Publikationen

Toshihide Numata Book Award Announcement 2015 (SICHUAN 1)

The Toshihide Numata Book Award in Buddhism is awarded on an annual basis to an outstanding book or books in the area of Buddhist studies. The selection is made by an external committee that is appointed annually. The members of this year’s committee were enthusiastic in their praise of Buddhist Stone Sutras in China. One member wrote that it is “opening a new chapter in the study of Chinese Buddhist ‘Stone Sutras’, by establishing a very fruitful methodological approach to these complex sources. As such, it has far-reaching positive implications for the field at large and represents (especially as part of a general project) an important contribution to the study of Chinese Buddhism as a whole, encompassing areas as diverse as textual studies, archaeology, religious practices and material culture.” Another commented that it “represents a model of successful cooperation between Chinese and Western scholars; the bilingual presentation is particularly noteworthy from this point of view, as it makes the book accessible to a wider scholarly public.”

Bart Dessein, China Review International Vol. 20, 2013 (2016), No. 3–4, 342–343 (SICHUAN 1)

. . . In line with the overall feature of this series, before turning to a detailed description and interpretation of Wofoyuan, the volume starts with a topographical introduction to all the caves in the valley, including a detailed description of their physical features and measurements, and the layout of the contents of each wall of each engraved cave. Having gained a general picture of the layout of the site, in this tremendously helped by the wonderful and lavish photography that characterizes this series, Lothar Ledderose touches upon the chronology of the grove . . .

Bart Dessein, China Review International Vol. 20, 2013 (2016), No. 3–4, 380–381 (SICHUAN 2)

. . . This makes this volume also an interesting philological and text historical study. Moreover, the volume contains the first English translation ever of the “Dhāraṇī Sutra of the Six Gates Spoken by the Buddha” (pp. 42–44) and of the “Sutra on Renouncing the Householder’s Life” (pp. 63–67) . . .

. . . From this and the previous volume on Buddhist stone sutras in Sichuan, it is obvious that the complete series will form an anthology of early medieval Buddhist texts and of the function and the position of these texts in the religious life of early medieval China. The series will also form a reference work on the function of Buddhist institutions in this period. We can therefore only hope for an early publication of the other volumes in this series.

Bart Dessein, China Review International Vol. 20, 2013 (2016), No. 3–4, 407–409 (SHANDONG 1)

. . . This completely bilingually edited Chinese-English book, with its excellent presentation of the sites and of the inscriptions through superb photography (with references to the pictures throughout the text), allowing the reader to form a visual picture of the sites, is not only valuable for those Buddhologists who work on the development of Buddhism and its relation to the secular state in sixth-century China. By showing how, “with their chiseled writings, the monks turned their land into the realm of the Buddha” (p. 44), this volume, more generally, helps anyone interested in Chinese history to form a more nuanced picture of Chinese political history than merely relying on Confucian sources may do . . .

. . . The detailed descriptions of the Buddhist sutras and the insightful interpretations of their importance in Chinese history, along with the overview of publications relating to each of the inscriptions and the comparison of sutra texts with their edited version in the Taishō collection, complemented with a com-plete English translation, make this book a valuable research tool and a volume every Buddhological and Sinological library should have in their collections . . .

Bart Dessein, China Review International Vol. 21, 2014 (2016), No. 2, 189–191 (SHANDONG 2)

. . . As all other volumes in the series, the inscriptions are edited, compared with the Taishō edition, and technical information on the size and type of characters, physical conditions, and so on, is provided. The lavish photography further helps readers visualize the sites and inscriptions. In addition, a history on the study and cataloguing of all different inscriptions is included. This approach lifts this volume to the level of a history of the discipline. . . .

. . . This, along with an analysis of scholarship relating to the inscriptions, makes this book a valuable research tool and a volume every Buddhological and Sinological library should have in their collections.

Karil J. Kucera, Journal of Chinese Religions Vol. 44, No. 2, 2016, 188–190 (SICHUAN 1; SICHUAN 2)

. . . Exemplary in terms of documenting the Buddhist texts inscribed at the site with photographs, rubbings, and transcriptions, both volumes are well organized, consistent in their approach to each cave and the documentation of each text as compared with those found within the Taishō shinshū daizōkyō, variations being listed in the footnotes. The bilingual nature of the volumes—Chinese and English—makes them structurally dense, but accessible to a broader audience . . .

. . . All can easily be read as stand-alone essays on each of the texts they analyze; concisely written and clearly structured, each represents a significant contribution to the field of Buddhist studies providing a perfect entrée into a number of less studied works for both specialists and non-specialists. . .

