28 November, 2022

The Nanzhao and Dali Kingdoms prospered throughout China’s Southwest frontier between the eighth and thirteenth centuries. Nanzhao-Dali coexisted with Tang-Song China, Tibet and the surrounding Southeast Asian civilisations. Buddhism was an important component of the Kingdoms, with the capital understood as a centre for Buddhist learning. For this workshop, we have invited scholars, curators, and researchers from museums and institutions to share their relevant research on Nanzhao-Dali and the surrounding regions from different aspects. We will take some in-depth looks at the material culture, archaeology and history of Buddhism in the region to gain a better understanding of the development of Buddhism in Nanzhao-Dali. We hope you will join us!

LOCATION: Room 303, Lipman Building, 2 Sandyford Rd, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 8SB

CONTACT: [email protected]

The International Research Centre for the History and Culture of Nanzhao and Dali Kingdoms (IRC), established in 2019, is a collaborative venture between Northumbria University, UK, Yunnan Provincial Museum, China, and the Woon Brothers Foundation, Singapore. The aim of the IRC is to promote academic research into the history and culture of the Nanzhao and Dali Kingdoms (dating from 653-937CE and 937-1253CE, respectively), located largely in today’s Yunnan province in southwest China.

Lecture Room 1 at 5pm 

Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies 

Pusey Lane 

Oxford, OX1 2LE 

All Welcome 

All enquiries: [email protected] 

Michaelmas Term 2022 

Monday 7 November 2022 

Ligeia Lugli, The Mangalam Research Centre, Berkeley, California. 

Modelling the Dharma: advances in Buddhist Sanskrit Corpus linguistics and Natural Language Processing 

This talk introduces a new corpus of Buddhist Sanskrit literature that is being developed at the Mangalam Research Centre (Berkeley, California). After presenting the corpus and some of the problems that it poses, the talk will outline the motivations that led to its creation and the methodological avenues that it opens up. It will briefly report on the experimentations with different Word Embedding Models for Buddhist Sanskrit that are currently underway at the Mangalam Research Centre. It then offers some practical examples of how the corpus can be used for Buddhist studies.  

Ligeia Lugli holds a PhD in Study of Religions from SOAS, where she worked on the Mahāyāna discourse on language. Since 2016 she is Head of Lexicography at the Mangalam Research Centre (Berkeley, California), where she directs the Buddhist Translators Workbench, a project aimed at creating digital resources for the study of the Buddhist Sanskrit vocabulary. She is currently also leading a project on Buddhist Sanskrit Natural Language Processing, in collaboration with researchers from the Jožef Stefan Institute in Ljubljana, funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities. At the same time, she is working on the development of a Buddhist Sanskrit corpus, with funding from the Khyentse Foundation, and a programme of education in digital lexicography at the State University of São Paulo, with funding from Brazil’s Ministry of Education. 

Monday 28 November 2022 

Andrew Skilton, Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Oxford 

The Prohibition of Anal Surgery in the Vinaya 

This talk unpacks the prohibition on anal surgery in the bhesajjakhanda/bhaiṣajyavastu section of the Vinaya, revealing a detailed familiarity with the dangers of such surgery, the risks of sexual misinterpretation and the importance of focusing in on technical terminology when translating Buddhist texts.  

Andrew Skilton conducts research on Mahāyāna and Vinaya literature in Sanskrit and Pali, which he teaches in the faculty. He is interested in the interpretation of texts. He has held posts in Cardiff, King’s College, London, and the Bodleian Library.   

April 8–9th 2022, Faculty of Divinity, University of Cambridge.

With support from the Global Humanities Initiative at the University of Cambridge, the Faculty of Divinity and Selwyn College invite scholars and students to a conference devoted to the theme of Buddhist identities across twenty-first century Asia. Over two days, invited and selected speakers will address the evolving status of Asian Buddhist identities as they are constructed, negotiated and intersect with other commitments and affiliations in the globalized, technologized twenty-first century. Speakers will explore the character, changes and challenges of Buddhist identities in a range of contemporary Asian cultures, considering South, Southeast, Central and East Asian Buddhist contexts.For registration and the complete schedule, visit: https://tinyurl.com/cubuddhistidentitiesconference.

We welcome and encourage in-person attendance by all interested parties, but request that all in-person attendees register by April 1st 2022. The conference will also be broadcast via Zoom. The conference has some funds available to support student travel to the event; to request this, or to make other enquiries, please email [email protected].