Author: Mariia Lepneva

We are excited to announce the next lecture in our ongoing “Gandhāra Corpora Project Lecture Series,” featuring Dr. Reinier Langelaar (IKGA, Austrian Academy of Sciences). The Gandhāra Corpora Project Lecture Series is organized by Prof. Charles DiSimone, leader of the ERC-funded project “Corpora in Greater Gandhāra: Tracing the development of Buddhist textuality and Gilgit/Bamiyan manuscript networks in the first millennium CE” at the Ghent Centre for Buddhist Studies.

Title: The Last Words of a God-King: A Corpus of Tibetan Buddhist Narrative Histories

Speaker: Dr. Reinier Langelaar (IKGA, Austrian Academy of Sciences)

Timing: Nov 25, 2025 @ 17.00 CET

Location: Faculteitszaal, Blandijn
Faculteit Letteren en Wijsbegeerte
Blandijnberg 2
9000 Gent

All are welcome. The Gandhāra Corpora Lecture Series is in-person and hybrid online. Please register for the series through this Google Form: https://forms.gle/TwffQCPuVipUpMvk6

Abstract:

This lecture will present a highly influential corpus of Buddhist historiographies, composed and expanded upon from perhaps the 12th c. CE onward. These works are attributed, as so-called ‘treasure texts,’ to the 7th-c. emperor Songtsen ‘the Profound’ (Tib. srong-btsan sgam-po), himself claimed to be an emanation of the bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara. This corpus constitutes a literary meeting ground for a series of pivotal developments in the realm of Tibetan Buddhist religion, political philosophy, and perceptions of Tibet and its people at large. Weaving compelling tales of Tibetan society’s history, it played a central role in formulating and propagating understandings of Tibet as a Buddhist realm under Avalokiteśvara’s special protection. Though eminently focused on Tibet, these works are also embedded in interregional webs of cultural exchange, potentially drawing inspiration from Indian sūtra literature, Newari Buddhism, Chinese and Khotanese notions of bodhisattva kingship, and more. This talk will introduce this body of works, discuss the particular text-historical and methodological challenges it presents, and show what we may hope to gain from its study.

Bio:

Reinier Langelaar is a researcher at the Institute for the Cultural and Intellectual History of Asia (IKGA) at the Austrian Academy of Sciences (AAS). His research interests include religious history, pre-modern ethnic identity, religious history, as well as kinship and genealogy. His work has employed historical, text-critical, ethnographic and comparative methods, and has appeared in journals such as Inner Asia, The Medieval History Journal, the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, and the Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies. At present, he is key researcher in the FWF-funded Cluster of Excellence ‘EurAsian Transformations.’ In 2025, he was awarded an ERC starting grant for the project FOUNT: ‘The Narrative Foundations of Tibetan Buddhism,’ to be hosted at the AAS (2026-31).

We are excited to announce the fourth lecture in our ongoing “Gandhāra Corpora Project Lecture Series,” featuring Professor Jessie Pons (Ruhr-Universität Bochum) and other esteemed guests! The Gandhāra Corpora Project Lecture Series is organized by Prof. Charles DiSimone, leader of the ERC-funded project “Corpora in Greater Gandhāra: Tracing the development of Buddhist textuality and Gilgit/Bamiyan manuscript networks in the first millennium CE” at the Ghent Centre for Buddhist Studies.

Title: Sustaining Digital Heritage Beyond Funding: Building on the DiGA Project

Speakers: Prof. Jessie Pons (CERES, Ruhr-Universität Bochum)

&co.:
Serena Autiero (Thammasat University, Bangkok), Frederik Elwert (CERES, Ruhr-Universität Bochum), Cristiano Moscatelli (Independent Researcher), Abdul Samad (KPDOAM)

Time: Nov 20, 2025 @ 17.00 CET

Location: Faculteitszaal, Blandijn
faculteit Letteren en Wijsbegeerte
Blandijnberg 2
9000 Gent

All are welcome. The Gandhāra Corpora Lecture Series is in-person and hybrid online. Please register for the series through this Google Form.

