"Indic Buddhist Manuscripts: The State of the Field"
June 15-19, 2009
On June 15-19 2009 over twenty scholars from around the world participated in the conference "Indic Buddhist Manuscripts: The State of the Field" held at Stanford under the auspices of the Ho Center for Buddhist Studies at Stanford. Convened by Paul Harrison of the HCBSS with the assistance of Jens-Uwe Hartmann (Munich), this meeting was conceived as a kind of "summit conference," bringing together the leaders of the different manuscript projects currently underway in various countries in order to review the work on recent discoveries in this area as well as the ongoing research into older finds made last century.
Attending were (in alphabetical order) Mark Allon (Sydney), Jens Braarvig (Oslo), Collett Cox (Washington), Duan Qing (Beijing), Michael Hahn (Marburg), Paul Harrison (Stanford), Jens-Uwe Hartmann (Munich), Oskar von Hinüber (Freiburg), Hori Shin'ichiro (Tokyo), Harunaga Isaacson (Hamburg), Helmut Krasser (Vienna), Luo Hong (Beijing), Matsuda Kazunobu (Kyoto), Nagashima Jundo (Tokyo), Saerji (Beijing), Richard Salomon (Seattle), Lore Sander (Berlin), Peter Skilling (Bangkok), Ingo Strauch (Berlin), Klaus Wille (Göttingen), Yonezawa Yoshiyasu (Tokyo), with Harry Falk (Berlin) also contributing a report to be read in his absence.
Although international collaboration has become the norm in the study of Buddhist manuscripts, and there are strong links between many of the projects, this was the first time that all these scholars had met together in one place to review the latest developments in this burgeoning field. Two days were spent hearing reports on the individual projects or collections of Buddhist manuscripts, and the rest of the time was devoted to in-depth discussions of issues of common concern. Among the topics covered were the ways in which these new finds are changing our picture of the Buddhist tradition, new insights into the creation, transmission, and use of Buddhist texts, the ethical challenges raised by this research in terms of ownership and cultural property, and the related issue of securing access to materials.
Although there was lively debate over the question of what the most exciting discovery in this field has been, for many participants the emergence of substantial amounts of material written in Gāndhārī, hitherto unknown except for a few scattered items, was at the top of the list. The recovery of these texts, and of the language in which they were written, in manuscripts dating from the beginning of the Common Era, has enabled us to start redrawing our map of the Buddhist scriptural and literary tradition. There are, however, many other discoveries that have altered the contours of the field, and will go on doing so, as more manuscripts come to light or receive the critical attention they still await. There is no shortage of work to be done.
The results of this conference will be published in a volume to be edited by Harrison and Hartmann, tentatively scheduled to appear in 2010. It is intended that this volume will include a complete bibliography and a title list of all works discovered and/or published recently.
