Students examine Buddhist relics at the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Cambridge

2022

University of California, Berkeley
  • Funding for Ph.D. student, Weiyu LIN

Weiyu Lin

This year Weiyu Lin started his Ph.D. studies at Berkeley where he made a significant pivot in his research, transitioning from Huayan Buddhism which he studied during his master’s program, to the study of early Tibetan tantric Buddhism. He approached this topic by exploring the relevant texts in Dunhuang manuscripts. Specifically, he is reading the Tibetan ritual manuals derived from the Sarvatathāgatatattvasaṃgraha sūtra (STTS) in order to study the Indo-Tibetan tantric Buddhism from the eighth to tenth century. The STTS is known in Chinese as the Jingang ding jing 金剛頂經 and is highly influential in East Asia Buddhism; even to this day, the tantric rituals associated STTS still thrive in Shingon Buddhism in Japan. So, based on his deepened knowledge of Indo-Tibetan ritual manuals associated with STTS, he is also reading the Chinese STTS ritual manuals. Weiyu is interested in discovering how the same tantra gave rise to different systems of tantric rituals; but also discerning their connections. At the same time, Weiyu is also reading ritual manuals associated with the so-called Mahāyoga tantras, especially Guhyasamāja
tantra. These tantras and their derivative manuals are known for transgressive rituals.

University of Cambridge
  • Some funds have been used for international conference participation and fieldwork trips, including manuscripts and Dunhuang Buddhist art research trips to London, Hamburg, and Berlin. The work was presented at international conferences and resulted in 10 publications for 2022 (13 from 2021).
  • Continued to provide hands-on training for graduate students on the Dunhuang manuscripts at the British Library in London.
  • Provided financial support to two Ph.D. students: Junfu WONG and Kelsey Granger.

Junfu Wong

Junfu Wong is a Ph.D. student at the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies. He is in the last year of Ph.D. programme, writing up his doctoral dissertation which is on votive steles erected by lay believers in Shaanxi province during the fifth and sixth centuries.

Kelsey Granger

Kelsey Granger was awarded a Ph.D. with no revisions for her thesis “Gifts from Afar: The Creation of an Imperial Lapdog in Tang-Song China”. She has published a collaborative article with the late Prof. N. Harry Rothschild, “Twenty-Six Reasons to Hate Zhang Yizhi and Zhang Changzong: Confucian Historiographical Construction of Wu Zhao’s ‘Male Favorites’” in American Review of China Studies 22.2, and an imminent article forthcoming with Journal of the American Oriental Studies 142.4 “Violence, Vigilantism, and Virtue: Re-assessing Medieval Female Avenger Accounts through the Study of Narratives about Xie Xiao’e”. She has also published a book review “Review of Peter J. Li’s Animal Welfare in China: Culture, Politics, and Crisis” in The China Journal 87. In addition to giving academic talks at the Cambridge Dunhuang and Silk Road Seminar series, Needham Research Institute Seminar series, Chapters on Chinese Seminar series at FAU Erlangen-Nuremburg, and the Animal History Group Summer Conference, she organised an online international workshop, “Transgressive Beasts: Animals Challenging Boundaries in Chinese History” with Dr. Renée Krusche.

