NEW BOOK> "Buddhism in Central Asia II: Practices and Rituals, Visual and Material Transfer ", Kasai and Sørensen (eds.)

Dear colleagues,

The BuddhistRoad team is happy to announce that its second conference proceedings is finally published.

The volume, entitled "Buddhism in Central Asia II—Practices and Rituals, Visual and Material Transfer" and edited by Yukiyo Kasai and Henrik H. Sørensen, is published as the 12th volume in the Brill series "Dynamics in the History of Religion" and is based on the contributions of the BuddhistRoad mid-project conference, held from the 16th to the 19th of September, 2019 at Ruhr-Universität Bochum.

Following the publication of the first conference volume in 2020, "Buddhism in Central Asia I—Patronage, Legitimation, Sacred Space, and Pilgrimage" edited by Carmen Meinert and Henrik H. Sørensen (downloadable here), this new volume focuses on two of the six thematic clusters explored in the BuddhistRoad project, namely aspects of the transfer of religious knowledge.

The first part, "practices and rituals", deals with eschatological practices such as meditation and rites of transcendence, as well as research into the material culture of these practices, such as maṇḍalas and talismans.
The second part, "visual and material transfer", refers to religious art and material culture, including shared iconographies and the dissemination of "Khotanese" themes.

For further information and the open access version of the full volume, please see: https://buddhistroad.ceres.rub.de/en/publications/books/

Please click on the following links for individual content:

Kasai, Yukiyo, Henrik H. Sørensen, and Haoran Hou. “Introduction—Central Asia: Scared Sites and the Transmission of Religious Practices,” 1–16.

Keyworth, George. “Did the Silk Road(s) Extend from Dunhuang, Mount Wutai, and Chang’an to Kyoto, Japan? A Reassessment Based on Material Culture from the Temple Gate Tendai Tradition of Miidera,” 17–67.

Konczak-Nagel, Ines. “Representations of a Series of Larger Buddha Figures in the Buddhist Caves of Kuča: Reflections on Their Origin and Meaning,” 68–96.

Lo Muzio, Ciro. “Buddhist Painting in the South of the Tarim Basin: A Chronological Conundrum,” 97–117.

Forte, Erika. “‘Khotanese Themes’ in Dunhuang: Visual and Ideological Transfer in the 9th–11th Centuries,” 118–152.

Russell-Smith, Lilla. “The ‘Sogdian Deities’ Twenty Years on: A Reconsideration of a Small Painting from Dunhuang,” 153–206.

Wang, Michelle C. “Seeking the Pure Land in Tangut Art,” 207–243.

Kasai, Yukiyo. “The Avalokiteśvara Cult in Turfan and Dunhuang in the Pre-Mongolian Period,” 244–269.

Dalton, Jacob P. “Bridging Yoga and Mahāyoga: Samaya in Early Tantric Buddhism,” 270–287.

Sørensen, Henrik H. “Visualising Oneself as the Cosmos: An Esoteric Buddhist Meditation Text from Dunhuang,” 288–312.