2016. Chapter 1: Introduction: Esoteric Buddhist Networks along the Maritime Silk Routes, 7th–13th Century AD (original) (raw)
Related papers
2016. Esoteric Buddhism in Mediaeval Maritime Asia: Networks of Masters, Texts, Icons [TOC]
This edited volume advocates a trans-regional, and maritime-focused, approach to studying the genesis, development and circulation of Esoteric (or Tantric) Buddhism across Maritime Asia from the seventh to the thirteenth centuries AD. The book lays emphasis on the mobile networks of human agents ('Masters'), textual sources ('Texts') and images ('Icons') through which Esoteric Buddhist traditions spread. Capitalising on recent research and making use of both disciplinary and area-focused perspectives, this book highlights the role played by Esoteric Buddhist maritime networks in shaping intra-Asian connectivity. In doing so, it reveals the limits of a historiography that is premised on land-based transmission of Buddhism from a South Asian 'homeland', and advances an alternative historical narrative that overturns the popular perception regarding Southeast Asia as a 'periphery' that passively received overseas influences. Thus, a strong point is made for the appreciation of the region as both a crossroads and rightful terminus of Buddhist cults, and for the re-evaluation of the creative and transformative force of Southeast Asian agents in the transmission of Esoteric Buddhism across mediaeval Asia.
The Atlas of Maritime Buddhism
The Atlas of Maritime Buddhism, 2021
THE BUDDHIST MARITIME SILK ROAD Understanding the spread of Buddhism by maritime routes from the Ganges Basin in India to East and Inner Asia, in the early centuries of the Common Era (CE), is crucial to understanding the history of the region. Seaports and connecting sites located on rivers played a major role in the expansion of Buddhism beyond the shores of India. The focus of this exhibition is the way Buddhism travelled these maritime routes in networks that flowed from India to China. See essay and curated show by Marnie Feneley: Photogrammetric sculptures p.152 , Buddhist Cultural Exchange p. 181 and curated exhibition of Buddhist works from collections in Hong Kong p. 196
Chapter Five (Final) Buddhist Maritime Silk Road
The Buddhist Maritime Silk Road, 2022
The Atlas of Maritime Silk Road Buddhism by Prof Lewis Lancaster contains a series of lectures he presented at the Department of Religious Studies for the University of the West in California. These lectures give a description of the search for models that can deal with the study of how Buddhism spread from the Ganges Basin and established itself throughout the Southeast area of Eurasia. In addition to the lectures, there are many images in the volume from the large museum exhibits that opened at the City University of Hong Kong and the Buddha Museum at Fo Guang Shan in Taiwan. As part of the data collecting process, Prof Sarah Kenderdine from Lausanne, Switzerland secured a grant from the Australian Research Council to take 3-D and surround images from Buddhist sites tied to the maritime route from India to East Asia. More than three months of filming with camera crews in India, Myanmar, Thailand, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Cambodia, and China resulting in a major collection of high density photographs, videos, and sound recordings. These images were taken by Prof Jeffrey Shaw of Hong Kong and installed as museum exhibitions using 3-D and Virtual Reality that allow visitors to experience the art, architecture, and cultural features on the journey from the shores of India to China. This volume has now been produced by the Institute for the Study of Humanistic Buddhism at Fo Guang Shan to accompany the museum exhibits providing a description of the data used in filming and the research that helped create the story that is told about Maritime Buddhism. The Atlas of Maritime Silk Road Buddhism by Prof Lewis Lancaster contains a series of lectures he presented at the Department of Religious Studies for the University of the West in California. These lectures give a description of the search for models that can deal with the study of how Buddhism spread from the Ganges Basin and established itself throughout the Southeast area of Eurasia. In addition to the lectures, there are many images in the volume from the large museum exhibits that opened at the City University of Hong Kong and the Buddha Museum at Fo Guang Shan in Taiwan. As part of the data collecting process, Prof Sarah Kenderdine from Lausanne, Switzerland secured a grant from the Australian Research Council to take 3-D and surround images from Buddhist sites tied to the maritime route from India to East Asia. More than three months of filming with camera crews in India, Myanmar, Thailand, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Cambodia, and China resulting in a major