Peking University
  • Boundless Minds Reading Group
    The Research Center organizes regular reading groups where participants at the doctoral and Master’s level from Peking University and Nankai University in the fields of Buddhist history, literature, Buddhist languages, Vinaya studies, cave temple art history, philology, and more, can gather and discuss set topics and readings. On the 20th of October, 2021, the Buddhist Text and Art Research Center launched the first reading group which took place at Peking University’s South Asian Studies Department. The reading group has since met once per week, beginning in the first semester with a text central to Chinese Buddhist catalogue studies, Seng You’s Chu sanzang jiji 出三藏記集. Every meeting, one or two participants
    present on the scholarship relevant to that week’s segment of the text, while simultaneously reading through and analyzing the primary source as a group.
  • Boundless Minds Pali Study Group
    The Research Center provides Pali language courses for students at Peking University’s Foreign Language School and for Nankai University’s Ph.D. and Master’s students researching Buddhist literature. The Pali language instructor, W.G. Indunil Philip Shantha, uses The New Pāli Course by the Venerable Polwatte Buddhadatta Thera. The goals of the “Boundless Minds Pali Study Group” are to provide participants with a foundational understanding of the Pali language’s origins and evolution. The program helps train the participants’ reading comprehension skills with the set goal of improving their competency to a level where they may read Pali texts with the assistance of a dictionary as well as read these text with a better overall understanding of Pali Buddhist scriptures. This last academic term, the group met twice a week to study Pali, reading the Satipaṭṭhāna. In August, the Pali study group started the second volume, focusing on the translation of the Pali Buddhist scriptures.
  • Boundless Minds Sanskrit Study Group
    The Research Center provided Sanskrit language courses for students at Peking University’s Foreign Language School and for Nankai University’s Ph.D. and Master’s students researching Buddhist literature from September 4 to October 21, 2022. The center hired a new teacher, Rev. Paranagama Gnanawimala Thero, to lead the Sanskrit study group and help students grasp the fundamentals and aid them in their Sanskrit reading comprehension so that they may learn to read and understand Sanskrit Buddhist scriptures with the help of specialized dictionaries. The group meets once a week.
    Beginning on September 4, 2022, interested participants at the Peking University Buddhist Text and Art Research Center could attend a Sanskrit course online on every Friday at 10 AM. The courses were chaired by Wang Lina and Chen Yingjin and they were led by the Venerable Paranagama. From September through to November, the group convened eight times. In the first course, Wang Lina and Chen Yingjin provided a syllabus defining the course content as well as the course requirements. Venerable Paranagama followed with a cursory introduction to Sanskrit fundamentals, speaking to the differences between Sanskrit and Pali, as well as basic grammar and certain conjugation rules.
    By the sixth course on the 7th of October, the teaching of the basics for both reading and reciting the Sanskrit phonetic characters were completed. All that attended could understand and read aloud the Sanskrit characters, as well as provide the Sanskrit in its Romanized form. For the seventh and eighth course, Venerable Paranagama used the Heart Sūtra to teach Sanskrit singing and translation. By the end of the eighth course, all that attended were comfortable reading through this short sutra. Participant practice Sanskrit pronunciation and writing, completing all the work required by Venerable Paranagama in a timely manner. The teacher was available for all queries related to the course. Overall, this has been a constructive experience for all that participated.
  • Summer Season Sanskrit Literature and Art Study Workshop
    From June 15-29, the India Research Center and the Sanskrit and Pali Center out of the Asian Studies Department, both at the Beijing Foreign Studies University, organized a Sanskrit literature and art workshop in Nanping, Fujian Province. At the workshop, they promoted translation, editing, and research related to Sanskrit art and literature. They also accompanied Ven. Zhanru to important cultural sites such as Wuyi Sanctuary.
    During this time, there were eight Rasa Club gatherings. From the third Rasa Club gathering to the tenth, the workshops lasted four hours with both online and offline participants. Participants included Wang Lina, Zhou Liqun, Zhao You, Dang Suping, Zhang Jiao, Cai Feng, Chi Mingzhou, and seven other readers.
Princeton University
  • From August 1-5, 2022, Kelly Carlton and Yalin Du, both doctoral students, participated in FROGBEAR Research Cluster 3.1: Multicultural Dunhuang Workshop. This field visit brought together an interdisciplinary cohort of art historians and scholars of manuscripts to the British Museum and British Library to develop research methods by which the contents of the Dunhuang “Library Cave” are reconciled with the mural paintings of the Mogao Caves. The visit also shed light on the material traces of Buddhism and transcultural contacts between the local population of Dunhuang and neighboring kingdoms and states, particularly during the period of Guiyijun rule in Dunhuang
  • On March 8, 2022, building on a lecture by Dr. Antonello Palumbo (SOAS and Visiting Scholar, Yale University), local Ph.D. students discussed their dissertation work with Professor Palumbo in a wide-ranging workshop format.
  • Funds were used to support the publication of a new book, Yili yu fojiao yanjiu 儀禮與佛教研究 (Ritual and the Study of Buddhism) by Taishi Wen 太史文 [Stephen F. Teiser], translated by YU Xin 余欣 and ZHAI Minhao 翟旻昊 (Beijing: Sanlian chubanshe, 2022.) Based on the Guanghua Lectures by Distinguished Scholars in the Humanities, delivered at Fudan University (復旦大學光華人文傑出學者講座). Description and contents available at: https://book.douban.com/subject/35778922/?icn=index-latestbook-subject.
Yale University
  • Funds were used for a weekend overnight fieldtrip to Blue Cliff Monastery, March 11 to 22, 2022, as part of the course “Monastic Life” taught at Yale in spring 2022.

