Bones of the Buddha: The Materiality, Textuality, and Musicality of Relics in Japanese Religions

Bones of the Buddha: The Materiality, Textuality, and Musicality of Relics in Japanese Religions

Friday, April 29, 2022 – 6:00pm to 7:30pm

Room 133, Humanities Quadrangle
320 York Street
Yale University
New Haven, CT 06511

Since the advent of Buddhism in ancient India, Buddhist relics have been used to confer religious legitimacy and the right to rulership. In premodern Japan, relic worship took on its own subtleties, which can be read through extant visual, textual, and musical culture from this period. Using interdisciplinary methods and a wide range of sources, this conference seeks to illuminate how the bones of the Buddhist dead were worshipped, enshrined, and written about by lay and monastic communities in premodern Japan. The papers presented will address relic worship in relation to Shakyamuni worship, relics in soundscapes of sacred music, and the enshrinement of relics in material culture. These talks are meant to facilitate interdisciplinary and nuanced discussions, across various fields of Japanese studies, around the multidimensionality of relic worship in Japan’s religious landscape. The keynote speaker will be Bernard Faure, Kao Professor of Japanese Religion, at Columbia University.

Registration
In-person for members of the Yale community (please note separate registrations for the Keynote Speech and the Conference):

Keynote Speech:
Friday, April 29th, 6:00 PM – 7:30 PM
Benard Faure, Kao Professor of Japanese Religion, Columbia University
https://yalesurvey.ca1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_9mFZb6K11pIHHmu

Conference:
Saturday, April 30th, 9:00 AM – 6:00 PM
https://yalesurvey.ca1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_1SbJMMYvKkuii4m

Funded by the Yale Buddhist Studies Initiative and the Glorisun Global Network for Buddhist Studies
Download the poster.

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