Table of Contents
- CONFERENCE> "Buddhist Statecraft in East Asia: A Conference of Storytellers"
- NEW BOOK> Boris Oguibénine. A Descriptive Grammar of Buddhist Sanskrit. The language of the Textual Tradition of the Mahāsāṃghika-Lokottoravādins.
- CFS> Indica et Buddhica -- Author and editor book proposals
CONFERENCE> "Buddhist Statecraft in East Asia: A Conference of Storytellers"
by Stephanie
Balkwill
This conference will take place at the University of Southern California
from Feb. 10-12, 2017 and will bring together twenty-five scholars from Canada,
the US, China, Korea, Taiwan, Japan and Vietnam in order to engage in an
interdisciplinary and comparative study of Buddhist statecraft, which will
include historians, anthropologists, textual scholars, and art historians.
Through the medium of storytelling, the paper presenters will explore how
Buddhism has been an important means of securing imperial legitimation and
political power, as well as an effective partner in the running of a state,
since its arrival in China in the third century of the Common Era and
subsequent spread to the rest of East Asia. As such, the conference will also
illuminate, explore, and challenge the role that Chinese culture has played in
the development of East Asian political and religious systems in general.For more information and to register, please visit the conference webpage: https://dornsife.usc.edu/religion/buddhist-statecraft-in-east-asia/
NEW BOOK> Boris Oguibénine. A Descriptive Grammar of Buddhist Sanskrit. The language of the Textual Tradition of the Mahāsāṃghika-Lokottoravādins.
by Richard Mahoney
Dear friends and colleagues,I am delighted to announce that a new book on Buddhist Sanskrit has just been published:
Boris Oguibénine. A Descriptive Grammar of Buddhist Sanskrit. The language of the Textual Tradition of the Mahāsāṃghika-Lokottoravādins. General Introduction. Sound Patterns. Sandhi Patterns (484 pp.), 2016. Journal of Indo-European Studies Monograph 64, Institute for the Study of Man, Washington DC.
ISBN Hardback: 978-0-9983669-0-6
ISBN Paperback: 978-0-9983669-1-3
Summary
This book is the first detailed description of the phonetics of Buddhist Sanskrit as shown in the textual tradition of the Buddhist sect known as Mahāsāṃghika-Lokottoravādins. The texts use the language which undoubtedly bears the marks of Middle Indian influence, mostly of Pāli. However, as widely recognized, this language is not identical with Pāli or any other Middle Indian dialect. F. Edgerton’s pioneer grammar of this language (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1953), which he called “Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit” allows only a limited space to its phonetics. The present book contains an analysis of the phonetic evidence of all available texts of the Mahāsāṃghika-Lokottoravādins. Several of them have been published after Edgerton’s demise, and their data had necessarily to be incorporated in our analysis.
Special emphasis is made on the fact that this language does not owe its shape to either Middle Indian dialect, but is a language on its own, with its own peculiar structural constraints and features.
Particularly, to account for its mixed nature, all occurrences of sound and their sequences are thoroughly examined with special attention to the alternations taking place within the texts and their layers, probably pointing to the language habits of the speakers of different Middle Indian dialects, which contributed to the production of the textual tradition that stood in the midway between Hīnayāna’s and Mahāyāna’s texts.
The intricate problem of sandhi patterns is also given much attention as it is generally believed that these patterns were subject to no constraints whatsoever.
This volume on the phonetics should be followed by further volumes dedicated to morphological and syntactic patterns of this language.
Regards and best wishes for the New Year,
Boris OGUIBENINE, Professor (rtd.)
University of Strasbourg
France
CFS> Indica et Buddhica -- Author and editor book proposals
by Richard Mahoney
Dear Colleagues,Indica et Buddhica is now publishing monographs, critical editions and
edited volumes in classical Indian and Buddhist Studies. We would be
pleased to receive proposals for print and ebook projects.
If you have begun working on a project then we would suggest that you
send a publication proposal as early as possible. Even if your work is
already well progressed a proposal will still help in the evaluation.
Further details, including proposal forms, are available on this page:
Indica et Buddhica -- Author guidelines
http://indica-et-buddhica.org/academic-author
With best regards,
Richard
--
Richard Mahoney
Littledene Bay Road Oxford New Zealand
+64-3-312-1699 r.mahoney@indica-et-buddhica.org
