Journal articles on the topic 'Avadānas'

This essay begins with a brief discussion of the marginalization of demonology in the study of both Indian Buddhist traditions and Āyurvedic medicine. Unlike the study of Buddhist traditions in other geographic regions, there has been relatively little scholarship on the dialogue between Indian Buddhist communities and the localized spirit deity cults with which they have interacted for more than two millennia. The modern study of Āyurverda, with few exceptions, demonstrates a similar trend in the marginalization of bhūtavidyā, or demonology, which has constituted a legitimate branch of Āyurvedic medicine from at least the time that the earliest Āyurvedic compendium, the Carakasaṃhitā, was composed. This essay argues that this lack of proper attention to Indian Buddhist and Āyurvedic medical demonology is symptomatic of a broader, persistent bias in the human sciences. The essay then examines a handful of stories from the Karmaśataka, a collection of Buddhist avadānas, to argue that certain Buddhist communities may have held their own biases against systems of medical demonology, albeit for entirely different reasons. The balance of this essay then concludes with an analysis of The Sūtra of the Seven Buddhas that presents this work as an example of Buddhist medical demonology.

This article provides information about the Tocharian B collection of the IOM RAS. It is a unique collection of Tocharian B manuscripts in Russia. It includes 87 wooden tablets and 383 manuscript fragments. Due to historical circumstances, the collection was not put into scholarly circulation. Only a few manuscripts have been introduced to the academic community, although it would be hard to overestimate the importance of this collection for knowledge of Tocharian palaeography and literature. The St Petersburg collection includes manuscript fragments from all the Tarim sites where traces of the Tocharians were found. Moreover, they are varied in scripts and content. There are fragments in archaic, middle, and late forms of the so-called “North Turkestan Brāhmī” script in their calligraphic and cursive variations. Buddhist texts are most numerous in terms of content. They include jātakas and avadānas, Āgama-related texts, Abhidharma and Vinaya texts, stotras, and other Hīnayāna and Mahāyāna texts. The collection of documents on paper and wooden tablets is of special attractiveness as some of the paper documents are complete folios. The article is mainly dedicated to the formation of the collection. It also summarizes research already done to introduce the manuscripts to the academic community. The references also provide a complete list of publications of the collection materials.

Abstract In Ogihara’s edition of the Tocharian B so-called “Avadāna-Manuscript”, a fragment from the Dhanika-Avadāna contains a word santse. On the basis of parallel texts, it is shown that santse means ‘daughter-in-law’. This newly identified word is cognate with a.o. Greek νυός ‘daughter-in-law’ and derives from Proto-Indo- European *snusó-.

Introduction. The Sumagadha-Avadāna (‘Avadāna of Sumagadha’) is often mentioned in Oriental studies, including works on the history of classical Mongolian literature examining writings of Indo-Tibetan origin. This text is included in both the Tibetan- and Mongolian-language canonical Kangyur (Kanjur) editions. Despite frequent references, the former has neither been translated into Russian, nor there are any descriptions of its structure and content. Goals. So, the article attempts to fill the gap and aims at considering the narrative about Sayin Magada through the analysis of The Legend of Sayin Magada (Mong. Sayin Magada-yin domuγ), the latter being integral to the canonical collection of Kanjur in Mongolian. The work explores the text, describes its genre characteristics, identifies its structure, reveals contents, and investigates data contained in the colophon. Materials. The study focuses on the text titled ‘Sayin Magada-yin domuγ-i ögülegči kemekü’ (‘[Sutra] Narrating the Legend of Sayin Magada’) from the Eldeb (‘Collection of Sutras’) section of the Mongolian Kanjur (vol. 91). Results. The textual and content analysis of works by Tibetologists, Mongolists, and Sinologists dealing with writings of the avadāna genre included in the canon makes it possible to reveal key characteristics of the genre, describe the structure of the Mongolian text, and outline its content.

Introduction. The Sumagadha-Avadāna (‘Avadāna of Sumagadha’) is often mentioned in Oriental studies, including works on the history of classical Mongolian literature examining writings of Indo-Tibetan origin. This text is included in both the Tibetan- and Mongolian-language canonical Kangyur (Kanjur) editions. Despite frequent references, the former has neither been translated into Russian, nor there are any descriptions of its structure and content. Goals. So, the article attempts to fill the gap and aims at considering the narrative about Sayin Magada through the analysis of The Legend of Sayin Magada (Mong. Sayin Magada-yin domuγ), the latter being integral to the canonical collection of Kanjur in Mongolian. The work explores the text, describes its genre characteristics, identifies its structure, reveals contents, and investigates data contained in the colophon. Materials. The study focuses on the text titled ‘Sayin Magada-yin domuγ-i ögülegči kemekü’ (‘[Sutra] Narrating the Legend of Sayin Magada’) from the Eldeb (‘Collection of Sutras’) section of the Mongolian Kanjur (vol. 91). Results. The textual and content analysis of works by Tibetologists, Mongolists, and Sinologists dealing with writings of the avadāna genre included in the canon makes it possible to reveal key characteristics of the genre, describe the structure of the Mongolian text, and outline its content.

