Buddhism and the Dynamics of Transculturality Religion and Society
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Buddhism and the Dynamics of Transculturality Religion and Society Edited by Gustavo Benavides, Frank J. Korom, Karen Ruffle and Kocku von Stuckrad Volume 64 Buddhism and the Dynamics of Transculturality New Approaches Edited by Birgit Kellner ISBN 978-3-11-041153-9 e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-041308-3 e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-041314-4 ISSN 1437-5370 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. For details go to: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. Library of Congress Control Number: 2019941312 Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. © 2019 Birgit Kellner, published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston This book is published in open access at www.degruyter.com. Typesetting: Integra Software Services Pvt. Ltd. Printing and binding: CPI books GmbH, Leck www.degruyter.com Contents Birgit Kellner 1 Introduction 1 Ingo Strauch 2 Buddhism in the West? Buddhist Indian Sailors on Socotra (Yemen) and the Role of Trade Contacts in the Spread of Buddhism 15 Anna Filigenzi 3 Non-Buddhist Customs of Buddhist People: Visual and Archaeological Evidence from North-West Pakistan 53 Toru Funayama 4 Translation, Transcription, and What Else? Some Basic Characteristics of Chinese Buddhist Translation as a Cultural Contact between India and China, with Special Reference to Sanskrit ārya and Chinese sheng 85 Lothar Ledderose 5 Stone Hymn – The Buddhist Colophon of 579 Engraved on Mount Tie, Shandong 101 Anna Andreeva 6 “To Overcome the Tyranny of Time”: Stars, Buddhas, and the Arts of Perfect Memory at Mt. Asama 119 Fabio Rambelli 7 In the Footprints of the Buddha: Ceylon and the Quest for the Origin of Buddhism in Early Modern Japan – A Minor Episode in the History of the Japanese Imagination of India 151 Davide Torri 8 From Geographical Periphery to Conceptual Centre: The Travels of Ngagchang Shakya Zangpo and the Discovery of Hyolmo Identity 169 VI Contents Markus Viehbeck 9 Indo-Tibetan Relations in Tibetan Polemical Discourse: Reconsidering Cultural Dynamics between Tradition and Innovation 201 Jonathan Samuels 10 Revisiting the Emic Perspective: Lessons to Be Learnt from the Worldly–Other-Worldly Distinction in Tibet and Beyond 225 Index 261 Birgit Kellner 1 Introduction This volume originated with the conference “Buddhism and the Dynamics of Transculturality,” which was held June 11–13, 2012, at the University of Heidelberg, within the congenial atmosphere of the International Academic Forum Heidelberg (IWH).1 Davide Torri contributed an additional essay based on new fieldwork conducted in Nepal, work that became even more relevant after the country was devastated by a series of earthquakes in April and May 2015. During the long and complex history of Buddhism, extending back in time for more than 2500 years, doctrines, practices and institutions repeatedly crossed cultural boundaries, undergoing considerable change for that very rea- son. The involvement of Buddhism in processes of cultural exchange and trans- fer has been remarked upon frequently. However, perhaps owing to the nature of the subject, which is both pervasive and seemingly subject to endless varia- tion, scholars have tended to treat cultural exchange and its short- to long-term aftereffects descriptively, demonstrating that transcultural processes played a role in the history of Buddhism. But they have not necessarily probed very deeply into the how. A new attempt at approaching the subject seemed timely, especially considering that the more recent growth of interest in aspects of transculturality across a variety of pertinent disciplines, including art history and archaeology, history as well as anthropology, had also begun to make itself felt here and there in the field of Buddhist Studies. The Heidelberg conference, organized within the framework of the interdis- ciplinary research cluster “Asia and Europe in a Global Context: The Dynamics of Transculturality,” was convened to bring together scholars of Buddhism across disciplinary boundaries for joint reflection on various topics that have emerged in connection with three critical aspects of Buddhism’s global history: – the spread of Buddhist doctrines, practices and institutions in terms of pat- terns of mobility, as well as in terms of the social networks that support or prevent the establishment of Buddhism in a particular region; – the domestication of Buddhism in new cultural environments, and the vari- ous strategies and devices utilized towards this end; 1 Special thanks are due to