Abstract

The ancient Buddhist culture of Gandhāra (modern Pakistan and Afghanistan) produced a distinctive school of art blending Hellenistic and South Asian formal elements in its portrayal of Buddhist themes. Gandhāra was also a highly literate culture, with well over a thousand inscriptions and around 150 Buddhist manuscripts preserved for us. Many of the inscriptions are attached to Buddhist sculpture and other pieces of art, and stand in dialogue with the object as well as its geographical context. This lecture will present an introduction to the epigraphy of ancient Gandhāra in its relation to Gandhāran Buddhist art, and then discuss how modern digital epigraphy not only provides better documentation and an improved understanding of the texts of Gandhāran inscriptions, but also makes possible a concerted study of text, object, and context that provides broader insights into the nature and development of Gandhāran Buddhism and its artistic expressions.

Moderator：Dr. Chai Yee Leow

Speaker Bio

Dr. Stefan Baums teaches Sanskrit, Prakrit, and Pali language and literature and Buddhist Studies at the Institute for Indology and Tibetology of the University of Munich and serves as lead researcher of the Buddhist Manuscripts from Gandhāra project at the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities. Before joining the University of Munich, he held positions at the University of Copenhagen, the University of Washington, the University of California, Berkeley, and Leiden University. His research interests include Buddhist philology and epigraphy, classical Sanskrit court literature, the development of Buddhist hermeneutics, and the description of Gāndhārī language and literature. His current work focuses on the decipherment and edition of four Gāndhārī manuscripts containing commentaries on early Buddhist verses and the Saṃgītisūtra and a study of the historical connections and exegetical principles of this group of texts. He is editor of the Dictionary of Gāndhārī, co-editor of the Gandhāran Buddhist Texts series, academic lead of the Research Environment for Ancient Documents (READ) software development project, and epigraphist for the Italian Archeological Mission in Pakistan.

Event Information

• Free and open to the public
• December 2nd (Tuesday)
• 7:00PM ET
• This is an in-person event.

Please note

The event will be conducted in English.