Le Centre d’études interdisciplinaires sur le bouddhisme (CEIB) et l’Ecole Française d’Extrême-Orient (EFEO) annoncent une double conférence, qui se tiendra le 6 décembre 2017, à partir de 14h00, dans la salle 3.15, à l’INALCO (65 rue des Grands Moulins, 75013 Paris).
La conférence sera animée par Fabienne Jagou (EFEO).
Ester Bianchi, Maître de conférence (HDR) à l’Università degli Studi di Perugia, Italie
A Theravada conquest of China? Pan-Asian Buddhism and the Southeast Asian
Model in Modern China
Discutant : François Lagirarde, EFEO
Résumé : At the turn of the nineteenth century, in the wake of Buddhism’s addition to the pantheon of
the “world religions”, the idea of an alleged “original Buddhism” emerged. This was soon to
be identified with the Pāli Buddhism of South and South-East Asia, i.e. with the Theravāda
tradition.
Chinese Buddhists were also exposed to this new perspective, after centuries when there
had not been many – if any – contacts between Chinese and Sinhalese Buddhists. Some
Chinese prominent masters and lay people started to espouse the idea whereby the
Southeast Asian traditions reflected more than any other Buddhist form the “original
teaching” of the Buddha and, more precisely, that the “original” Indian Buddhist vinaya had
been best preserved by Theravāda monasticism.
To what extent and depth was the Chinese saṃgha affected by the Theravāda model in
terms of rules of conduct and ritual procedures? The present lecture aims to probe into the
impact of these modern ideas on the subsequent developments of Chinese Buddhism,
mainly focusing on the vinaya.
Carmen Meinert, professeur à la Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Allemagne
coordinatrice du projet ERC « Dynamics in Buddhist Networks in Eastern Central Asia 6th-14th
Centuries (Buddhist Road) »
Tibetan-Tangut Buddhist Encounters through the Patronage of Tangut
Rulers
Discutant : Matthew Kapstein, EPHE
The Tangut Empire (11th to 13th centuries) was the last Buddhist stronghold in Eastern Central
Asia thanks to generous imperial support. A unique feature of this patronage system was its
dual orientation, favoring Sinitic as well as Tibetan Buddhist traditions nowadays still
documented in manuscripts collections, paintings and murals from various Central Asian
oases and garrisons. The interest of Tangut rulers in Tibetan Tantric Buddhism is particularly
striking from around the 1130s until the Mongolian conquest in the 1220s. Within this time
span Tibetan teacher were residing at the Tangut court, translations from Tibetan into
Tangut and Chinese were prepared e.g. of ritual manual and Buddhist art of a Tantric
pantheon was produced on banners and on walls at cave sites. I suggest to closely read
textual and visual materials of this period and from various locations together, in order to
get a clearer picture of the dynamics of intercultural exchange, and production and
dissemination of Tantric Buddhist knowledge.
Pour plus de détails, voir l’affiche de l’événement : programme_20171206_CEIB-EFEO_conf_Bianchi_Meinert