2021

University of Cambridge
  • To maximize the use of funds that could not be used during the pandemic, Cambridge University allocated a sum for buying books and subscriptions related to Buddhist studies, Dunhuang studies and Silk Road studies for the Faculty Library and the University Library. A small portion was used for buying books by teaching staff and graduate students to alleviate the difficulties with library access and travel during the pandemic.
  • Some funds have been used for international conference participation and fieldwork trips this year, including manuscripts and Dunhuang Buddhist art research trips to London, Hamburg, and Berlin. The work was presented at international conferences and resulted in 10 publications.
University of Hamburg & University of British Columbia
  • Together with Chen Jinhua (UBC) and George Keyworth (University of Saskatchewan), Steffen Döll edits the Journal of Chan Buddhism, published with Brill. In order to realize the Journal’s goal of introducing a Western language audience to current research trends in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean language scholarship via review articles covering publication projects and topics presently under academic discussion, Glorisun funds were used to purchase books and ship them to reviewers.
University of Hamburg & University of Oxford
  • In 2021, the late Stefano Zacchetti’s book The Da zhidu lun 大智度論 (*Mahāprajñāpāramitopadeśa) and the History of the Larger Prajñāpāramitā was published. The Glorisun funding has enabled the two editors, Michael Radich and Jonathan Silk, to employ an assistant to produce the index, and the publishers of the Hamburg Buddhist Studies series thank the Foundation for subsidising the printing costs. Stefano Zacchetti’s loss is sorely felt in the world of Buddhist Studies, but it may give some comfort that Stefano’s magnum opus is now available to readers, thanks to the support of the Glorisun Foundation.
  • In his final monograph, Stefano Zacchetti analyzes the Da zhidu lun’s complex relation to a number of Larger Prajñāpāramitā texts. The evidence presented here reveals a complementary, even symbiotic relation between root text and commentary, and puts into relief processes of stabilization, consolidation, and canonization. The reader is afforded precious insights into the textual history of the Da zhidu lun, of the Larger Prajñāpāramitā literature as a whole, and of the general patterns of formation, transmission, exegesis, and recension of Mahāyāna Buddhist texts.
Peking University
  • On October 21 2021, Professor Zhan Ru of the Peking University Research Center for Buddhist Texts and Arts attended the summit conference titled, “Xinchang—the Important Birthplace of Buddhist Sinicization and Promoting the Modernization of Religious Governance,” held in Xinchang City. The conference invited a total of 80 specialists and representatives from the Buddhist communities in Beijing, Shanghai, Shandong, Jiangsu, and Zhejiang. Professor Zhan Ru presented the paper “Xinchang and the Sinicization of Buddhism—taking the Religious System of Rules and their Construction as an Example”
  • From October 23 to 24, 2021, Head of the Research Center for Buddhist Texts and Art Professor Zhan Ru, attended the “Mount Jiuhua Bodhisattva Kṣitigarbha Forum—Promoting the Bodhisattva Kṣitigarbha Spirit and Implementing Buddhist Sinicization,” sponsored by the Mount Jiuhua Buddhist Association and led by the Buddhist Association of Anhui Provience and the United Front Work Department (Bureau of Religious Affairs) of the Chizhou Municipal Party Committee. Professor Zhan Ru presented a paper on the “Dasacakra Kṣitigarbha Sutra and Kṣitigarbha Faith in the Tang Dynasty”.
  • Wang Lina, Center Research Fellow, attends the Conference organized by the Research Institute of Social Sciences and International Education on “Seeking Common Ground While Reserving Differences and Achieving Mutual Development—the 1st Session of Multicultural Communication” held from September 25-26, 2021. Wang published a paper titled, “The Buddhist Cultural Exchanges of Chang’an and Luoyang”.
Princeton University
  • Partial support for salary of Zoom-taught graduate seminar, REL 533, Popular Buddhism in Premodern Japan, co-taught by Numata Visiting Scholar KIKUCHI Hiroki, Historiographical Institute, Tokyo University, Spring 2021
  • REL 533, Popular Buddhism in Premodern Japan This seminar explores the issue of popular or folk Buddhism (minshu Bukkyo) in premodern Japan. We read primary sources and secondary scholarship on topics such as mountain practice, pilgrimage, sacred space, and social organizations to better understand the role of Buddhism in the lives of everyday people in premodern Japan. Significant time is spent on translation, as well as research methods and tools necessary for the study of premodern Japanese Buddhism. Readings require basic familiarity with at least one of the following languages: classical Chinese, kanbun, or classical Japanese.

