Periodic Reporting for period 2 - TibSchol (The Dawn of Tibetan Buddhist Scholasticism (11th-13th c.))
Période du rapport: 2023-01-01 au 2024-06-30
TibSchol is the first wide-ranging exploration of the formative phase of Tibetan Buddhist scholasticism. The aim of the project is to provide an integrative picture of this tradition by exploring both the early Tibetan scholastic landscape and the Tibetan scholastic method.
From the 10th century onward, Tibet witnessed a revival of Buddhist culture and a new flowering of religious and intellectual traditions. A massive number of Indian Buddhist teachings were introduced, sparking a huge amount of literary activity. This configuration spurred the development of formal tools of reasoned analysis and hermeneutical devices that were applied to the investigation of the Buddhist scriptures and used in religio-philosophical discussions. The methods and tools that Tibetan scholasticism developed at this time went on to shape an enduring tradition of methodical and systematic learning closely tied to the religious context. Understanding this tradition is essential not only for a more complete appreciation of Tibet’s intellectual history, but also for a more comprehensive and accurate global history of philosophy.
Mapping the personal and intellectual networks of Tibetan scholastics active during the period in question and surveying the early scholastic corpus will pave the way for research on how texts were circulated at that time, as well as how knowledge was propagated. This will make an important contribution to the broader understanding of the social and intellectual history of the first centuries of the Later Spread of Buddhism in Tibet.
TibSchol takes advantage of the resurfacing of a large body of early scholastic writings in manuscript form, which is enabling the exploration of Tibetan scholasticism at a depth that has never before been possible. By examining theoretical excursus on the most significant conceptual tools and their application in exegeses of Indian Buddhist soteriological and philosophical literature, the project is clarifying the basic vocabulary of scholastic discussions. This will make these texts more accessible, even to researchers in other fields, and promote comparative studies with other scholastic cultures worldwide.
From the 10th century onward, Tibet witnessed a revival of Buddhist culture and a new flowering of religious and intellectual traditions. A massive number of Indian Buddhist teachings were introduced, sparking a huge amount of literary activity. This configuration spurred the development of formal tools of reasoned analysis and hermeneutical devices that were applied to the investigation of the Buddhist scriptures and used in religio-philosophical discussions. The methods and tools that Tibetan scholasticism developed at this time went on to shape an enduring tradition of methodical and systematic learning closely tied to the religious context. Understanding this tradition is essential not only for a more complete appreciation of Tibet’s intellectual history, but also for a more comprehensive and accurate global history of philosophy.
Mapping the personal and intellectual networks of Tibetan scholastics active during the period in question and surveying the early scholastic corpus will pave the way for research on how texts were circulated at that time, as well as how knowledge was propagated. This will make an important contribution to the broader understanding of the social and intellectual history of the first centuries of the Later Spread of Buddhism in Tibet.
TibSchol takes advantage of the resurfacing of a large body of early scholastic writings in manuscript form, which is enabling the exploration of Tibetan scholasticism at a depth that has never before been possible. By examining theoretical excursus on the most significant conceptual tools and their application in exegeses of Indian Buddhist soteriological and philosophical literature, the project is clarifying the basic vocabulary of scholastic discussions. This will make these texts more accessible, even to researchers in other fields, and promote comparative studies with other scholastic cultures worldwide.
TibSchol was launched on 1 July 2021. Research activities are divided into five sub-projects:
P1: Persons, schools, and networks in early Tibetan scholasticism
P2: Early Tibetan scholastic literature: the corpus, its constitution and diffusion
P3: Conceptual tools
P4: Hermeneutics
P5: Argumentation: theory and practice
In the first three years of the project, the team has completed the preliminary survey of the initial textual corpus consisting in more than 530 works in handwritten manuscripts, accessible as facsimile.
An important milestone was reached in the domain of digital humanities with the successful training of two Handwritten Text Recognition models for Tibetan cursive script on the platform Transkribus. These models and the Ground Truth have now been made public.
In P1, the survey of the colophons of works in the corpus was completed. Biographical research was conducted to reconstruct the personal network of scholastic authors and assess their place(s) of activity.
In P2, the collection of references to other texts written by 11th-13th century scholastics found in historiographies and catalogues has been expanding our understanding of the range of individuals’ specialized learning and thematic focus of scholarly compositions in that period.
Data on authors, works and their instances is being integrated in a prosopographical database, which is linked to a bibliographical library on Zotero and a library of textual fragments in TEI format. Public access to these tools, and associated datasets will be provided once their development and curation has reached a satisfactory stage.
Thematic inquiries into scholastic tools (P3) have been dealing with discussions on scriptural authority, the theory of definition, and the differentiations at play in the Madhyamaka two-truth framework.
In P4, the question of scholarly authority and of “forgeries” has been examined, as well as Tibetan classifications of Indian tenet systems.
In P5, the development of a rules-based method of public argumentation has been investigated. Works that provide evidence of a growing gulf in Tibet between scholastics and scholars who rejected this approach have also been examined.