In this paper we would like to introduce two newly identified Old Uyghur fragments kept in the Research Department of Dunhuang Academy, China. The first one (D0913) is a small fragment which we identified as part of another copy of the Ci’en zhuan 慈恩轉, namely of a colophon to the 4th book of the Old Uyghur translation. The second one (D0623) written on the verso side of a Chinese Buddhist scroll of T. 643 is an Old Uyghur poem which can be compared to the Ratnasūrya avadāna.

In the propagation and spread of Buddhism throughout Asia, jātaka and avadāna narratives played a decisive role, both in the form of texts and iconographical representations. In this paper I will focus on another set of narratives which enjoyed great popularity in the Dūnhuáng area during the later Tang and Five Dynasties period, dealing with historical projections concerning the origin and transmission of Buddhism. In this stories, “Auspicious Statues” (ruìxiàng 瑞像) play a key role. These “living” statues were thought to have moved from Indian monasteries to Khotan and other regions, serving as agents of the transmission of the Dharma in these areas. Besides reflecting religious key concern during that period, the historical narratives on the spread of Buddhism also give witness to the close diplomatic and family relations between Dunhuang and the Kingdom of Khotan during that period.

The fraught encounters between biological sciences and religions such as Buddhism have raised philosophical issues for many. This essay will focus on one of them: Can form ground the truth of life? The author suggests that, along with the introduction of evolutionary biology from Europe, literary realism in China has emerged as a technology of biomimesis, among other such technologies, to grapple with the problem of “life as form.” Focusing on Lu Xun's early interest in Ernst Haeckel and science fiction, especially his translation of “Technique for Creating Humans” and his narrative fiction “Prayers for Blessing,” which drew extensively on a Buddhist avadāna, the essay seeks to throw some new light on the familiar as well as unfamiliar sources relating to Lu Xun's life and works and to develop a new understanding of how the debates on science and metaphysics have developed in modern China.

Hint’e ait oldukça kıymetli izleri içerisinde barındıran Acanta Mağaraları, kadim Hint tarihi ve kültürü açısından önemli bir yere sahiptir. Acanta mağaraları yapılış tarihleri ve biçimsel özellikleri bakımından iki gruba ayrılmaktadır. Tarihsel süreçte, milattan önceki döneme ait olanlar, birinci grup; milattan sonra 4. yüzyıl itibarıyla oyulmuş olanlar ise ikinci grup olarak adlandırılmaktadır. Yapılış biçimleri açısından da Hint’e özgü haliyle, vihāralar ve çaityalar olmak üzere ikiye ayrılırlar. Çalışmamıza konu olan vihāralar ise, verandası, iç ve dış sütunları, heykel, kabartma ve duvar resimleriyle, her biri ayrı ayrı kıymetli, birer sanat eseri olma özelliği taşımaktadır. Mağaralardaki duvar resimlerinde ise çoğunlukla Buddhist kültüre ait figürler yer almakta olup, Avadāna ve Cātaka metinlerine ait sahneler ustalıkla resmedilmiştir. Bu renkli duvar resimlerinin geleneksel Asya resim sanatının da öncüsü olduğu düşünülmektedir. Bu çalışmada ise, toplamda otuz tane olan Acanta mağaralarından, sözü edilen unsurlar dâhilinde, vihāra biçimindeki yirmi beş tanesi incelenmiştir. Böylece, Hint geleneğinin Buddhist inanca ait kültürel mirası ile ilgili yapılan çalışmalara katkıda bulunulmak istenmiştir.

