Project description
Investigating the early development of the Tibetan Buddhist scholastic tradition
What can new manuscript sources tell us about the formative phase (11th to 13th centuries) of the Tibetan Buddhist scholastic tradition? The ERC-funded TibSchol project will integrate the contextual aim of reconstructing the early Tibetan scholastic landscape with the conceptual aim of exploring the Tibetan scholastic method. Specifically, it will map the networks of Tibetan scholastics in the 11th to 13th centuries and chart the early scholastic corpus. The project will also investigate seminal features of the early Tibetan scholastic toolkit and study how it was applied in hermeneutics and argumentation. This will pave the way for studying the circulation of texts and knowledge propagation in this influential phase of Tibet’s intellectual history.
Objective
TIBSCHOL will be the first wide-ranging exploration of the formative phase (11th–13th c.) of the Tibetan Buddhist scholastic tradition. Its ground-breaking study of an exceptionally active period of Tibetan scholarly creativity will integrate Tibetan thinkers into world intellectual history and the global history of philosophy.
The revival of Buddhist culture in Tibet in the late 10th/11th c., marked by an intense engagement with the sophisticated tradition of Indian Buddhist scholarship, set in motion the development of new tools of reasoned analysis and their application in synthesizing exegeses of Indian Buddhist soteriological and philosophical literature and in newly devised textual genres. TIBSCHOL integrates the contextual aim of reconstructing the early Tibetan scholastic landscape with the conceptual aim of exploring the Tibetan scholastic method. This involves:
- Mapping the networks of Tibetan scholastics in the 11th–13th c.
- Charting the early scholastic corpus
- Investigating seminal features of the early Tibetan scholastic toolkit
- Studying how this toolkit was applied in hermeneutics and argumentation
TIBSCHOL takes advantage of the recent surfacing of a large amount of early scholastic writings in manuscript form, advocating a broad-scale approach to this corpus that goes beyond previous studies both in qualitative and in quantitative terms. Introducing an original methodology that systematically exploits the high degree of intertextuality displayed in these scholastic treatises (typically containing critical discussions of others’ views), the project articulates personal networks, intellectual networks, and intellectual profiles.
This will pave the way for studying the circulation of texts and knowledge propagation, as well as the continuities and ruptures in a particularly enduring tradition of methodical and systematic learning in human history, as forms of scholasticism continue to survive in Tibetan monastic contexts to the present day.
Fields of science
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
ERC-COG - Consolidator GrantHost institution
1010 Wien
Austria