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Subject: H-Buddhism daily digest: 4 new items have been posted
Subject: H-Buddhism daily digest: 4 new items have been posted
New items have been posted in H-Buddhism.
Table of Contents
- Re: QUERY> 琉璃: lapis lazuli, beryl, or something else?
- Re: QUERY> 琉璃: lapis lazuli, beryl, or something else?
- ONLINE EVENT > UKABS 2020 summer conference online: 2 July
- Re: QUERY> 琉璃: lapis lazuli, beryl, or something else?
Re: QUERY> 琉璃: lapis lazuli, beryl, or something else?
by Bryan Lowe
Dear All,Thank you for your help with my translation question. I received a number of comments off list, as well as some references. I thought it might be useful to summarize these in one place for the benefit of others. In addition to those who responded publicly, I would especially like to thank Eric Huntington, Adeana McNicholl, Sam Morse, Janine Nicol, Dessi Vendova, and others who have asked to remain anonymous.
To start with a summary, it seems that in the Indic context, there are strong reasons to translate the term as beryl, though I’m still not entirely convinced that this is always the case there and does not seem to be the case for East Asia. It should be noted that aquamarine, which Michel proposed, is, of course, a form of beryl, but it has advantages in being a more specific form that does fit some of the particularly East Asian connotations, especially with regards to color.
So why beryl in South Asia? One reason given is etymological, as Diego discussed. It should be noted that there is some debate about this as described by Master and others. It’s beyond my expertise, but the etymological claims seem reasonable but somewhat contested.
Next is the issue of translucency, which several people brought up and is a feature that appears in a number of canonical descriptions including most crucially those related to the Medicine Buddha. This quality would seem to point to beryl, but I think it’s worth noting that certain forms of lapis lazuli and lazurite crystals can be semitranslucent, as Sam and other informed me (also see the GIA’s description, which confirms its semitranslucence: https://www.gia.edu/lapis-lazuli-description-v1 ). A lot of the philological scholarship states that lapis lazuli is opaque, but this really seems to be a mistake that needs to be revised. Beryl is, of course, more likely to be translucent, but we are now speaking about matter of degree rather than absolutes. For this reason, I don’t think the references to the translucency of the material in primary sources can entirely rule out lapis lazuli/lazurite.
Another issue is color. Master argues that the variety of color mentioned in Indic sources is evidence of beryl, as beryl can cover a range of colors. At the same time, as I’ll not below, it does seem to become strongly associated with blue in other contexts (most importantly for me: Japan). Interestingly, according to Biswas, the color of beryl is a result of impurity, which technically I suppose makes the line in the Yaoshi liuliguang benyuan jing that the body is like liuli in being both clear inside and out and pure lacking defilement impossible. Of course, I wouldn’t expect such a scientific understanding from our authors.
Taking all of that together, I think the evidence is still seems somewhat inconclusive, but beryl does seem like the most accurate choice for most Indic materials.
But in East Asia, it seems to be a different story from what I can tell. Dessi pointed out to me that the meaning in South Asia might be more narrow than that of China, where it refers to a whole range of objects (as confirmed in the Yu Xin piece). Winder and others discuss how lapis lazuli was considered an exceptionally rare substance in China and that rarity was a key feature of how liuli was understood (more on that below). But as Yu Xin writes, it also seems to have often been used to refer to any colored, translucent gem and also was used to refer to glass objects.
In many cases, it does not necessarily need to be a single color (as the various colored liuli/ruri objects in the Shōsōin attests), but it does seem to have especially strong connections to blue, which I suspect is why it is often translated as lapis lazuli in English. As I pointed out in my original post, those Shōsōin objects without a color labeled are all a deep blue.
Since I’m dealing with a ninth-century Japanese manuscript, I find the following evidence from a Japanese dictionary produced in the 930s to be especially helpful, which I came across after posting my question. The citation in this text, the Wamyō ruiju shō in ten scrolls, emphasizes that it is a blue colored jewellike object (瑠璃 野王案瑠璃〈流離二音 俗云留利〉青色而如玉者也). Here, it is clear that the main characteristic that defines the term is its color: blue (recognizing of course that 青 ranges from green to blue).
But these associations with blue appear in earlier sources as well. Miyajima Junko has pointed out a few examples. In the 起世經, we have the following description of the southern face of Mount Sumeru being made of heavenly blue liuli.