John Kieschnick, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies Vol. 79(3), 2016, 686–688 (SHANDONG 1; SHANDONG 2; SICHUAN 1; SICHUAN 2)

. . . Perhaps the most important contribution of these volumes is to understanding the craft of stone inscriptions—the challenges calligraphers, stone masons and carvers faced when attempting to realize works of great difficulty, creativity and sophistication. The technical information in these books alerts us to carving choices—U-shaped carving, V-shaped carving, and the unusual “flying white” and “Buddha-hands” carving. The authors point out the challenge of fitting a given sutra or passage to a particular space, and the technical difficulties of carving characters close to a wall or near the floor.

Taken together, these four volumes (and the volumes to come) provide extensive primary material together with background and analysis for any number of types of research into Chinese Buddhist social history, philology and art history.

Florian C. Reiter, Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft Vol. 167(1), 2017, 256–262 (SICHUAN 1; SICHUAN 2)

Sichuan 1: . . . Although some Buddhist texts in those sutra caves were recorded, “none of the stone sutras have been comprehensively and systematically documented, analysed and published” ... and now, it is the very purpose of the ongoing German-Chinese project to tackle exactly that task . . .

. . . The paragraph “Transcription” presents the text of the Lotus Sutra of the Wonderful Law in Cave 1. This is a scholarly master piece for which Ts’ai Sueyling signs: She copies the extant remnants of the text in the Cave and fills in the gaps, thus reconstituting the Sutra on the basis of the canonical version of Kumârajîva’s translation. Different colours of the characters mark their origin and textual function. . . .

. . . impressive book which is a most valuable contribution to the study of China’s history and pious religious culture that was shared by Chinese society as a whole.

Sichuan 2: . . . We realize that a huge amount of financial support and practical means are required to operate a project of that range and fantastic aspiration . . .

. . . Pages 42–44 contain “The Dhāraṇī Sutra of the Six Gates: Translation” which shows both: the Chinese original version and the first English translation of the text which is indeed a marvelous contribution . . .

. . . A “Bibliography” (pp. 443–448) concludes this volume which is a most intriguing opus, fascinating and promising as to forthcoming new volumes in the series Buddhist Stone Sutras in China. These volumes are indispensable for the study of religious Buddhist life and culture in early medieval China.

Bart Dessein, China Review International Vol. 22, 2015 (2017), No. 2, 142–145 (SICHUAN 3)

. . . As in the other volumes in this magnificent series, the combination of archeological, art historical, and philological work provides us with a new and renewed look at the social and political embedding of the creation of Buddhist caves, enhances our knowledge of text history . . . and adjusts our view of actual Buddhist practices of monks and lay believers.

Raoul Birnbaum, T’oung Pao Vol. 103-1-3, 2017, 261–278 (SHANDONG 1)

. . . Professor Ledderose’s comprehensive project, of which this mammoth volume under review is just one constituent element, aims to record and study major Buddhist open-air stone inscriptions at Chinese sites. It is a project of enormous scope, which looks to many regions and many sites (some of the sites themselves are enormous), and it involves a substantial international team of dedicated researchers with expertise both in the technical skills required to carry out meticulous fieldwork and communicate its results, and in a broad range of academic fields, including such fields as art history, history of calligraphy, epigraphy, local history, Buddhist studies, and Chinese religions. It is to Ledderose’s credit, together with all his international collaborators and the various generous funding agencies, that this extraordinary visionary endeavor has been seen to fruition . . .

. . . This volume and series on Shandong inscriptions, and the full scope of the project on Buddhist Stone Sutras in China, for which we are deeply grateful, produce in turn a challenge to new generations of scholars to extend these studies through the history of medieval times to the present, to examine how successive waves of peoples lived with these extraordinary religious monuments and thought about them . . .

Florian C. Reiter, Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft Vol. 167(2), 2017, 519–522 (SHANDONG 1)

. . . The pictures and descriptions illustrate what landscape art means in China, it is the melting of the physical, geomorphic nature and the spiritual, intellectual capacity to find and understand an inherent transcendent meaning, using Buddhism as the form of expression. The practical realization was based on a fantastic albeit anonymous craftsmanship that transported art. The volume is absolutely indispensable for the study of religion, of state history and regional culture in China.

