Project description
Reevaluating Tibetan Buddhism’s origins
The origins of Tibetan Buddhism have traditionally been traced to India, with little acknowledgment of the significant role Sinitic sources played in its formation. Early contributions from the Silk Road oasis of Dunhuang, a cultural crossroads between Tibetan and Chinese traditions, are often overlooked. With this in mind, the ERC-funded BEST project aims to correct this by using advanced tools such as handwritten text recognition to digitise and analyse manuscripts. By studying these Sinitic influences, particularly translations from Chinese into Tibetan, BEST will challenge the oversimplified narrative of Tibetan Buddhism’s origins. The project will produce a comprehensive historical study and a database of Tibetan Dunhuang manuscripts, shedding light on the site’s vital role in shaping early Buddhist scholarship.
Objective
Modern scholarship follows emic accounts in situating the origins of Tibetan Buddhism squarely in India, tacitly accepting Tibets claim to be heir to the orthodox tradi-tion. This oversimplifies the complex history of Buddhisms two transmissions to Tibet, in the 7th and 11th centuries, elid-ing the formative early contributions of Sinitic sources, principally imparted from the Silk Road oasis of Dunhuang, a crucial locus of interaction between Tibetan and Chinese cultures in the 8th-11th centuries. Manuscripts preserved in the Dunhuang caves evidence this Sino-Tibetan nexus in native compositions and translations from Chinese into Tibetan. Efforts to trace Chinese and Sino-Tibetan influences on the formation of Tibetan Buddhism have been largely impressionistic, but state-of-the-art tools such as Handwritten Text Recognition to digitize manuscripts allow their systematic analysis, and others permit us to identify fingerprints of Tibetan translations from Chinese. BEST will locate scriptures and other materials of Sinitic origin, and trace their impact on Tibetan Buddhism. Starting with an examination of the reasons for the prominence of Dunhuang, we will uncover the conditions permitting the site to become such a multicultural center, cradle to a high level of Buddhist scholarship. Identifying Sinitic sources introduced into Tibet in the early period, we will probe their later importance, challenging the tradition's polemical historiography which represses such recognition. We will produce a historical study addressing the background of Dunhuang's scholastic Buddhist culture, studies of individual Tibetan translations from Chinese, linguistic studies of the Chinese-Tibetan lexical interface, studies on the most prominent Dunhuang monk-translator, Chos grub, investigations of later Tibetan historiographical works, and a database of Tibetan Dunhuang manuscripts, all contributing to a fundamental revaluation of formative influences on early Tibetan Buddhism.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
- humanities philosophy, ethics and religion religions eastern religions
- natural sciences computer and information sciences databases
- humanities history and archaeology history
- humanities philosophy, ethics and religion philosophy history of philosophy medieval philosophy
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Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
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Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC)
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Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
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Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC Grants
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Call for proposal
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(opens in new window) ERC-2023-ADG
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80539 MUNCHEN
Germany
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