T0024.1.311b18南面天青琉璃所成。
And in the Tang-dynasty 一切経音義, we have a definition of the term liuli, which defines it as a blue jewel and differentiates between the true liuli, which comes from abroad and is difficult to attain, and a provisional domestic version, which seems to be glass.
T2128.54.418c4 琉璃，青色宝也。有仮有真，真者難得，出外国。仮者即此国錬石作之，染為五色也
These dictionary examples seem to suggest that color not substance is the main distinguishing feature, which is a point that I feel cannot be ignored when translating this term in an East Asian context.
It’s also useful to note that as Sam pointed out to me lazurite is often ground and used in pigments and painting and as such was more wideley applied than beryl. I’d be curious if lazurite pigments are ever used in paintings of the Medicine Buddha in East Asia.
Given the temporal and geographic proximity of these dictionary references to my manuscript, I’m thinking of simply translating the realm as “Yakushi’s Blue Jewel Pure Land,” though this translation is perhaps more of a paraphrase than a translation of “ruri” and is still too specific for the dictionary definitions. Others have suggested I just leave the Japanese word “ruri” as is, but I’m genuinely reluctant to adopt this strategy for a number of pragmatic and philosophical reasons that would take us far afield.
There are also some methodological issues worth considering. Sam and others also raised the issue of whether we should assume that our authors even had an in-depth understanding of the differences between various gems and whether those would map onto our modern scientific categories. I think this is an important and underappreciated point. It’s not clear to me why we should assume such consistency; would monks and other authors of texts of texts really be able to distinguish all of the various substances? As translators, is it an imposition to use rigid modern classifications?
I also should confess that I wasn’t able to consult one source recommended to me by Janine due to the ongoing pandemic and library closures: Xinru Liu's Ancient India and Ancient China: Trade and Religious Exchanges AD 1-600, which seems to have a detailed discussion of this topic that I hope to return to.
Finally, there’s the issue of other gems, which came up in some personal replies. It’s outside of my original question and beyond my expertise, but as Sam noted, 瑪瑙 also seems to pose problems since agate seems standard and DDB gives cornelian and agate, but Yu Xin translates it as emerald.
I really appreciate all of the advice and information. It’s been a lot of reading for a minor issue in my project (a sentence or two at most), but I’ve enjoyed learning about it and hope others will find utility despite my long-windedness. I’ve put an incomplete bibliography below my signature for anyone wanting to dig deeper.
Sincerely,
Bryan
Here’s a brief bibliography (not exhaustive):
Birnbaum, Raoul. 1979. The Healing Buddha. Boulder : Shambhala.
Biswas, ArunKumar. 1994. "Vaidūrya, Marakata and other beryl family gem minerals: etymology and traditions in ancient India." Indian Journal of History of Science 29.2: 139-154.
Liu, Xinru. 1988. Ancient India and Ancient China: Trade and Religious Exchanges AD 1-600. Oxford University Press.
Master, Alfred. 1944. “Indo-Aryan and Dravidian.” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London 11 (2): 297–307.
Miyajima Junko. 2008. "Kan'yaku Butten ni okeru hon'yakugo no 'hari' seiritsu 漢訳仏典における翻訳語「頗梨」の成立." Higashi ajia bunka kōshō kenkyū 東アジア文化交渉研究 1:365–380.
Winder, Marianne. 2001. “Vaiḍūrya.” In Studies on Indian Medical History, 85–94. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass.
Yu Xin. 2018. “Liuli in Buddhist Rituals and Art in Medieval China.” Hualin International Journal of Buddhist Studies 1.2: 231–268; https://dx.doi.org/10.15239/hijbs.01.02.09
Re: QUERY> 琉璃: lapis lazuli, beryl, or something else?
by Diego Loukota
This is a wonderfully useful summary, thank you Bryan. I think it comes closest to shaping or informing consensus rather than finding what that (chimeric) consensus is. And this brings me to a related issue. May I humbly suggest that those who replied off-list consider doing so on-list in the future? In this case Bryan took the trouble to provide a complete overview with bibliography, but I was personally eager to see what other people's views were, and had it not been for that, I would not have known!
namaskaromi,
Diego
ONLINE EVENT > UKABS 2020 summer conference online: 2 July
by Emanuela Sala
Dear colleagues,
As many of you will know, we at UKABS sadly had to cancel our
Manchester conference for July 2-3. However, we have decided to hold a
summer conference online, as a one-day special event on July 2nd,
where we will showcase brilliant postgraduate scholarship from institutions
across the world. We look forward to seeing many of you. You can find a full
programme for the event below, and one with abstracts on our Eventbrite page. Please note that the times given are GMT.