collection of high density photographs, videos, and sound recordings. These images were taken by Prof Jeffrey Shaw of Hong Kong and installed as museum exhibitions using 3-D and Virtual Reality that allow visitors to experience the art, architecture, and cultural features on the journey from the shores of India to China. This volume has now been produced by the Institute for the Study of Humanistic Buddhism at Fo Guang Shan to accompany the museum exhibits providing a description of the data used in filming and the research that helped create the story that is told about Maritime Buddhism. The Atlas of Maritime Silk Road Buddhism by Prof Lewis Lancaster contains a series of lectures he presented at the Department of Religious Studies for the University of the West in California. These lectures give a description of the search for models that can deal with the study of how Buddhism spread from the Ganges Basin and established itself throughout the Southeast area of Eurasia. In addition to the lectures, there are many images in the volume from the large museum exhibits that opened at the City University of Hong Kong and the Buddha Museum at Fo Guang Shan in Taiwan. As part of the data collecting process, Prof Sarah Kenderdine from Lausanne, Switzerland secured a grant from the Australian Research Council to take 3-D and surround images from Buddhist sites tied to the maritime route from India to East Asia. More than three months of filming with camera crews in India, Myanmar, Thailand, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Cambodia, and China resulting in a major collection of high density photographs, videos, and sound recordings. These images were taken by Prof Jeffrey Shaw of Hong Kong and installed as museum exhibitions using 3-D and Virtual Reality that allow visitors to experience the art, architecture, and cultural features on the journey from the shores of India to China. This volume has now been produced by the Institute for the Study of Humanistic Buddhism at Fo Guang Shan to accompany the museum exhibits providing a description of the data used in filming and the research that helped create the story that is told about Maritime Buddhism.
Ports of the Ancient Indian Ocean. Proceedings of the Kolkata Colloquium 2011 (Median Project). , 2016
This essay seeks to write a broader ‘event history’ of South Asia in the maritime trade of the western Indian Ocean over the tenth to twelfth centuries CE and in so doing to explore the problems that this exercise in a particular type of history and historical time poses for South Asian sources. As the western seaboard of India and Sri Lanka formed the main interfaces with West Asia, it is on these coastal regions, from Sind to southern Sri Lanka, that this discussion centres. In order to streamline the discussion, my focus is on the West Asian trade communities which feature so prominently in a number of these sources. I use them as a prism through which to explore the challenges of working with these pluridisciplinary data sets and the different timespans of history that they present. Taking its cue from the original brief to write a ‘histoire événementielle’, this essay explores more broadly how these sources also contribute to histories of ‘conjonctures’ and the ‘longue durée’.
Southeast Asian history has seen remarkable levels of mobility and durable connections with the rest of the Indian Ocean. The archaeological record points to prehistoric circulations of material culture within the region. Through the power of monsoon sailing, these small-scale circuits coalesced into larger networks by the 5th century BCE. Commercial relations with Chinese, Indian, and West Asian traders brought great prosperity to a number of Southeast Asian ports, which were described as places of immense wealth. Professional shipping, facilitated by local watercraft and crews, reveals the indigenous agency behind such longdistance maritime contacts. By the second half of the first millennium CE, ships from the Indo-Malayan world could be found as far west as coastal East Africa. Arabic and Persian merchants started to play a larger role in the Indian Ocean trade by the 8th century, importing spices and aromatic tree resins from sea-oriented polities such as Srivijaya and later Majapahit. From the 15th century, many coastal settlements in Southeast Asia embraced Islam, partly motivated by commercial interests. The arrival of Portuguese, Dutch, and British ships increased the scale of Indian Ocean commerce, including in the domains of capitalist production systems, conquest, slavery, indentured labor, and eventually free trade. During the colonial period, the Indian Ocean was incorporated into a truly global economy. While cultural and intellectual links between Southeast Asia and the wider Indian Ocean have persisted in the 21st century, commercial networks have declined in importance.