Mahāpratisarā Mahāvidyārājñī (Hidas 2011)

After many years of work, the critical edition of the Mahāpratisarā ("The Great Amulet, Great Queen of Spells") is finally out as the 636th volume of the Śatapiṭaka series.

JA 298/2

The latest online volume of the Journal Asiatique is full of goodies. To wit:

• pp. 389-420 Koichi Shinohara, "The All-Gathering Maṇḍala Initiation Ceremony in Atikūṭa's Collected Dhāraṇī Scriptures. Reconstructing the Evolution of Esoteric Buddhist Ritual."
• pp. 421-493 Isabelle Ratié, "Le non-être, une preuve de l'existence du Soi? La notion d'abhāva dans la philosophie de la Pratyabhijñā."
• pp. 535-548 Christopher I. Beckwith and Michael L. Walter, "On the Meaning of Old Tibetan rje-blon during the Tibetan Empire Period."
• pp. 549-571 Nathan W. Hill, "Personal Pronouns in Old Tibetan."

I especially enjoyed reading about the new interpretation of rje blon, something that sounded 'scratchy' back in the days when we read Old Tibetan inscriptions.

Mahāpratisarāvidyāvidhi published

As an update to an earlier post I am glad to announce that the text is now published by Dr. Gergely Hidas in Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hung. Volume 63 (4), 473–484 (2010).

Avacūrikā

A new and highly recommended blog described as: Glosses on classical Indian literature and the history of premodern South Asia.

Kīli kīlaya

viditam astu bhavatām that Rob Mayer and Cathy Cantwell have opened a blog with a rather fascinating first post and hopefully many more to come.

Manuscripta Buddhica 1

Most of you will probably have read about this already on several mailing lists. I think I'm not alone when I say that this series should continue to flourish until the end of the kalpa.

evam āryamiśrān vijñāpayāmi

The moment we have all been waiting for is here: the hilarious, the scandalous, the outrageous... Quartet of Causeries is here. Read some of the excerpts. Here is what our critics say:

"I knew these guys, but I thought they were just joking around at the pub. It's actually not bad poetry." [Kālidāsa, notoriously elusive poet]

"The Caturbhāṇī taught me everything I know. Never leave home without it." [Dāmodaragupta, award winning author of A Courtesan's Confession]

"When I'm down and need a good kick I read the Pādatāḍitaka." [Kṣemendra, acclaimed author of The Idiot's Guide to Making Fun of Bengalis]

"The Dhūrtaviṭasaṃvāda brings back into public awareness the topic of the pimping subaltern other. It is ruthless against Sanskritic society and the greatest thing about it is that it's done with the enemy's weapon: brilliant Sanskrit. Not as if I could read Sanskrit, only colonialists can and do." [very famous post-colonialist, name withheld]

"The Dhūrtaviṭasaṃvāda coaxes from out of the shadows the subject of the subaltern as the "Pimp". It is excoriating in its critique against Sanskritic society while at the same time formulating its diatribe with the favored weapon of the oppressive literary minority: erudite Sanskrit. As Foucault points out: "Power is not an institution, and not a structure; neither is it a certain strength we are endowed with; it is the name that one attributes to a complex strategical situation in a particular society." (What's with all the gibberish that is printed on the left side? Surely this is a colonialist expropriation of the Other's voice. Hold on... the Other here is the oppressive literary minority! I'm confused.) [very famous post-colonialist's student, name withheld]

Granthinām is back!

A third avatāra of Daniel Stender's great blog is back, revealing the following secret mantra between the lines: "backup, backup, backup..."

Canons for all

Thanks to Dan for pointing out this blog entry. In short TBRC has decided to make canonical collections free for all to view. Their laudable decision will be followed by a string of lawsuits from Tibetologists all over the world (causing endless sleepless nights, exhaustion, spectacular breakdown of their non-canonical social life, etc.) However, for the time being many thanks are due.

Sakya resource center

The good people in Hamburg put up another very interesting and promising site: The Sakya Resource Center.

Granthinām re-enters e-Saṃsāra

Granthinām is back, so please adjust your links to this.

TibSkrit 2008

It's a bit difficult to find if you're not looking for it. Go to the great blog, tibeto-logic. Then scroll down until you find this cat on the right side. Above it a link: Tibskrit 2008. And while you're there, read the new stuff on Pha dam pa.

Co ne bla ma online

A subproject of the good people of the ACIP have released scans of the complete works of Co ne bla ma grags pa shes grub, a famous master from Eastern Tibet. Personally I prefer the 'letter stack' download, this makes a pdf on letter paper size fitting as many folios as possible on a page.

Red tape chokes Hungarian Oriental Studies

Hungarians are a funny sort. Whereas most normal languages express things with particles, agglutination is a national sport. We have our surnames in front. When the post-communist world was trying to pick up the pieces amidst chaos, Hungary was the wonderchild of Eastern Europe. When the neo-European countries were booming, we suddenly discovered that the economy is about to collapse. Then we have an unusual knack for screwing up things that work and pumping money into things that don't and never will, to wit, soccer.

So it was high time for the glorious red tape to choke some of the good things still left in the country. This year the all-powerful Hungarian Accreditation Committee decided that studies concerning about half of the planet is totally useless beyond a BA. Kind of ironic for a nation of less than ten million. Thus, beginning from next year the following disciplines will not offer MA courses at ELTE University: Indian Studies, Chinese Studies, Mongolian Studies, Korean Studies, and Japanese Studies (Tibetan was successfully wiped out earlier).

Well, fine and dandy, a small country can't afford such 'luxuries'. Never you mind that Tibetan studies should be on the list of national treasures since it was sort of invented by a Hungarian. To hell with India and China which happen to be on the way to becoming superpowers of this century. Japan is going down anyway. Mongolian? Oh well, 50 years of spearheading research should not bother us.

Surprise, surprise, however: Turkic studies, Arabic studies, Hebrew studies, Assirian studies, Iranian studies, and Altaic studies (in Szeged) passed. I'm not saying that they don't deserve it, they are just as valuable as all the above if not more. Surely, it's only a fortunate coincidence.

I think that members of the accreditation committe deserve our thanks and appreciation for taking this burden off the country's shoulders. I'm sure that the process was long and exhausting, hence I would be glad to pay them a long vacation to discover some of the more obscure parts of Xinjiang Uighur. One way tickets will suffice.

Granthinām enters Bardo

Daniel Stender's excellent blog will be out of order for a while providing the author with some necessary breathing space. All we can do is wish him a happy vacation and a speedy return to e-saṃsāra.

Tokyo mss. online

Thanks to Iain and Daniel (whom I shall eventually sue for causing me yet more sleepless nights) for this info: the Tokyo University Library Sanskrit manuscripts are viewable online. Click on the link and then enter queries in the Harvard-Kyoto encoding in the upper left corner. Then press the grey button to view the full catalogue entry of that item and the red button to view it. Ah, the joys of not reading Japanese...

CTS new text: Abhiṣekanirukti

iti subodham.

DSBC new text: Śrāvakabhūmi

Shukla's edition is now online at the DSBC. The texts are being inputted at a prodigious rate. Rumour has it that most of the CIHTS editions will also be available in e-text form.

DSBC new text: STTS

With a newly formatted structure (I have a hunch where that came from), under the heading 'tantra' a significant new contribution, the Sarvatathāgatatattvasaṃgraha (Lokesh Chandra [and D. Litt - for the joke see below] edition) is now online, courtesy of the good people at the DSBC.

DSBC new text: Avadānaśataka

Speyer's edition of the Avadānaśataka is now online at the DSBC.