Max Deeg, Cardiff University
| DATE: | Thursday, September 20, 2007 |
|---|---|
| TIME: | 5:00 PM |
| PLACE: | IEAS Conference Room, 2223 Fulton Street, 6th Floor |
| FORMAT: | Colloquium |
| SPONSORS: | Center for Buddhist Studies |
Due to the scarce textual material for the study of the history of Indian Buddhism, the travel accounts of the Chinese pilgrims, especially Xuanzang's text, the Xiyu-ji, "Records of the Western world," have attracted the attention of scholars working in fields such as archaeology, history of arts, history of religion (especially Buddhism) and history in general, etc. Consequently, there is almost no book written on Indian Buddhism of the first millennium C.E. that does not refer to the pilgrims' reports. These texts have not, however, been studied in a sufficiently comparative and critical way by Western scholars and were not adequately contextualized in relation to information which we have from Indian Buddhist literature, archaeology and history of arts. Nor were they read as a specific genre of Chinese literature. Without taking this kind of research into account it is not possible to draw sound conclusions as to whether the pieces of information related in these texts reflect a historical reality – that is to say "places seen" – or whether they were moulded according to certain patterns of inner-Buddhist or inter- or innercultural topoi. This lecture explores one example where it can be shown that Xuanzang, in his Xiyu-ji, construed a complete description of an Indian region, Mathurā, probably without having travelled there and solely on the basis of information available to him in Chinese Buddhist texts. It will be argued that this was not for reasons of forging evidence but as a consequence of the very purpose of the text, written, as it was, for the Chinese emperor in order to provide a complete overview of Buddhist India.
Max Deeg is Senior Lecturer in Buddhist Studies at Cardiff University in Wales. He received his Ph.D. in Indian Studies and his Habilitation (professoral degree) in Religious Studies from the University of Würzburg. He taught German in Taiwan and Japan before joining the Religious Studies faculty at the University of Vienna from 2002-2005. His most recent publication is a German translation of Kumārajīva's Lotussutra.