Unfortunately we are experiencing technical issues with our
website, and we are unable to upload an event programme there for the time
being. We are sorry for this inconvenience, and encourage you to share this
post with those who might be interested.
The conference will use the virtual meeting app Zoom
Please note that
registration is required. To register, click on this link, which will lead you to our Eventbrite booking
page. A link to the Zoom chat will be sent to the registered participants,
along with a password, before the event.
Our conference is completely
free, but consider making a donation or becoming a member of
our association.
Please note that tickets for this event are limited. We
invite you to book mindfully. If you have booked a place but find yourself
unable to attend, consider releasing your ticket to make it available for
others.
We hope to see many of you soon!
On behalf of the UKABS committee,
Emanuela Sala (Postgraduate students representative)
We are on Twitter! Follow us at @U_K_A_B_S
For membership enquiries, please contact Rhonwen Sawyer at Rhonwen_Sayer@attglobal.net
For general enquiries, please contact our secretary, Koko
Kawanami, at h.kawanami@lancaster.ac.uk
Postgraduate students can contact our Postgraduate student
representative, Emanuela Sala, at 633905@soas.ac.uk
---------------------------------------
UK Association for Buddhist Studies
Summer online Conference 2020
Thursday 2 July 2020
Via ZOOM
9:45 - 10:10
Welcome –
Cathy Cantwell
Remembering Professor Karel Werner – Peter Harvey
Remembering
Professor Stefano Zacchetti – Christopher Jones
Morning Session 1: Contemporary Buddhism and
Globalisation – Nick Swann (chair)
10:10 -10:30
am Engaged Buddhism and
Global Culture: Key Features of a Cross-Yānic and Transnational Social
Philosophy – Manu Ato-Carrera (SOAS, London)
10:30 -10:50 am A
New Frontier for Buddhism: Conceptual Relocation Within Western Science –
Stephen Gene Morris (University of Kent)
10:50 -11:10 am
Break
Morning Session 2: Ancient and Medieval
Encounters within the Buddhist World – Janine Nicol (chair)
11:10 - 11:30 am Journeying
to the West: The Image of the Western Regions in Shi Huijiao’s Biographies of
Eminent Monks – Edward A. S. Ross (University of Reading)
11:30 - 11:50 am Internal
Politics or International Conspiracies? Buddhist Identities of Deities in
Medieval Japan – Emanuela Sala (SOAS, London)
11:50 - 12:45 pm Lunch
Break
12:45 - 2:00 pm
AGM
Afternoon Session: Chinese, Sanskrit and
Textual Studies – Rhonwen Sawyer (chair)
2:00 - 2:20
pm Language
Contact and Grammatical Interference: Determining the Theoretical Framework for
the Linguistic Analysis of Chinese Buddhist Translations – Francesco Barchi
(Ludwing Maximilian Universität Munich, Germany)
2:20 - 2:40
pm Reconstructing
A 9th-century Chinese-Sanskrit Manuscript in Edo Japan – Diana Shuheng
Zhang (University of Pennsylvania, USA)
2:40 - 3:00
Break
Late Afternoon Session: Contemporary Buddhism and
Identity – Gregory Scott (chair)
3:00 - 3:20 pm
The Importance of Patriarchal Lineage and its Literary and Symbolic Expression
in Korean Ch’ŏnt’ae Buddhism – Yohong Roh (Temple University, USA)
3:20 - 3:40 pm
The Gendered Aspect of Sŏn (Korean Zen) Rhetoric in Europe and Other
Accommodations – John Ó Laoidh (National University of Ireland, Maynooth,
Republic of Ireland)
3:40 - 4:00
pm The
Movement of Holiness and The Visual Analysis: The Four Faced Buddha in the
Temples of Kuan-yin in Southern Vietnam – Yunxia Wu (Lancaster University)
4:00 - 4:15 pm
Break
4:15 - 5:00
pm Open
Discussion chaired by Peter Harvey
5:00 pm
End of Conference
Please register for the UKABS Conference:
The conference
will use the virtual meeting app Zoom
Please note that registration
is required. To register, click on this link,
which will lead you to our Eventbrite booking page. A link to the Zoom chat
will be sent to the registered participants, along with a password, before the
event.
