Dear members, Professor Richard Salomon from the University of Washington is the holder of the 2016 University Buddhist Education Foundation (UBEF) Visiting Professorship in Buddhist Studies. As part of this Professorship, he will deliver a series of lectures titled, “Recovering the History of Indian Buddhism from Inscriptions”. Professor Salomon will also present a paper within the prestigious Sydney Ideas lecture program titled, "Twenty years and Counting: Reflections on the Study of the Oldest Buddhist Manuscripts". Details are given below. For a pdf brochure of these events, please click here. We hope you can attend some of this program. Kind regards, AABS Executive Lecture Series In his eight lectures, Professor Salomon will show how Buddhist inscriptions provide a fundamental tool for understanding the history of Buddhism in its native India from the time of Aśoka in the third century BC until the end of Buddhism in the 13th century AD. The thousands of Buddhist inscriptions in India bring to life Buddhism’s spread, institutionalization, and eventual decline over fifteen centuries in ways that literary texts rarely reveal to us. The lectures will focus on selected examples of particularly important or interesting documents, accompanied with illustrations of the inscriptions themselves and of their artistic and archaeological context. All lectures will take place between 10.30am and 12:00pm in room S325 of the Woolley Building at the University of Sydney Friday 2 September The beginning of Buddhist inscriptions: Emperor Aśoka’s great epigraphic experiment. Friday 9 September Starting over: Donations, images, and labels in the Śuṅga period (2nd-1st century BC). Friday 16 September Buddhism under the foreigners: The Śaka-Kuṣāṇa period. Part 1: Statues and inscriptions from the heartland. Friday 23 September Buddhism under the foreigners. Part 2: Relics and reliquary inscriptions from the northwest. Friday 7 October Buddhism beyond India: Buddhist communities and their inscriptions in the northern borderlands and beyond. Friday 14 October Buddhism in South India: The Buddha’s life and lives in stone. Tuesday 18 October The era of assimilation: Buddhist inscriptions of the Gupta and post-Gupta period. Friday 28 October The era of pilgrims: The last Buddhist inscriptions as testimony to the decline and disappearance of Buddhism in India. Sydney Ideas lecture Tuesday 20 September, 6.30-8pm Law School LT104, New Law School Annex, Eastern Avenue, University of Sydney Co-presented with the Buddhist Studies Program in the School of Languages and Cultures, the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, and the Australasian Association of Buddhist Studies Professor Salomon will present an overview of his experiences in studying the oldest manuscripts of Buddhism. These manuscripts, written on birch bark scrolls in the Gāndhārī language which was once spoken in what is now Pakistan and Afghanistan, date back as far as the first century BC.  Salomon has been leading their study since they first came to light in 1995 and is now preparing an anthology of translations from them intended for a broad audience. In this lecture, he will explain how the discovery and interpretation of these unique documents have transformed the study of ancient Buddhism. Free entry, registration required. For full details, registration and venue map, please click here. Richard Salomon is the William P. and Ruth Gerberding University Professor at the University of Washington (Seattle WA, USA), where he has taught for over 35 years in the Department of Asian Languages and Literature. His areas of expertise include Sanskrit language and literature, Indian Buddhist literature and history, Gandharan studies, and Indian epigraphy. He has also served as the Director of the University of Washington’s Early Buddhist Manuscripts Project since its inception in 1996. This project oversees the study, publication, and translation of the oldest surviving Buddhist manuscripts, dating back as early as the first century BC. Professor Salomon’s books include Indian Epigraphy: A Guide to the Study of Inscriptions in Sanskrit, Prakrit, and the Other Indo-Aryan Languages; Ancient Buddhist Scrolls from Gandhāra: The British Library Kharoṣṭhī Fragments; A Gāndhārī Version of the Rhinoceros Sūtra; and Two Gāndhārī Manuscripts of the Songs of Lake Anavatapta. He also currently serves as the President of the International Association of Buddhist Studies. UBEF Visiting Professor of Buddhist Studies Richard Salomon is the 6th holder of the University Buddhist Education Foundation (UBEF) Visiting Professorship in Buddhist Studies. This Professorship was established at the University of Sydney in 2009 through the generosity of the UBEF for the purpose of sponsoring an extended visit to Sydney of a distinguished international scholar in any field of Buddhist Studies in order to expose students and academics to current trends in research and to raise the profile of Buddhist Studies in Australia. It is administered by the Department of Indian Sub-continental Studies in the School of Languages and Cultures. Gold leaf covered schist reliquary in the form of a stupa.  Kusana period, North Western India. National Museum, Karachi, Pakistan. Copyright: Huntington, John C. and Susan L.Huntington Archive