PROJECT DESCRIPTION
Lectures and conference, Oslo / Rosendal 2008
Conference title:
Zen Texts as "Public" Documents:
Zen Rhetoric in a diachronic and comparative perspective
Conference description:
The significance of the conference for current research projects at IKOS:
This invitational conference / seminar is intended to mark and enhance Oslo University's commitment to Buddhist studies, to establish and deepen relationships to internationally leading scholar, and to give impetus to research activities on important aspects of East Asian Buddhism currently conducted at the IKOS. The organizers have chosen a topic that puts emphasis on the interdisciplinary and diachronic aspects of Buddhist studies and which will contribute to many of the ongoing research projects at IKOS. As such the conference is not an isolated event but will have an important impact on long-term research activities.
Background - Buddhist studies at the University of Oslo:
In the recent years Buddhist studies at the Department of Culture Studies and Oriental Languages have become one of the focal areas of research and the topic has been approached from a broad range of angles. On the one hand studies have focused one different areas, including India, China, Tibet, Japan, Korea, and Mongolia, on the other hand research has been conducted with different methods and concentrated on different aspects of Buddhist studies. Besides anthropologic studies on Modern Buddhism among minorities in China, the adaptation of Buddhism to different areas and socio-political conditions in the course of its spread throughout East-Asia, the interaction of Buddhism and state in pre-modern and modern Korea, textual and linguistic studies have been the main focus of current research activities.
Text oriented studies focus on the tri-lingual (Sanskrit, Tibetan, Chinese) reading and study of canonical sūtra and commentary literature, as well as the design of a quadrilingual database (Sanskrit, Tibetan, Chinese, with English translations). In addition, extensive studies on the semantics and syntax of canonical texts written in Buddhist Hybrid Chinese and Buddhist texts written in the early Chinese vernacular have been conducted.
Concretely, current projects at IKOS include the following:
- Thesaurus Literaturae Buddhicae (TLB), a quadrilingual presentation of Buddhist literature sentence by sentence in Sanskrit, Chinese, Tibetan and English (ed. in chief: Jens Braarvig). Prof. Braarvig has been previously involved in the EBTI and CBETA projects and is one of the invited speakers at the EBTI/CBETA conference in Taibei, Feb. 2008. Collaboration with scholars in Taiwan, Korea, and Japan on various aspects of the digitalization of Buddhist texts, electronic dictionaries, text- and analytic databases are one of the focal concerns of researchers on Buddhism at IKOS.
- Thesaurus Linguae Sericae (TLS), An Historical and Comparative Encyclopaedia of Chinese Conceptual Schemes (ed. in chief: Christoph Harbsmeier; co-editor for Buddhist Chinese: Christoph Anderl). During the recent years, one of the main areas of research have been the semantic and syntactic analysis of Buddhist texts within the framework of the database.
- The Emergence of Buddhist Colloquial Chinese - Studies in the Formation of the Pre-modern Vernacular in China (Christoph Anderl); part of the project is an English translation of the Zǔtáng jí 祖堂集 (Compilation from the Patriarchs' Hall), one of the most important texts for the study of Early Vernacular Chinese and the history of the Chán School.
- Halvor Eifring is presently in the process of initiating an interdisciplinary project on the Cultural History of Meditation that will involve scholars from a variety of disciplines, including scholars of Religion, scholars of East Asian Studies, Buddhologists, historians, and psychologists.
- In the borderlands of the Buddha: Ritual specialists and the localization of Buddhism across Asia (project director: Mark Teeuwen)
- A project of translating important Chán Buddhist texts from China, Korea, and Japan into Norwegian has just been concluded (participants: Halvor Eifring, Christoph Anderl, Vladimir Thikhonov, Mark Teeuwen)
- Studies on the history of Korean Buddhism and the interaction between Buddhism and state (Vladimir Tikhonov)
- Studies on Tibetan Buddhism and contemporary Buddhism in Mongolia (Hanna Havnevik)
- Buddhist tantrism (Prof. emeritus Per Kværne)
Topic of the conference:
One of the crucial factors for the success of the Chinese Chán School was without doubt the creativity and productivity of its adherents with respect to literary genres and devices. Many texts did not only appeal "internally" to members of the Chán (China) / Sǒn (Korea) / Zen (Japan) schools but also aimed at reaching the educated elite (literati, officials, aristocracy, etc.) and a broader readership.
The overall aim of the invitational conference is a text-based analysis of aspects concerning the literary strategies which were deployed by authors and compilers of Chán / Sǒn / Zen texts in a historical and diachronic perspective, as well as through a comparative view on developments in China, Korea, and Japan.
Some of the basic questions will be the following: What were the rhetoric strategies in specific texts? What changes occurred in the course of the development of literary genres within Chán / Sǒn / Zen? Are there any "continuities"? How were strategies adapted to different sociopolitical environments and ideological purposes? How did innovations interact with other genres and traditions?
Methodologically, the approach to these topics tries to combine a philological text-based analysis of linguistic devices (language, genre, rhetoric means, etc.) with a discourse-oriented analysis (in its broadest sense!), trying to relate the text to its sociopolitical surrounding and trying to reveal aspects of motivation, ideology, intended readership, political intent, etc.
The aim of this approach is a better understanding of the structure of this type of texts, their development, and the specific use of language / genre in relationship to "external" factors, such as the sociopolitical surrounding and intended readership, in addition to gaining a better understanding of specific sectarian and ideological purposes.
The topic is interdisciplinary in a multiple sense, trying to combine modern methodological devices with a text-based philological and linguistic analysis of texts, and thereby placing the development of literary traditions and rhetoric devices into the broader context of historical and sociopolitical conditions. In addition, developments in China, Korea, and Japan are compared.
Concretely, the topic will be approached from four angles:
1. "Pre-Chán" rhetoric in China
In this section rhetoric devices typical for Chinese Buddhist texts prior to the development of the Chán School will be analyzed in order to determine possible antecedents for the development of Chán specific rhetorical devices.
2. Chán rhetoric in China
Several problems concerning Chán rhetoric will addressed: the specific linguistic features and rhetoric devices of early Chán texts found among the Dūnhuáng documents, the development during the "Classical" period of Chán and in the Recorded Sayings literature of the Sòng period, Chán-Buddhist inspired Chinese poetry, as well as features of Chán writings in the modern period.
3. Sǒn rhetoric in Korea
Specific features of Sǒn rhetoric in Korea will be analyzed and compared to Chinese Chán. Special attention will be given to continuities / discontinuities concerning the development of literary devices.
4. Zen rhetoric in Japan
The focus of this section will be the transmission of Zen texts to Japan and developments during medieval Japan.