The TibSchol team has (co-/)organized three workshops and a symposium, and panels at the 16th Seminar of the International Association for Tibetan Studies (Prague, 3–9 July 2022) and the Association for Asian Studies Annual Conference (Seattle, 14–17 March 2024). Research results were presented in 28 lectures and three articles have appeared.
P1: Persons, schools, and networks in early Tibetan scholasticism
P2: Early Tibetan scholastic literature: the corpus, its constitution and diffusion
P3: Conceptual tools
P4: Hermeneutics
P5: Argumentation: theory and practice
In the first three years of the project, the team has completed the preliminary survey of the initial textual corpus consisting in more than 530 works in handwritten manuscripts, accessible as facsimile.
An important milestone was reached in the domain of digital humanities with the successful training of two Handwritten Text Recognition models for Tibetan cursive script on the platform Transkribus. These models and the Ground Truth have now been made public.
In P1, the survey of the colophons of works in the corpus was completed. Biographical research was conducted to reconstruct the personal network of scholastic authors and assess their place(s) of activity.
In P2, the collection of references to other texts written by 11th-13th century scholastics found in historiographies and catalogues has been expanding our understanding of the range of individuals’ specialized learning and thematic focus of scholarly compositions in that period.
Data on authors, works and their instances is being integrated in a prosopographical database, which is linked to a bibliographical library on Zotero and a library of textual fragments in TEI format. Public access to these tools, and associated datasets will be provided once their development and curation has reached a satisfactory stage.
Thematic inquiries into scholastic tools (P3) have been dealing with discussions on scriptural authority, the theory of definition, and the differentiations at play in the Madhyamaka two-truth framework.
In P4, the question of scholarly authority and of “forgeries” has been examined, as well as Tibetan classifications of Indian tenet systems.
In P5, the development of a rules-based method of public argumentation has been investigated. Works that provide evidence of a growing gulf in Tibet between scholastics and scholars who rejected this approach have also been examined.
The TibSchol team has (co-/)organized three workshops and a symposium, and panels at the 16th Seminar of the International Association for Tibetan Studies (Prague, 3–9 July 2022) and the Association for Asian Studies Annual Conference (Seattle, 14–17 March 2024). Research results were presented in 28 lectures and three articles have appeared.
TibSchol has already gone beyond the state of the art with its initial survey of the early scholastic corpus. The ongoing exploration of specific topics that have hardly or never been addressed in modern scholarship, which TibSchol members have taken up in presentations and which will also be reflected in publications currently in the works, also represents an extremely valuable advance in the field.
By the end of the project, we expect to be able to shed new light on the following questions:
- Who were the individuals involved in scholastic activities in Tibet during the 11th to 13th centuries, how were they connected, and with which enclaves of learning were they affiliated?
- Which textual traditions and topics did Tibetan scholastics in the 11th to 13th c. favor, and which Indian and Tibetan treatises did they teach, study, and refer to in their own works?
- What is the contextual and theoretical background of discussions on tools and methods, and what degree of abstraction do they display?
- What were the dominant problems and debates in Tibetan Buddhist scholarship of the 11th to 13th century, and how were scholastic tools used to frame and solve philosophical and exegetical problems?
Answering these questions will bring research on early Tibetan scholasticism to an entirely new level. TibSchol further embraces questions shared by the fields of religious studies and philosophy. It aims to understand the phenomena associated with Tibetan scholasticism as significant parts of world intellectual history and philosophy. The results of TibSchol’s research will allow for better informed comparisons with other forms of scholasticism worldwide, and contribute, in methodological terms, to a more nuanced conceptualization of scholasticism as a cross-cultural comparative category. The technical tools being developed and the data being collected will also remain available as a long-term output of the project.
By the end of the project, we expect to be able to shed new light on the following questions:
- Who were the individuals involved in scholastic activities in Tibet during the 11th to 13th centuries, how were they connected, and with which enclaves of learning were they affiliated?
- Which textual traditions and topics did Tibetan scholastics in the 11th to 13th c. favor, and which Indian and Tibetan treatises did they teach, study, and refer to in their own works?
- What is the contextual and theoretical background of discussions on tools and methods, and what degree of abstraction do they display?
- What were the dominant problems and debates in Tibetan Buddhist scholarship of the 11th to 13th century, and how were scholastic tools used to frame and solve philosophical and exegetical problems?
Answering these questions will bring research on early Tibetan scholasticism to an entirely new level. TibSchol further embraces questions shared by the fields of religious studies and philosophy. It aims to understand the phenomena associated with Tibetan scholasticism as significant parts of world intellectual history and philosophy. The results of TibSchol’s research will allow for better informed comparisons with other forms of scholasticism worldwide, and contribute, in methodological terms, to a more nuanced conceptualization of scholasticism as a cross-cultural comparative category. The technical tools being developed and the data being collected will also remain available as a long-term output of the project.