Our translation and analysis of sections of the epic poem, “Avadāna of Silver Flowers” showcases Tibetan-language poetics or “nyen-ngak” (snyan ngag). In this case, this mode of fine writing serves to reestablish the authority of Tibetan lamas as integral to the revival of Tibetan Buddhist culture in the aftermath of decades of state-sanctioned violence against Tibetans in the People’s Republic of China. Within the context of the early 1980s in China, the use of Tibetan belles-lettres flouts the nation-state’s purported civilizing mission which legitimizes its rule by disparaging Tibetan culture as inferior or backward. Evading this denigrating discourse, the poem’s author, the Buddhist monastic scholar, Alak Tséten Zhabdrung, creates a literary mandala radiating from his birthplace that centers on the subject of the poem, the Géluk Buddhist hierarch, the Tenth Panchen Lama, who was also born in Xunhua County, and was a key figure in the survival and continuance of Tibetan culture in the early Deng Xiaoping era. We translate sections of the twenty-page epic poem and discuss our translation choices as an ethical imperative to bring attention to the particularities of Tibetan poetics in terms of style and subject matter. We view this as part of a larger discourse on decolonization and anti-colonial translation practices because this foregrounds Indigenous epistemologies of literary aesthetics. In order to make these heuristic moves, we are indebted to insights from Decolonising the Mind by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o and from a claim in the philosophy of aesthetics that decouples objective values from aesthetic principles, which help us open up discursive space for Tibetan Indigenous aesthetic and epistemic values in English translation. After establishing our theoretical basis, we analyze the intertextual literary figures in “Avadāna of Silver Flowers” by drawing upon Alak Tséten Zhabdrung’s General Commentary on Poetics (snyan ngag spyi don) to develop an appreciation for the specifics of Tibetan poetics and enrich the English language with new types of