2019). The current application complements the first project and concludes the investigation of the sculptures from Kanaganahalli. The reliefs with which the lower part of the stupa was clad and which visitors saw up close when the stupa was transformed are being investigated. The images in this area do not depict narratives, but sacred sites associated with the Buddha legend. Incorporating symbols of Buddha presence and figures such as nagas and yaksas, it appears that a kind of "sacred geography" is visualized, which will be explored as part of the project. Friezes depicting scenes from the Buddha legend are found on the four projecting platforms, which were supplemented at the stupa by about 120 AD. These scenes, 32 in all, are important indicators of the mutual influence between Kanaganahalli and other art centres in Andhra Pradesh. Finally, the project includes the full-scale sculptures in the area of ritual intercourse, including the representations of the eight successive Buddhas with the inclusion of Maitreya, as well as the ornamental objects, in which the intensive exchange with non-Indian regions, especially Rome, can be demonstrated. The most striking example of this exchange, which flourished in the course of trade between the Satavahana empire and the Mediterranean region, is the depiction of the Buddhist wheel of the teachings with a lion's head hub of the kind known from Roman chariot wheels.
• DFG project „Das Ratnameghasūtra, eine Lehrrede des Mahāyāna-Buddhismus: Die Wiedergewinnung der verloren geglaubten Sanskrit-Fassung“/"The Ratnameghasūtra, a Mahāyāna Buddhist Doctrinal Discourse: Recovering the Sanskrit Version Believed Lost" by Dr H. Vinita Tseng (May 2016 to April 2019). The Ratnameghasūtra, "the doctrinal discourse (entitled) Jewel Cloud", is not one of the narrative sūtras of the Great Vehicle. Rather, it offers a comprehensive exposition of the bodhisattva's ideas and modes of action, which are systematically dealt with in the form of 101 questions of the Bodhisattva Sarvanīvaraṇaviṣkambhī and the corresponding answers of the Buddha. It has therefore been used remarkably widely as a canonical reference in the Mahāyāna commentary literature. It was translated into Chinese four times and also very early on into Tibetan, and in both cultures it has developed an additional history of influence. The Sanskrit manuscripts preserved in Tibet include on of the Ratnameghasūtra. A copy of it is in the China Tibetology Research Centre in Beijing. Quite surprisingly, this copy was made available to Dr Tseng in 2014, along with permission to publish the text. The aim of the project is to produce a critical edition of the Sanskrit text based on the (unfortunately incomplete) manuscript and in comparison with the translations into Chinese and Tibetan.
• DFG project "A Contribution to Buddhist Philosophy: New Sanskrit Fragments of the Yogācārabhūmi" by Dr. des. Jinkyoung Choi (2017-2019). The Yogācārabhūmi is the major work of one of the two great schools of Indian Mahāyāna Buddhism. It presents the philosophical foundations of this school and at the same time constitutes the longest Indian text on Buddhist contemplative practice. Traditionally it is attributed to a single author, but it is thought to be a compilation bringing together dogmatic developments from different periods. Precise dating is therefore difficult; the work was probably written around the middle of the first millennium AD. Only about half of it is preserved in the Indian original, and for studies of the dogmatics and practice of the Yogācāra, one had to rely on the translations into Chinese and Tibetan. In recent years, however, several leaves from Sanskrit manuscripts have come to light that belong to sections of the work once thought to be lost. Particularly surprising is a single leaf from an unknown commentary on the Viniścayasaṃgrahaṇī. The originals are in Kathmandu, Lhasa and St. Petersburg. The aim of the project is to edit and translate the new leaves, because the Sanskrit wording is indispensable for an understanding of the content and the underlying intellectual-historical developments, especially in a work like the Yogācārabhūmi, which is strongly dominated by technical terminology.