Dear colleagues,

we are pleased to announce a new OA publication


Studies on Buddhist Monastic Cultures
German-Japanese Collaboration. 

Eds. Annette Schmiedchen, Petra Kieffer-Pülz, Taiken Kyuma
In collaboration with Satoshi Ogura

Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz 2025

Asien- und Afrika-Studien der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, 68.

https://www.harrassowitz-verlag.de/titel_8564.ahtml 
<https://www.harrassowitz-verlag.de/titel_8564.ahtml>


Studies on Buddhist Monastic Cultures is based on an online lecture series 
organised by the former Indology Department of Martin Luther University 
Halle-Wittenberg, Germany and the Japanese Vihāra Project, supported by the 
Japanese Society of the Promotion of Science in 2021 and 2022. 

Of the three contributions included in this volume, two address the terminology 
for Buddhist monasteries and nunneries in the early and middle phases of 
Buddhism in India and Sri Lanka. Petra Kieffer-Pülz investigates the terms 
vihāra, ārāma, and āvāsa in the Buddhist Pāli literature from its origins to 
around the 5th/6th centuries CE, focusing on the terminological shifts between 
the early and later texts and showing that many elements of monastic complexes 
were not yet mentioned in the earliest writings. Annette Schmiedchen examines 
the terms vihara, mahāvihāra, and vihāramaṇḍala in Sanskrit epigraphy from Late 
Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages in various Indian regions, especially 
Gujarat, Bengal and Andhra Pradesh, and explains the implications of these 
terminological differences. The third contribution by Shin’ichirō Hori focuses 
on the evidence for Buddhist monasticism in the phase of its decline in India. 
Based on dated colophons of Sanskrit manuscripts in Old Bengali script, Hori 
reveals that despite the widespread disappearance of Buddhism in India by the 
13th century CE, Buddhist institutions still persisted in rural areas in Bihar 
until the mid-15th century CE.

Best,
Petra Kieffer-Pülz

*********************


Email: [email protected]






_______________________________________________
INDOLOGY mailing list
[email protected]
https://list.indology.info/mailman/listinfo/indology

Reply via email to