Richard Salomon: "Retrieving the Buddhist Canon at Bamiyan"

Abstract:

Bamiyan, Afghanistan, best known as the site of the enormous Buddha statues destroyed by the Taliban in 2001, was also the source of thousands of fragments of Buddhist manuscripts, many of which were rescued and are now being studied by Buddhist scholars around the world. Among them are some twenty-five fragments of an early manuscript in the Gāndhārī language of one of the fundamental collections of Buddhist sūtras, the Ekottarikāgama. Professor Salomon’s lecture will describe the process of discovery, reconstruction, translation and interpretation of this manuscript, and its importance for the our understanding of Buddhist history and literature. 

Bio:

Richard Salomon (PhD, Sanskrit, University of Pennsylvania 1975) is Professor of Sanskrit in the Department of Asian Languages and Literature, University of Washington, and director of the University of Washington Early Buddhist Manuscripts Project. His research areas include Sanskrit and Prakrit literature, Indian Buddhist literature, Indian epigraphy and paleography, early Indian history, and Gandhāran studies, particularly Buddhist manuscripts and inscriptions in Gāndhārī. He is the author of five books and numerous articles in these areas, including Indian Epigraphy (1998) and Two Gāndhārī Manuscripts of the Songs of Lake Anavatapta(2008).

Evans-Wentz Lecture XXXIX. Co-sponsored by the Department of Religious Studies, the Silk Road Foundation, and the Stanford Humanities Center