Paul Copp: "Manuscript Culture and the Ritualist's Craft at Dunhuang"

Abstract

This talk explores what manuscripts found at Dunhuang can tell us about the composition of Buddhist ritual forms in ninth and tenth centuries China. It takes manuscript liturgies, such as those centering on the Diamond Sūtra and the Incantation of Great Compassion, as case studies, exploring three basic features of their making: 1. the natures of the frames by which texts were made the focuses of recitation rites, 2. the borrowings and adaptations of existing materials of which those frames were made, and 3. the understandings of the nature of scriptural language implicit in these practices.

Bio

Paul Copp is associate professor in Chinese religion and thought at the University of Chicago. He is the author of The Body Incantatory: Spells and the Ritual Imagination in Medieval Chinese Buddhism (Columbia, 2014) and is currently at work on a new book, tentatively titled "Seal and Scroll: Buddhism and Manuscript Culture at Dunhuang."