The conference is completely free, but consider making a donation
or becoming a member
of our association. Both would help us immensely with running
UKABS.
Re: QUERY> 琉璃: lapis lazuli, beryl, or something else?
by Michel Mohr
Hi everyone,First, let me apologize for the typos in my previous post. To the editors > Is there any way to fix this retrospectively? [Ed. Note: Unfortunately we are unable to edit posts once they have been published. Authors may issue corrective posts afterward.]
I also received a few interesting comments offline, pointing to fascinating routes of transmission beyond the simplified India-China version. It includes South-East Asia, and Cambodia in particular. Here is one of such resources:
Woodward, Hiram. 2011. Cambodian Images of Bhaisajyaguru. In Khmer Bronzes: New Interpretations of the Past, eds. Emma C. Bunker, and Douglas Latchford, 497--502. Chicago: Art Media Resources.
One suggestion that has not been discussed yet is that of "cat's eye" for vaiḍūrya. This was suggested more than a century ago by Louis Finot in his Les lapidaires indiens (Paris, 1896, pp. xlv-xlvi). I am indebted to Hiram Woodward for this reference. The problem with this translation is that it sounds a bit odd when translating the Chinese sutra’s title (藥師琉璃光如來本願功德經). Here would be the two variants:
Sutra on the Merits of the Original Vows by the Healing Master, Tathagata of Aquamarine Radiance
Sutra on the Merits of the Original Vows by the Healing Master, Tathagata of Cat’s Eye Radiance
In any case, I am aware that aquamarine is one type of beryl, mostly the greenish-blue to blue variety. It seems to make sense in terms of its association with the Medicine Buddha, often depicted in blue. Here, possible links with Śiva (also called Blue throat or Nīlakaṇtha because he drank poison) and Kṛṣṇa (who also evokes black or deep blue) would be worth exploring.
Regarding the depiction of this substance in the Pāli Canon, Bhikkhu Bodhi provides a convincing explanation:
“Just as a beryl gem—beautiful, of fine quality, eight-faceted, of excellent workmanship—when placed on a brocade cloth, shines and beams and radiates, so too the young devas in Susīma’s assembly... displayed diverse lustrous colours.”
Bodhi. 2000. The Connected Discourses of the Buddha: A Translation of the Saṃyutta Nikāya. Translated by Bhikkhu Bodhi. Somerville, MA: Wisdom Publications, p. 160. He adds: This “eight-faceted beryl gem (Pāli veḷuriya)” is meant to evoke the Eightfold Path. Technically, it probably refers to chrysoberyl.
This nevertheless leaves us, as Bryan pointed out, with a dilemma regarding the new life it took in East Asia. Essentially, it seems linked to the fact that early Buddhist translators tried to match this substance with a gem known in their native language(s). Let me provide one example below, in a pretty obscure text (clarifications welcome).
Pre-Buddhist Textual Sources
The usage of the term liúlí 瑠璃 predates the transmission of Buddhism to China, as indicated by a passage in the Yantielun 鹽鐵論 (Debates on salt and iron), which consists of discussions on the state monopoly of these two items during the Former Han period 前漢 (206 BCE–8 CE). The author is Huan Kuan 桓寬. See paragraph 3 of the second section titled “Ligeng 力耕” (Hold fast the plough):
夫中國一端之縵，得匈奴累金之物，而損敵國之用。是以騾驢馲駝，銜尾入塞，驒騱騵馬，盡為我畜，鼲貂狐貉，采旃文罽，充於內府，而璧玉珊瑚琉璃，咸為國之寶。
https://ctext.org/yan-tie-lun/li-geng?searchu=%E7%90%89%E7%92%83&searchmode=showall#result (accessed February 25, 2020).
This passage provides a list of three precious substances bìyù 璧玉 (round pieces of jade), coral (shānhú 珊瑚), and beryl (?) (liúli 琉璃) used by the Xiongnu 匈奴 people, all considered as their nation’s treasures (咸為國之寶).
Issues revolving around liúli 琉璃 are, indeed, conducive to wonderful forays into cross-cultural studies and comparative linguistics. Maybe this precious substance could warrant a panel in one of our field's conferences, once they resume?
Best,
Michel Mohr, University of Hawaii at Manoa
