Search Results (3)

This study provides a comprehensive philological analysis of ten Old Uyghur manuscript fragments of the Saddharmapuṇḍarīka-sūtra (Lotus Sutra) in the Berlin Turfan Collection, while systematically examining all extant Old Uyghur Lotus Sutra manuscripts to establish a complete corpus for comparative analysis. By collating this complete corpus with Kumārajīva’s Chinese translation, this research demonstrates a typology of Old Uyghur Lotus Sutra fragments. It identifies at least two distinct translation lineages: (1) early translations (pre-10th century) exhibiting lexical and structural divergences indicative of Sogdian mediation or hybrid source traditions, and (2) late translations (11th–14th centuries) directly derived from the Chinese version, characterized by syntactic fidelity and a standardized terminology. Through comparative textual analysis, orthographic scrutiny, and terminological cross-referencing, this paper aims to reconstruct the historical trajectory of the Lotus Sutra’s transmission. In addition, it discusses some facts indicating linguistic and cultural contact between the Sogdians and the progressive alignment of Uyghur Buddhist texts with Chinese Buddhist traditions. Full article

In this paper, I examine the iconography, religious function and text–image relationship of one of the earliest illustrations of the apocryphal Visualization Sūtra, namely, the mural painting on the left (south) wall of Cave 20 at the Toyok Grottoes in Turfan created in the late sixth century. I study this mural with a structuralist approach to situate it within the overall pictorial program of the cave temple. I argue that this wall painting was designed as a set of visual and verbal cues to assist the meditating monks in situ to separately visualize the different individual visions constituting the “Thirteen Visualizations” taught in the sutra, excluding the five visions directly related to the Amitāyus Triad, namely, the eighth, ninth, tenth, eleventh and thirteenth visualizations. These five visualizations were likely facilitated by icons of the Amitāyus Triad placed in the center of the cave. The meditators started from the contemplations of the impure represented on the right (north) wall as preparatory practices to eliminate their sins, improve their karma and thereby enhance their spiritual purity to a level appropriate for performing the Pure Land visualizations. They then turned to the left wall to perform the Pure Land visualizations represented there that end with the twelfth visualization: imagining oneself being reborn in Sukhāvatī. Continuing from the twelfth visualization, the meditators facing the rear wall entered the Western Pure Land via the lotus ponds represented on the rear wall while in a state of meditational concentration. Full article

Dipesh Chakrabarty describes the problem of climate change as in part one of temporal incommensurability. For most of human history, we have enjoyed the primacy of anthropocentric “world-historical” time. But as climate change becomes an increasingly dominant preoccupation in our daily lives, we experience a rupture in everyday world-historical time and the incursion of a new timescale: the inconceivably vast and impersonal scale of “planetary-geologic” time. The incommensurability between the personal scale of human time and the vast planetary scale of climate change has produced an affective crisis, confronting us with the very limits of our imaginative capacity. In this essay, I argue that although the specifics of climate change may be new, human imaginative engagement with deep time is not. Animated by the conviction that Buddhist literature and thought contain robust theoretical and conceptual ideas that can enrich philosophical and ethical thinking, I bring select Buddhist concepts to bear on the problem of temporal incommensurability. Rather than suggest any general “Buddhist” way of thinking about time, I argue that Buddhist sources can offer new conceptual points of entry into the problem of temporal incommensurability itself, specifically addressing how we might differently conceptualize the relationship between the personal and the planetary in order to address the affective crisis identified by Chakrabarty. Full article