2020

University of Cambridge
  • Research assistantships for the following students: Junfu WONG (Ph.D.), Kelsey GRANGER (Ph.D.), Xi FANG (Ph.D.), Daniel SHERIDAN (Ph.D.), and Mia MA (Ph.D.)
  •  Funding for language training for graduate students:
    – Japanese for sinologists, with Dr Hideko Mitsui
    – Classical Tibetan, by Dr. Nathan Hill
    – Hands-on training seminar on East Asian paper, by Dr. Agnieszka Helman-Wazny
    – Dunhuang manuscripts training at British Library, by Dr. Imre Galambos
  • Travel subsistence for graduate students towards their research on topics related to Chinese Buddhism and Dunhuang. Because of the pandemic, these were used only at the beginning of the 2020.
Peking University
  • From June 9th to June 13th, 2020, the Center funded and organized an academic excursion to Hangzhou, Mount Wuyi and other historical sites in the Jiangnan region, titled: “From Assam to Wuyi Shan—A Field Study of the Historical Sites of Sino-Indic Tea Trade in Modern Times”. Participants included current Indian Language and Literature Studies Post-doctoral fellows, Wang Jun, Jia Xiaonan, and Li Xi, and Doctoral candidates, Bian Huiyuan, Hu Junlin, Hu Ziqi, and Li Xiaonan, and Master student Ma Yan. Students and fellows participated in reading groups and site visits to Sanwei shuwu 三味書屋, Shen Gardens 沈園, and the Orchard Pavilion 蘭亭 in Shaoxing. They also attended “Unbound Awareness—a Retrospective Exhibition of the Art and Calligraphy of Zhao Puchu” (無盡意——趙樸初書法藝術展). Additionally, participants visited the Chinese Tea Museum and Longjing Tea Village; Tianxin Yongle Monastery 永樂禪寺, and the former residence of Zhu Xi. The trip culminated in a series of research presentations and exchanges on Tea’s history and the related feildwork.
  • On August 17th–25th, 2020, the Center sponsored Doctoral candidates Bian Huiyuan and Qiu Qi to participate in the activity “Flower-Rain on the  Silk Road, Buddha-Light on Sand Gravel—Dunhuang Grottos Art Survey” in Dunhuang. One aspect of the Center’s current project supported by the National Social Science Foundation, “Research on and Translations of Important Indian Classical Sanskrit Texts on Literature and Art” (Project No: 18ZDA286), focuses on how classical Indian architecture, Buddhist statues, and painting traditions have affected China’s history. Therefore, during this field study, the Center supported related researchers to visit and survey the Mogao Grottoes and Leiyin Monastery sites, No. 275, 57, 220, 321, 158, 45, 254, 322, 217, 156, and several semi-open caves, including, Xiqianfo dong 西千佛洞, Yangguan 陽關, Yumen Pass 玉門關, Yadan 雅丹 Scenic Area, 榆林窟 Yulin Caves, and Caves No. 32, 33, 34, 35, 39, and Special Caves No. 2 and 4.
Princeton University
  • Funding for the following first-year graduate students: Heather F. HEIMBACH and Echo WENG.

Heather Heimbach

Heather F. Heimbach is a first-year doctoral student in the Asian Religions subfield of the Department of Religion. She is interested in the development of new religious movements (NRM) in twentieth-century Japan. She hopes to investigate wartime and Occupation-period religion in Japan by exploring the history of Konkōkyō, a new religious movement registered as a Sectarian Shinto organization under the Japanese imperial regime. She received her B.A. in East Asian Languages and Cultures at Columbia University in May 2020.