Florian C. Reiter, Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft Vol. 167(2), 2017, 522–526 (SHANDONG 2)

. . . The essay by L. Ledderose embeds the studies of the present project group in the tradition of traditional Chinese Han Learning that since the Qing-period aimed at preserving, verifying, understanding and transmitting the cultural heritage of China, which in history was a strong concern of the imperial house and the intellectual elite. The importance of having these Buddhist inscriptions presented in this new and modern study, supported with any technical finesse, need not be explained . . .

Wendi Adamek, Bulletin SOAS Vol. 80 (3), 2017, 614–615 (SICHUAN 3)

. . . The series is widely known to be the most ambitious and comprehensive attempt of its kind. Each volume is eagerly awaited by scholars in the fields of Buddhist studies, Chinese art and archaeology, and medieval Chinese history. This latest production maintains the high standards of the project, providing state-of-the-art documentation of the caves. Moreover, inclusion of more analytic chapters in this volume provides welcome contextualization. An important point that emerges from these studies is that cave inscriptions were used to assert slightly different versions of much-used texts. This sheds additional light on engraved text sponsorship, showing that it was not only a merit-making or text-preservation endeavour, but a means to stake claims about textual accuracy and efficacy.

 

Ha Jungmin 하 정 민, 韓國思想史學 Vol. 56 (2017.8), 429–438 (SHANDONG 1; SHANDONG 2)

auf Koreanisch

Helmut Schmidt-Glintzer, Monumenta Serica Vol. 66, no. 1 (2018), 226–228 (SHANDONG 2; SICHUAN 2)

Die Herausgeber und Bearbeiter haben sich in jeder Hinsicht allergrößter Umsicht befleißigt, und ganz besonders ist ihnen für die Vorlage englischer Übersetzungen zu den Texten zu danken. Die Verbindung allgemein einführender Texte mit der Transkription und Übersetzung der eingeschriebenen Texte und der photographischen Dokumentation der Funde selbst ist für den Forscher ein Vergnügen und ermöglicht dem Interessierten einen virtuellen Rundgang durch die Höhlen und zu den beschriebenen Steinen und Wänden. Format, Umfang und Gewicht der Bände fordern ihren Tribut, doch wird jeder, der sich auf die spektakulären Funde einlässt, reich belohnt. ... Bei einer Neuvermessung der Kultur- und Religionsgeschichte des chinesischen Mittelalters ebenso wie bei einer die Regionen berücksichtigenden Geschichte des Buddhismus in China werden die Ergebnisse dieses Heidelberger Akademieprojektes von grundlegender Bedeutung sein. Sie reihen sich ein in die bahnbrechenden Dokumentationen zu Orten entlang der Seidenstraße sowie zu Yungang, Maijishan und anderen Zentren buddhistischer Frömmigkeit in China. Die zukünftigen Dunhuang-Studien, die sich zu einem eigenen Forschungsfeld entwickelt haben, werden ebenso die Ergebnisse des Steininschriften-Projekts berücksichtigen, wie die bisherigen Erkenntnisse zu den buddhistischen Felshöhlen in Yungang in der Provinz Shanxi ... und am Maijishan in Gansu ... nunmehr in einen erweiterten Kontext gestellt werden können.

Marcus Bingenheimer, T’oung Pao Vol. 104-1-2 (2018), 202–206 (SICHUAN 1; SICHUAN 2; SICHUAN 3)

For such a project to address Buddhist epigraphy in China is a happy occasion for the field at large, as Chinese Buddhist epigraphy is in a way one of its last frontiers....the thousands of inscriptions at temples that have survived into the twentieth century remain mostly uncatalogued and unedited. In this context, Buddhist Stone Sutras in China is an important and meaningful foray into the little studied world of Chinese Buddhist epigraphy, and sets the bar high for future editions of epigraphic material. ... The three main elements of the volumes—essays, photography, and transcriptions— work very well together. ... The question that unites the essays is: What does it mean for this particular text to be inscribed at this location? Although the answers necessarily remain somewhat conjectural, to me they were often convincing. The many successful interpretations prove that such a locative approach to epigraphy is a fruitful way to think about meaning and the development of sites and texts. ... The Sichuan volumes of Buddhist Stone Sutras in China are among the first results of a fascinating large-scale research project, which is successful both in its conception and execution. ... If the data is made openly available, a group of designers could come up with a virtual cave for research in a few days’ work. It would take much less time than our forebears needed to excavate the chambers, chisel the inscriptions, and carve the magnificent reclining Buddha, who is all but ready to float from the stone through the pages of these splendid books into our digital networks.