wordplay. རྟོགས་བརྗོད་སྙན་རྩོམ་“རྟོགས་བརྗོད་དངུལ་གྱི་མེ་ཏོག་”ཅེས་པ་ལས་ཚིགས་སུ་བཅད་པ་ཁག་ཅིག་གི་འགྱུར་དང་དཔྱད་པ་བྱས་པ་བརྒྱུད་ནས་ང་ཚོས་བོད་ཀྱི་སྙན་ངག་གི་དཔེ་མཚོན་ཞིག་བསྟན་ཡོད། རྒྱ་ནག་མི་དམངས་སྤྱི་མཐུན་རྒྱལ་ཁབ་ཀྱི་དབང་བསྒྱུར་འོག་ལོ་ངོ་བཅུ་ཕྲག་འགའ་ཡི་རིང་ལ་བོད་མི་དམངས་ཀྱིས་གཞུང་གི་དྲག་སྤྱོད་མྱངས་རྗེས་ཀྱི་དུས་སྐབས་སུ། འདི་ལྟ་བུའི་རྩོམ་རྩལ་གྱིས་བོད་ཀྱི་བསྟན་པ་བསྐྱར་དར་བྱེད་པའི་ཁྲོད་བོད་ཀྱི་བླ་མའི་ཤུགས་རྐྱེན་སླར་གསོ་བྱས་ཡོད་པ་མཚོན་ཐུབ། རྒྱ་ནག་གི ༡༩༨༠ གྲངས་ཀྱི་ལོ་འགོའི་གནས་བབས་འོག་ཏུ། སྙན་ངག་རྩོམ་འབྲི་ཡིས་རྒྱལ་སྲིད་དཔལ་ཡོན་སྤེལ་བའི་ལས་འགུལ་ཏེ་བོད་ཀྱི་རིག་གནས་དམན་པ་དང་རྗེས་ལུས་ཡིན་པར་སྨྲས་ནས་དམའ་འབེབ་ཀྱིས་དབང་བསྒྱུར་ལུགས་མཐུན་དུ་བྱེད་སྟངས་དེ་ལ་འཕྱ་སྨོད་དང་ཟུར་ཟ་བྱས་ཡོད། འདི་ལྟ་བུའི་མཐོང་ཆུང་གི་ལྟ་ཚུལ་ལས་གཡོལ་ཆེད། སྙན་རྩོམ་འདིའི་རྩོམ་པ་པོ་སྟེ་བོད་ཀྱི་ནང་པའི་མཁས་དབང་ཨ་ལགས་ཚེ་ཏན་ཞབས་དྲུང་མཆོག་གིས་རྩོམ་རིག་གི་དཀྱིལ་འཁོར་ཞིག་གསར་བཞེངས་བྱས་པ་དེ་ཁོང་གི་སྐྱེས་ཡུལ་ནས་མཆེད་པར་བྱས་ཡོད། སྙན་ངག་འདིའི་བརྗོད་བྱ་གཙོ་བོ་ནི་༧པཎ་ཆེན་སྐུ་ཕྲེང་བཅུ་པ་མཆོག་ཡིན་ལ། ཁོང་ནི་དགེ་ལུགས་པའི་བསྟན་པའི་བདག་པོ་ཞིག་ཡིན་པར་མ་ཟད་མདོ་སྨད་ཀྱི་ས་ཆ་འདི་རུ་སྐུ་འཁྲུངས། ད་དུང་ཁོང་ནི་ཏིང་ཞོ་ཕིང་གི་དུས་རབས་ཀྱི་དུས་སྟོད་ལ་བོད་ཀྱི་རིག་གནས་རྒྱུན་འཛིན་དང་གསོན་གནས་ཐད་གལ་འགངས་ཆེ་བའི་མི་སྣ་ཞིག་རེད། ང་ཚོས་ཤོག་གྲངས་ཉི་ཤུའི་བདག་ཉིད་ཅན་གྱི་སྙན་རྩོམ་འདི་ལས་འགའ་ཤས་ཤིག་བསྒྱུར་ཏེ་ཡིག་བསྒྱུར་བྱེད་སྐབས་ཇི་ལྟར་བདམས་གསེས་བྱས་པའི་སྐོར་ལ་གྲོས་བསྡུར་བྱས་ཤིང་། དེ་ཡང་རྩོམ་ཉམས་དང་བརྗོད་བྱའི་ཐད་ནས་བོད་ཀྱི་སྙན་ངག་གི་དམིགས་བསལ་རང་བཞིན་ལ་དོ་སྣང་བྱེད་དགོས་པ་ནི་བཟང་སྤྱོད་ཀྱི་དགོས་མཁོ་ཞིག་ཏུ་བཟུང་ཡོད། ང་ཚོས་ལས་གཞི་འདི་ནི་མི་སེར་སྤེལ་བ་ལ་རྒོལ་བའམ་དེ་ལས་གྲོལ་བའི་ཡིག་སྒྱུར་ལག་ལེན་ཁྲོད་ཀྱི་ཆ་ཤས་ཤིག་ཏུ་བསམ་བཞིན་ཡོད་ལ། དེ་ཡང་གདོད་སྐྱེས་མི་རིགས་ཀྱི་ཤེས་ཡོན་དང་རྩོམ་རིག་གི་མཛེས་དཔྱོད་རྨང་གཞིར་བཟུང་ཡོད་པས་ཡིན། གོང་སྨྲས་ལྟར་གོ་བ་ལོན་ཆེད། ང་ཚོས་རྩོམ་པ་པོ་ གུ་གེ་ བ་ ཐོན་ལགས་ཀྱིས་བརྩམས་པའི་“མི་སེར་སྤེལ་ཡུལ་ལ་རྒོལ་བའི་སེམས་”ཞེས་པའི་དཔེ་དེབ་ཀྱི་ཤེས་བྱ་དང་རྣམ་དཔྱོད་ལ་བཀའ་དྲིན་རྗེས་དྲན་བྱེད་བཞིན་ཡོད་ལ། མཛེས་དཔྱོད་མཚན་ཉིད་རིག་པའི་རྩོད་པ་ཞིག་སྟེ་ཕྱི་རོལ་ཡུལ་གྱི་རིན་ཐང་དང་མཛེས་དཔྱོད་ཀྱི་རྣམ་བཞག་གཉིས་ཁ་ཐོར་དུ་འཛིན་ལུགས་ཀྱིས་ངེད་གཉིས་ལ་བོད་ཀྱི་གདོད་སྐྱེས་སམ་གཉུག་མའི་མཛེས་དཔྱོད་དང་ཤེས་བྱ་ཡི་རིན་ཐང་ལྟ་བ་ལ་བོད་རྩོམ་དབྱིན་འགྱུར་ཁྲོད་དུ་རྩོད་གླེང་གི་བར་སྟོང་ཞིག་བསྐྲུན་པར་རོགས་རམ་བྱས། ང་ཚོས་གཞུང་ལུགས་ཀྱི་རྨང་གཞི་བཏིང་རྗེས་ཨ་ལགས་ཚེ་ཏན་ཞབས་དྲུང་ཚང་གི་སྙན་འགྲེལ་“སྙན་ངག་སྤྱི་དོན་”ལ་གཞིགས་ནས་“རྟོགས་བརྗོད་དངུལ་གྱི་མེ་ཏོག་”གི་སྙན་རྩོམ་ནང་གི་རྒྱན་དང་དེའི་དབྱེ་བ་ལ་དབྱེ་ཞིབ་བྱས་ཏེ་བོད་ཀྱི་སྙན་ངག་གི་དམིགས་བསལ་རང་བཞིན་ནམ་ཐུན་མོང་མ་ཡིན་པའི་ཆ་ལ་བརྩི་མཐོང་དང་། དེ་བཞིན་བརྡ་ཆད་གསར་བའི་རྩེད་འཇོ་ལ་བརྟེན་ནས་དབྱིན་ཇིའི་སྐད་ཡིག་ཕུན་སུམ་ཇེ་ཚོགས་སུ་བཏང་ཡོད།