Speaker: Brandon Dotson, Thomas P. McKenna Chair of Buddhist Studies, Department of Theology and Religious Studies, Georgetown University
Date & Time: Friday, February 14, 2025, 5 pm Pacific
Venue: Institute for South Asia Studies 10 Stephens Hall, UC Berkeley
Sponsor: Numata Center for Buddhist Studies, Institute for South Asia Studies, The Himalayan Studies Initiative, The Tang Center for Silk Road Studies, Glorisun Global Buddhist Network
Contact Info: Sanjyot Mehendale, (510) 643-5104, buddhiststudies@berkeley.edu
Access Coordinator: Sanjyot Mehendale, buddhiststudies@berkeley.edu, (510) 643-5104
Abstract: Chinese and Tibetan scribes produced over 10,000 copies of the Sutra of Limitless Life (Sanskrit title: Aparimitāyuḥ-sūtra) in the 820s in Dunhuang as an offering for the ailing Tibetan emperor. These sutra copies were then distributed all across his realm for protection, sanctification, and to extend the emperor’s life. Drawing on a decade of archival research documenting approximately 1,500 Tibetan copies of the sutra kept in the British Library’s Stein Collection, I was able to reconstruct the processes by which these sutras were produced, deposited in temples, stored in the Library Cave, and then conserved and documented in London. This presentation highlights codicological features of these sutras, their colophons, later curators’ notes, and the ‘discovery’ of a Tibetan version of this sutra that appears to be otherwise unknown.
Speaker: Brandon Dotson largely researches seventh to tenth century Tibet and Dunhuang, and the circulation of rituals and narratives in and out of Tibet during this period. He completed his DPhil in 2007 at the University of Oxford and wrote a dissertation on administration and law in Tibetan Buddhist historiog- raphy. He has worked and taught at the School of Oriental and African Studies, the University of Oxford, and Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, where he led the “Kingship and Religion in Tibet” re- search group. He is currently professor and Thomas P. McKenna Chair of Buddhist Studies in the De- partment of Theology and Religious Studies at Georgetown University, where he has served since 2016. His books include The Old Tibetan Annals: An Annotated Translation of Tibet’s First History (2009), Codicology, Paleography, and Orthography of Early Tibetan Documents (2016), and Dice and Gods on the Silk Road (2021).
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