Florian C. Reiter, Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft Vol. 169(2), 2019, 511-515 (SHANDONG 3)

. . . It is almost needles to say that all these paragraphs are evidence of meticulous scientific work relying on the mastery of the philological and historiographical techniques of traditional Chinese Studies, which is all supported by modern techniques such as photography and cartography. . .

. . . The reader will find a fantastic amount of information that will invite him to visit the region and use these materials as a solid, reliable basis for further regional studies that would have to accept Buddhist religion as a major component that shaped life and history in Shandong and, in fact, in China. An extended “Bibliography” (pp. 499–512) of the reference sources quoted concludes this valuable volume that no Oriental library should fail to acquire.

Jiang Wu, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies Vol. 82 (3), 2019, 576-578 (SHANDONG 3)

. . . The editors admirably maintain the high quality of previous volumes and continue to impress us with the richness of the Buddhist stone carving tradition, calling for even more questions to challenge our understanding of Chinese Buddhism. . .

. . . In sum, the discovery and reproduction of the Buddhist stone sutras in Shandong are exciting developments and will move scholarship forward. I believe that the publication of this series in English and Chinese has without doubt brought the study of the stone sutra tradition into a new era.

Bart Dessein, China Review International Vol. 25, 2018 (2020), No. 2, 104–107 (SICHUAN 4)

. . . As in the previous volumes of this series, philological, historical, art historical, and archaeological approaches importantly modify and adjust our generally accepted knowledge of Buddhism in the Tang era. Buddhism is shown in its dimension of a lived religion in its at times troublesome relation with the central government. One can only praise the Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften, the Institute of Archaeology and Museology at Peking University, the Chengdu Municipal Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, the Sichuan Provincial Research Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, and the Bureau for Cultural Relics of Anyue County for their excellent work.

Florian C. Reiter, Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft Vol. 170(2), 2020, 523-526 (SICHUAN 4)

. . . This presentation of the Sutra on Repaying the Profound Kindness of Parents (pp. 315–316, 349–350) and the Nirvana Sutra (pp. 317–347) following the distribution of the texts on the various walls, is the absolute highlight for any Sinologue and student of Chinese Buddhism.

 

Elisabeth Guthrie, Canadian Journal of Buddhist Studies Vol. 15, 2020, 122-127 (SICHUAN 3)

. . . As part of a four-part series, this volume and its counterparts speak to a high degree of expertise, with the extensive primary and secondary-source research conducted by the international team of scholars, the inclusion of numerous sources in the footnotes, and the careful attention to bibliographical details. The language of the volume is accessible, and the bilingual content is applicable to a wide audience base. This book is highly recommended for graduate students and scholars with familiarity in the disciplines of archaeology, art history, Buddhist studies (especially Chinese Buddhist studies), history, and philology. This volume is an excellent read and will prove a unique addition to any collection.

Florian C. Reiter, Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft Vol. 177(2), 2021, 532-536 (SHAANXI 1)

. . . Seeing these pictures we realize what a hell of work had to be done to decipher and analyse the blurred characters. . . .  It is absolutely rewarding to read the texts and compare the translations that will enable the reader to perceive a sphere of Buddhism that most certainly was unknown to him before.  . . .  It is almost needless to say that the volume in all its parts is painstakingly documented in the footnotes. Again, this is a volume that any library must not miss to acquire.

Bart Dessein, China Review International Vol. 27, 2022, No. 2, early release  (SICHUAN 5)

. . . as to the overall rationale and motivation that underlies the carving of this and similar cave constructions. It is thanks to works such as this magnificent series that we may hope to find an answer to this and related questions.

 

Wendi Adamek, Bulletin SOAS Vol. 86 (1), 2023 (SICHUAN 5)

The fifth volume on Sichuan in the monumental Buddhist Stone Sutras in China series continues the impressive teamwork of the Heidelberger Aka demie der Wissenschaften to document the famous site known as Wofoyuan (Grove of the Reclining Buddha). . . . All the volumes in this series provide high-quality documentation, enabling other scholars to incorporate study of the site. . . . In sum, I have only praise for this magnificent achievement; each aspect of the volume shows the highest degree of attention to detail and quality scholarship. I had the opportunity to hear a presentation by Manuel Sass mann on the technology and labour involved in pro ducing the detailed photos of rubbings and correlat ing them with photos of wall-segments. The proc ess was complicated and exacting, and creates a high standard for other archaeologists. This will be an enduring resource for scholars of medieval China, Buddhism, and Chinese archaeology.