Prof. Dr. Jonathan Silk

Jonathan Silk is professor in the study of Buddhism at Leiden University, and Guest Professor at LMU (from January 2025, for a period of 5 years). He directs the ERC-funded Advanced Grant “Buddhism’s Early Spread to Tibet” (BEST).

A scholar of Buddhist traditions, Silk studied in the United States at Oberlin College and the University of Michigan, and in Japan at Kyoto and Ryū­koku Universities. His work primarily focuses on Indian Buddhism and its sources preserved in Chinese and Tibetan translations, as well as on the interaction of Chinese and Tibetan Buddhisms, with particular attention to Mahāyāna sūtras and their translations into Chinese and Tibetan. His monographic publications include Buddhist Cosmic Unity (2015), Riven by Lust: Incest and Schism in Indian Buddhist Legend and Historiography (2008), and Managing Monks: Administrators and Administrative Roles in Indian Buddhist Monasticism (2008), in all 6 books, 10 edited volumes, and more than 75 scholarly papers, as well as numerous book reviews and other contributions.
He taught at Grinnell College, Western Michigan University, Yale and UCLA, before joining the faculty of Leiden University in 2007, and LMU in 2025. He works in a variety of languages, chiefly Sanskrit, Classical Chinese and Tibetan, and makes free use of the riches of scholarship in modern Japanese. Long-serving co-Editor-in-Chief of the flagship Indo-Iranian Journal, he is the founding editor of Brill’s Encyclo­pedia of Buddhism. He was awarded a VICI grant from the NWO (Dutch National Science Foundation) in 2010, and an earlier European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant in 2017. In 2016 he was elected as a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen [KNAW]).

• Professional Memberships and Service (actual active service only):

Founding Editor-in-chief, Brill’s Encyclopedia of Buddhism.
Co-Editor-in-Chief, Indo-Iranian Journal, 2008–.
Editorial Board Member, Gonda Indological Studies. 2010–.
Editorial Board Member, University of Vienna Arbeitskreis für Tibetische und Buddhistische Studien series Wiener Studien zur Tibetologie und Buddhismuskunde, 2013–.
Editorial Board Member, University of Hawaii Press Pure Land Buddhist Studies series.
English consultant for the Japanese Association of Indian and Buddhist Studies, 1990–.
Member: International Association of Buddhist Studies; Pali Text Society; Japanese
Association of Indian and Buddhist Studies; International Association of Tibetan
Studies.

• Books and Monographs (authored):

2016 : Materials Toward the Study of Vasubandhu’s Viṁśikā (I): Sanskrit and Tibetan Critical Editions of the Verses and Autocommentary; An English Translation and Annotations. Harvard Oriental Series 81 (Cambridge MA: Department of South Asian Studies, Harvard University).

2015 : Buddhist Cosmic Unity: An Edition, Translation and Study of the Anūnatvāpūrṇatvanirdeśaparivarta. Hamburg Buddhist Studies 4 (Hamburg: Hamburg University Press).

2008b : Riven by Lust: Incest and Schism in Indian Buddhist Legend and Historiography (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press).
Long listed for the International Convention of Asian Scholars Book Prize 2011 (Humanities).

2008a : Managing Monks: Administrators and Administrative Roles in Indian Buddhist Monasticism. (New York: Oxford University Press).

2006 : Body Language: Indic Śarīra and Chinese shèlì in the Mahāparinirvāṇa-sūtra and Saddharmapuṇḍarīka. Studia Philologica Buddhica Monograph Series XIX (Tokyo: The International Institute for Buddhist Studies).

1994 : The Heart Sutra in Tibetan: A Critical Edition of the Two Recensions Contained in the Kanjur. Wiener Studien zur Tibetologie und Buddhismus Kunde 34 (Vienna: Arbeitskreis für Tibetische und Buddhistische Studien, Universität Wien).