Ina Buchholz and Kathrin Amend for the efficient and graceful orga- nization and running of the conference, as well as to Markus Viehbeck, Alexander Häntzschel and Alexandra Heidle for lending various forms of support during the conference. I would also like to thank Liudmila Olalde Rico for editorial support in the final production stages of this vol- ume, and Cynthia Peck-Kubaczek for improving the English of the introduction. Open Access. © 2019 Birgit Kellner, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110413083-001 2 Birgit Kellner – the production of Buddhist histories that newly framed and freshly contex- tualized previous processes of cultural exchange, histories that were crucial to Buddhism’s spread and domestication in the relevant regions. The papers now assembled in this volume loosely follow a long trajectory: from ancient Gandhāra across medieval China and Japan, to nineteenth-century Tibet and contemporary Nepal. They are, however, not arranged in a strict chro- nological order of the historical periods they concern. The topics discussed under the umbrella of these three large thematic areas are as diverse as revelry scenes in Gandhāran art, Buddhist stone inscriptions in Shandong, star wor- ship and the arts of perfect memory in medieval Japan, and conformity with Indian tradition as a standard in Tibetan Buddhist polemical literature. The essays address religious practice and discourse, visual and material culture, as well as sociopolitical issues ranging from political legitimation to the formation of ethnic identities. Most of the papers are concerned with pre-modern Asian societies and cultures, but some explore how religious and cultural knowledge produced in the past was rediscovered and re-contextualized in early moder- nity, this connected to processes that still reach into the present. Each essay is intended as an original contribution in its own field and disciplinary context, presenting hitherto unstudied materials and sources, while simultaneously striving to participate in a larger common conversation under the aegis of the somewhat elusive concept of transculturality. In 1940, the Cuban anthropologist Fernando Ortiz propagated the term “transculturation” to “express the highly varied phenomena that have come about in Cuba as a result of the extremely complex transmutations of culture that have taken place there.”2 In his study of the impact of sugar and tobacco on Cuban society, Ortiz argued that the complex cultural changes on an island where new waves of migrants arrived so many times through its history could not be properly considered a form of acculturation, a “process of transition from one culture to another.” With his elaboration of transculturation, Ortiz placed himself in opposition to conceptions that dominated US-American an- thropology at the time. Both elements – a fascination with particularly dense forms of cultural mixture effected by migration, and discontent with prevailing theories that approach cultures as homogeneous and stable systems – also characterize the theorization of transculturality as it intensified over the course of the 1990s, this focused on contemporary conditions of globalization. As the 2 Quoted from Ortiz (1995, 98) (new edition of the first English translation from 1947; for the Spanish original see Ortiz [1940]). 1 Introduction 3 German philosopher Wolfgang Welsch argued,3 cultures “de facto no longer have the insinuated form of homogeneity and separateness. They have instead assumed a new form, which is to be called transcultural insofar that is passes through classical cultural boundaries.”4 Welsch’s concern with moving away from conceptualizing cultures as sta- ble and closed systems is frequently echoed in the rich literature on transcul- tural dynamics that has emerged since then. Elements of Welsch’s approach have, however, been called into question.5 Most importantly in the present context, it cannot be assumed prima facie that the “new” form of cultures is a hallmark of the present. Processes of cultural contact and transformation can surely be studied in all epochs, well before the formation of global capital markets and the advent of the internet, and even well before the European mar- itime expansion in early modernity. Building a theory with universalizing aspi- rations on the premise that transculturality marks a new era in human history risks begging the question, since the construction and dissolution of cultural boundaries is in itself a historical process.6 In keeping with the critical spirit that has characterized the elaboration of the transcultural since Ortiz – distancing from entrenched modes of thinking – and through the increase in