Abstract:
From 2021 to 2024, the DiGA project (“Digitization of Gandharan Artefacts: A project for the preservation and study of the Buddhist art from Pakistan”) documented a collection of approximately 1,500 Gandharan sculptures preserved at the Dir Museum in Chakdara, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Province (KP), Pakistan. These sculptures originated from a dozen archaeological sites in the Shah-kot/Talash zone (around present-day Chakdara), excavated by the Directorate of Archaeology and Museums, KP, and the Department of Archaeology at Peshawar University in the 1960s and 1970s. As one of the few Gandharan sculptural corpora with established archaeological provenance, this collection provides a solid foundation for reassessing key questions in Gandhara studies, particularly regarding the history of Buddhism on the right bank of Swat River. The database of the collection is now available on the heidICON platform, ready to lend itself to exciting research avenues.

With the project officially coming to an end, however, new questions emerge: how can such a project remain active and relevant beyond its institutional and financial framework? How can its data continue to be curated, enriched, and mobilized for research and public engagement once the funding period ends? This presentation will report some of the project’s activities in the post-funding phase. It will share results from recent research based on the DiGA corpus, sketch the outline of a research program building on the project’s legacy, and discuss ongoing initiatives with KPDOAM on community engagement. Ultimately, this talk invites reflection on the broader question of how digital heritage projects can evolve sustainably once their formal lifecycle has ended.

Bios:
Jessie Pons (CERES, Ruhr-Universität Bochum):
Jessie Pons is Professor for the History of South Asian Religions at the Center for Religions Studies at Ruhr-Universität Bochum. Trained as an art historian, Jessie Pons explores how religion and art intersect and how material objects shape religious communication, lived experiences, and scholarly interpretation.

Serena Autiero (Thammasat University, Bangkok):
Serena Autiero is an archaeologist and material culture historian. She is currently a researcher at Thammasat University. Her research interests include cultural exchange in Afroeurasia in pre-modern times, globalization studies, and a special focus on the Indian Ocean World. She authored several publications in international journals and co-edited Globalization and Transculturality from Antiquity to the Pre-Modern World for Routledge.

Frederik Elwert (CERES, Ruhr-Universität Bochum):
Frederik Elwert is associate professor at the Center for Religious Studies, Ruhr University Bochum. His background is in religious studies and sociology. He has applied digital humanities methodologies in different areas of the study of religions.

Cristiano Moscatelli (Independent Researcher):
Cristiano Moscatelli specialises in Gandharan studies. His research interests focus on Buddhist visual and material culture and on the interactions between Buddhism and local religious systems in the ancient north-western Indian subcontinent. In addition to his work with DiGA, he was a research fellow with the eartHeritage project – A cultural rescue initiative for earthen heritage, investigating clay and stucco Buddhist sculpture from Central Asia through the development of a digital database for the collection, preservation, and dissemination of archaeological data.

Abdul Samad (KPDOAM):
Abdul Samad is Secretary of Tourism, Culture, Archaeology and Museums, Government of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (KP) Pakistan as well as Director General of Archaeology & Museums KP. He has two decades of experience in South Asian archaeology, history, and culture, extensively exploring Pakistan’s rich heritage, focusing particularly on the Gandhara and Kalash civilizations. As the Director of the Directorate of Archaeology and Museums in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, he has led numerous initiatives to preserve and promote the cultural legacy of KP through national and international Projects.

We are delighted to announce that the fourth lecture in our ongoing “Gandhāra Corpora Project Lecture Series” will be delivered by Keiki Nakayama from the University of Leipzig. The lecture series is organized by Prof. Charles DiSimone, leader of the ERC-funded project “Corpora in Greater Gandhāra: Tracing the development of Buddhist textuality and Gilgit/Bamiyan manuscript networks in the first millennium CE” at the Ghent Centre for Buddhist Studies.