 

Echo Weng

Echo joined the program in the Asian Religions subfield in 2020. Her research interests center on disability, body, medicine, and healing in medieval Chinese Buddhism. She is particularly interested in the disciplinary nature of Buddhist images and the interactions between images and practitioners in the realm of dream. She is also interested in the dialogue between religion and science fiction. Prior to coming to Princeton, Echo received her B.A. in Comparative Literature at Georgetown University and her M.A. in East Asian Languages and Cultures at Columbia University.

 

Yale University
  • Funding for Ph.D. students, Iljea LEE, Jusung LEE and John G. GRISAFI, who are working on topics related to Buddhism.

Iljea Lee

Iljea Lee grew up in New York City. He has a BA From Queens College, City University of New York, an MA From Boston University, an M. DIV. from Yale Divinity School, and is currently a Ph.D. student at Yale University in the Department of Religious Studies. He has worked at Harvard for five years prior to beginning his doctoral program at Yale. He is studying early Buddhist texts with Phyllis Granoff.

John G. Grisafi

John G. Grisafi is a Ph.D. student in Religious Studies at Yale, in the Asian Religions program and Religion and Modernity program. He previously earned a B.A. in East Asian Languages and Civilization and World History, and an M.A. in East Asian Languages and Civilizations from the University of Pennsylvania. John also studied Korean at the Defense Language Institute and Kyunghee University. He has worked as a journalist for NK News/NK Pro and as a Korean linguist and military analyst for the US Army. He lived and worked for more than five years in South Korea. John’s research and teaching interests include Korean history, East Asian religion, and the politics of religion and secularism. His research covers the politics of religion in modern Korea, including issues pertaining to Christianity, Buddhism, Confucianism, Shamanism, new and marginal religious movements, Japanese religions, and other religions. His work emphasizes the discourses around religion, religious freedom, and the secular, as well as the political history and historiography of religion, religious places, and religious traditions and ideologies in Korea.

Jusung Lee

Jusung Lee is a Ph.D. student at Yale University’s Department of Religious Studies. He has studied Buddhism widely and in great depth in the East and in the West. At Dongguk University, the leading Buddhist Studies university in Korea, he was able to acquire extensive knowledge of Buddhism by reading Buddhist scriptures, studying Buddhist philosophy, and studying the history of Indian, Chinese, and Korean Buddhism. He graduated summa cum laude from college. He then enrolled in the MTS (Master of Theological Studies) program at the Harvard Divinity School where he had the opportunity to acquaint him with recent scholarly approaches to the study of Korean Buddhism by Western scholars. At Yale, he intends to examine Buddhism in colonial Korea in relationship to Japanese Buddhism. More specifically, his doctoral research will focus on exploring how Korean Buddhists perceived Japanese Buddhism during the Japanese occupation and how this perception influenced their Buddhist views and activities by comparing Korean Buddhists who studied abroad in Japan and those who stayed in Korea.

 

2019

University of Cambridge
  • Research Assistantships for four Ph.D students (Jing Feng, Junfu Wong, Kelsey Granger, Xi Fang) who have been conducting relevant research under Dr. Galambos and supporting various aspects of the network, including assisting with the lecture and conference series.
  • Teaching classes for graduate students. The courses were: (1) Elementary Japanese for graduate students, (2) Tibetan language classes, (3) Japanese for sinologists.
  • Travel allowance were provided for graduate students working towards their research on topics related to Chinese Buddhism and Dunhuang.
  • Visits to the British Library to study Buddhist manuscripts and paintings from Dunhuang.
  • Purchase of books related to Buddhist studies and Buddhist manuscript culture.
Hamburg University
  • Remuneration for Sigrid Francke who supports the network.
  • Continued funding for joint project with the German State Library, Berlin.
Harvard University
  •  Supported CAMLab’s multimedia projects including the production and preview of the documentary film, “To The Moon”, and the filming of Peking opera performer Rachel Liu who perform the “Heavenly Maiden Scattering Flowers” as part of a forthcoming media project in which the filmed performance will be intercut with images of Buddhist statuary and iconography
University of Oxford
  • Publication support for Dr. Christopher V. Jones (British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow in the Faculty of Oriental Studies) to publish his book (which has been produced during his period of postdoctoral research in Oxford), The Buddhist Self: On Tathāgatagarbha and Ātman (University of Hawai’i Press, forthcoming).
Peking University
  • Supported Peking University’s Ph.D. students Bian Huiyuan, Hu Junlin, Hu Ziqi, Li Xiaonan, and Ma Yan to attend the 2019 International and Intensive Program on Buddhism at Inalco, Paris, France (Summer 2019).
  • Co-hosted “2019 Annual Buddhist and East Asian Cultural Seminar” (Winter 2019) in Kunming, Yunnan, which includes activities such as youth scholar forums and cultural visits.
Princeton University
  • Publication support for Dr. Hao Chunwen’s book Dunhuang Manuscripts: An Introduction to Texts from the Silk Road. Glorisun provided funding for Prof. Hao to conduct research at Princeton University for six months, including regular collaboration with Prof. Stephen F. Teiser on the translation; as well as to underwrite the production of the text. Publication by Portico Press in early 2020.

