Episodes of the Buddha’s life are portrayed at the Dunhuang grottoes either as large-scale separate murals or as small vignettes painted in an illustration of the sutra. For a long ...read more
In the last several years, fantastic manuscript finds have surfaced opening new windows into the scholarly study of the development of Buddhist literature. Gandhara Corpora represents a multifaceted, holistic approach ...read more
Buddhist Sūtra Literature represents the diverse, discursive genre of scripture held to be canonical by various Buddhist traditions because it was considered to be buddhavacana (words spoken by the Buddha). ...read more
My project focuses on the history of Baohua Mountain from the late Ming to the middle Qing period (seventeenth–eighteenth century), tracing the establishment and development of the Vinaya (monastic code) ...read more
This project focuses on the modal markers used in the Vinaya texts translated into Chinese in the early 5th century: Four-Part Vinaya, Sarvâstivāda Vinaya, Mahīśāsaka Vinaya and Mahāsāṃghika Vinaya. Vinaya ...read more
My project focuses on the satire of Brahmins as well as religious mendicants in other religious traditions (e.g. Buddhist and Jain), and their use as stock characters in the classical Indian literary tradition ...read more
Mourning texts (āi jìwén 哀祭文) are an important genre of Dūnhuáng 敦煌 literature and are usually regarded as a subgenre of Dūnhuáng "prayer texts” (yuànwén 願文). More than 230 mourning texts are ...read more
The resurgence of identity politics in India has deeply polarised public discourse between a fundamental clash of cultures and a liberal, pluralistic view of society. Behind the present deadlock is ...read more
The main objective of this research are the flying apsaras in the grottoes of the Northern Wei Dynasty, focusing on the three main royal grottoes, Yungang Grottoes, Longmen Grottoes and Gongyi ...read more
The Indian Sufi romances (premākhyāns), written in the Avadhi language by poets with Muslim origins, are mystical narratives that have circulated across South Asia, defying literary genres and linguistic barriers. ...read more