“Resituating the Yogācārabhūmi Corpus: Potential Gandhāran Links and Sūtra-Grounded Practice”

Keiki Nakayama, University of Leipzig

Nov 13, 2025 @ 17.00 CET

Location: Faculteitszaal, Blandijn
faculteit Letteren en Wijsbegeerte
Blandijnberg 2
9000 Gent

To attend remotely, please register through this Google Form.

Abstract:
The Yogācāra school, together with the Madhyamaka, is well known as one of the two major streams of Indian Mahāyāna Buddhism. Yet its foundational text, the Yogācārabhūmi, contains numerous passages that follow the modes of description characteristic of the Śrāvakayāna tradition. The author(s) of this work are thought to have belonged to a lineage that transmitted the Mūlasarvāstivāda Vinaya. Thus, while the Yogācārins were moving away from the Sarvāstivāda mainstream, they also inherited many of its scholastic and disciplinary elements.
The first part of this presentation reconsiders the position of the Yogācārabhūmi—and hence early Yogācāra—in relation to the Sarvāstivāda tradition. The Yogācāra school appears to have shared doctrinal affinities with internal Sarvāstivādin groups such as the Dārṣṭāntikas and Vibhajyavādins mentioned in the Mahāvibhāṣā. Focusing on the Gandhāra region, I examine evidence suggesting that the “Western Masters” (Pāścāttyas), associated with Gandhāra, held positions that coincide with those of the Yogācārabhūmi, thereby indicating possible intersections between Yogācāra and Gandhāran Buddhism.
Later but related materials include numerous Mūlasarvāstivāda Vinaya manuscripts discovered in Gilgit, part of Greater Gandhāra. These texts notably embed a variety of sūtras. If the sūtras employed in the Yogācārabhūmi correspond to those appeared in the Mūlasarvāstivāda Vinaya, this strengthens the view that the Yogācārabhūmi originated from a tradition closely linked to the transmitters of the Mūlasarvāstivāda Vinaya. The recently studied Dīrghāgama (Long Discourses) manuscripts from Gilgit also deserve attention.
The latter half of the talk examines how the Yogācārabhūmi actively incorporates and reinterprets sūtras within its structure of practice. Focusing on the Śrāvakabhūmi, the earliest stratum of the text, I argue that the Yogācāra school, though renowned as meditative practitioners, grounded their practice in close engagement with the words of the Buddha.

Bio
Keiki Nakayama is a guest researcher and lecturer at the Institute for South and Central Asian Studies, Leipzig University. Having recently fulfilled the requirements for a PhD at Kyoto University, he is currently conducting research on the interpretation of canonical scriptures within the Yogācāra school, supported since 2023 by the Bukkyō Dendō Kyōkai (BDK). His publications include a co-authored article with Jens-Uwe Hartmann, “One Hundred and Eight Distinctions of Craving: The Tṛṣṇā-sūtra of the Saṃyuktāgama,” in Mind, Text, and Reality in Buddhist Studies: Engaging the Scholarship of Rupert Gethin (Bloomsbury, 2025), and a co-authored monograph with Izumi Miyazaki et al., The Seventy-five Elements (Dharma) in the Madhyamakapañca-skandhaka, in Bauddhakośa: A Treasury of Buddhist Terms and Illustrative Sentences, Volume VIII (The International Institute for Buddhist Studies, 2022).

We are pleased to announce an upcoming lecture by Dr. Nishimura Akira (Associate Professor of Religious Studies, University of Tokyo), who has been a visiting scholar with us over the past two months. Dr. Nishimura’s talk will explore the complex intersections of war memorialization, repatriation of human remains, and the pivotal role played by temple communities in these processes—an issue of particular relevance to scholars of Buddhism and religion. He will also address the responsibilities and ethical engagement of religious scholars in such sensitive contemporary debates. The lecture will take place on Thursday, 23 October at 16:30 in the Faculty Room. All are warmly invited to attend.