 

2018

University of Cambridge
  • Student bursaries for four students studying topics related to Buddhism, Dunhuang and the Silk Road.
  • Research Assistantships for three students to help organize the Cambridge Dunhuang Studies Conference, the Dunhuang and Silk Road Seminars talk series, as well as the Tangut language classes with Professor Peng Xiangqian, a visiting academic from Ningxia University.
  • Hosted Prof. Stephen Teiser to give a talk as part of the China Research Seminar. The talk is titled, “The Beginning and End of the Dunhuang Manuscripts.”
  • Training for graduate students including visit to the British Library in London to examine the Dunhuang manuscripts, and The Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology in Cambridge to learn about material culture.
  • A Japanese course for sinologists.
  • Research project at Wiltshire County on archival material related to two trips by Otani Kozui (22nd Abbot of the Nishi Honganji sect of Buddhism in Japan) to Britain in the early 20th century.
  • Research project at the British Library working with Buddhist manuscripts from Dunhuang.
  • Purchase of books related to Buddhism to build up research library.
  • Administrative support for the organization of the conference and the lecture series, including accounting
Hamburg University 
  • Remuneration for Sigrid Francke who supports the network, especially with regards to the extensive organizational matters associated with academic events such as lectures and workshops. Her longstanding experience in editorial capacities also allows her to expertly manage the forthcoming volumes of the Hamburg Buddhist Studies book series.
  • Procurement of books, journals, and databases to help grow Asia Africa Institute’s library collection, and to provide for the necessities of especially younger scholars’ broad range of work-in-progress.
  • Provided travel allowance for Dr. Steffen Döll to participate in the “Creating the World of Zen: Chinese Zen Buddhism and Its Spread in East Asia” hosted by Professor Albert Welter of the University of Arizona and sponsored him to participate in the FROGBEAR Research Group 2.2 in Korea and Japan for field research, library research, network building and collection of materials.
  • Funding for joint project with the German State Library, Berlin, electronic facsimiles of East Asian Buddhist Canons such as the Shôgozô Collection of the Shôsô-in. This project is unique in that not a single Western university has access to a complete set of these documents. This resource is extremely important for the study of East Asian Buddhism in general and shall be made available through the CrossAsia database of the Berlin State Library. The project is underway and will be finalized in 2020/2021.
Peking University 
  • Publication support for Prof. Zhan Ru to publish his journal article “戒律與計時——以唐代一行法師為中心” (Literature and Culture Studies, 2018 (02): 75–80).
  • Publication support for Prof. Chen Ming to publish his journal articles “漢譯佛經中的天竺藥名札記(一–五)” (Chinese Medicine and Culture 2018 13 (1): 39–46, 2018 13 (2): 28–34, 2018 13 (3): 14–21, 2018 13 (4): 50–64,2018 13 (5): 31–36).
  • Publication support for Prof. Li Silong to publish his journal article “法演正見 音暢十方——我與《法音》的點滴因緣” (The Voice of Dharma 2018 (1): 39–41).
  • Publication support for Prof. Wang Lina to publish her journal articles “A study of poet-monks in Da Jianfu Monastery in Chang’an of the Tang China” (Chanxue yanjiu [Research in Chan Studies] 2018 3 (96): 21–28); “The Research of Buddhaʼs Biographies Literature” (Journal of Indian and Buddhist Studies March 2018 66(3): 76–81).
  • Publication support for co-edited and co-published journal, Studies in History of Buddhism, with Zhejiang University.
Princeton University 
  • Funding for Kyle Bond, and Kentaro Ide to participate in FROGBEAR Japan Research Cluster.
  • Funding for Kelly Carlton, travel to and from FROGBEAR seminar, Ghent, Belgium; language training, Peking Normal University.
  • Funding for Sinae Kim, travel to and from UBC Intensive Course.
  • Funding for Minhao Zhai to participate in FROGBEAR Korea Research Cluster.

 

Yale University
  • Participation of one student (Nathaniel Lovdhal) in the Winter Program in Taiwan.
  • Funding for MA student Xianguan Liu (釋賢貫) to take summer Sanskrit language course at the University of Wisconsin.
  • Funding for MA student Haohao Chang (釋賢構) to take summer Sanskrit language course at the University of Wisconsin.
  • Tuition support for Illjea Lee (January–May 2018). He received B.A. from Queens College, City University of New York, M.A. from Boston University, and M. DIV. from Yale Divinity School. He is currently a Ph.D. student at Yale University in the Department of Religious Studies and studying early Buddhist texts with Dr. Phyllis Granoff.

 

Nate has an MA in Buddhist Studies from McMaster University and is currently a PhD student in the Department of Religious Studies. His research focuses on Buddhist monastic identity in late medieval China.

 

 

• January-May 2018: student scholarship for Iljea Lee:

Iljea Lee grew up in New York City. He has a BA From Queens College, City University of New York, an MA From Boston University, an M. DIV. from Yale Divinity School, and is currently a PhD student at Yale University in the Department of Religious Studies. He has worked at Harvard for five years prior to beginning his doctoral program at Yale. He is studying early Buddhist texts with Phyllis Granoff.

 

 

2017

 

Peking University
  • Two monk-students, Venerable Jizhao and Venerable Daowu, doing their doctoral program, at the Jawaharlal Nehru University in India and Hanazono University in Japan respectively, both aided by the Glorisun Global Network of Buddhist Studies at Peking University.
  • Publication support for student Yao Hui to publish her doctoral dissertation “Research on the Buddhist Ritual Folk Music in the Western Part of Beijing and on Its Safeguarding: Zhang Guangquan Folk Music Club as a Case”. This book helps to further study the promotion of the development of folk Buddhist music and its related protection.
  • Publication support for Prof. Zhan Ru to publish his journal article “Precepts for Lay Buddhists—Types of Rituals for Initiating Devoted Donors into Monkhood at Dunhuang Based on P.2984V” (Dunhuang Research, 2017(01): 91–95). This article analyzes the differences between P. 2984V and other documents focused on the rituals of five precepts listed in this manuscript, which serves as a master copy. The article concludes with a final explication of the reasons for these discrepancies based on the time and details of recorded monkhood
    initiation rituals and contents, in an effort to reveal the discipline of life at Dunhuang at the time.
  • Publication support for Prof. Wang Lina to publish her journal article “Tangdai changan siyuan cangshu tanze” [Research of Books collection of temples in Chang An of the Tang Dynasty] (Fo xue yanjiu [Buddhist Studies] 2017(01): 161–168).
University of Cambridge
  • Stipend to three graduate students working on areas related to Chinese Buddhism and Dunhuang Studies.
  • Visit to British Library for a first-hand examination of Dunhuang manuscripts. This is a very useful exercise, considering that the largest collection of Chinese Buddhist manuscripts in the world is located in London.
  •  Purchase of books related to Buddhism and Chinese religions to build up research library. This acquistion help toward research on Chinese Buddhism which has not been formally done at Cambridge before and thus there have been no concentrated efforts to accumulate books related to this field of research.
  • Administrative support for the organization of the conference and the lecture series, including accounting

 

Students were provided the opportunity for a first-hand examination of the Dunhuang manuscripts. This proved to be a very useful exercise, considering that the largest collection of Chinese Buddhist manuscripts in the world is located in London.

Princeton University
  • Participation of two graduate students FROGBEAR research clusters in Korea and Japan.
  • Participation of three graduate students and one post-doctoral fellow in the Woodenfish/Dunhuang Academy Seminar at Dunhuang