Asia Beyond Boundaries: Transdisciplinary Perspectives on Primary Sources in the Premodern World

Description

This conference volume unites a wide range of scholars working in the fields of history, archaeology, religion, art, and philology in an effort to explore new perspectives and methods in the study of primary sources from premodern South and Southeast Asia. The contributions engage with primary sources (including texts, images, material artefacts, monuments, as well as archaeological sites and landscapes) and draw needed attention to highly adaptable, innovative, and dynamic modes of cultural production within traditional idioms. The volume works to develop categories of historical analysis that cross disciplinary boundaries and represent a wide variety of methodological concerns. By revisiting premodern sources, Asia Beyond Boundaries also addresses critical issues of temporality and periodization that attend established categories in Asian Studies, such as the "Classical Age" or the "Gupta Period". This volume represents the culmination of the European Research Council (ERC) Synergy project Asia Beyond Boundaries: Religion, Region, Language and the State, a research consortium of the British Museum, the British Library and the School of Oriental and African Studies, in partnership with Leiden University. Preface Contents Contributors Primary Sources and Asian Pasts: Beyond the Boundaries of the “Gupta Period” Part I: Narrative Form and Literary Legacies Why So Many ‘Other’ Voices in the ‘Brahmin’ Mahābhārata? After the Mahābhārata: On the Portrayal of Vyāsa in the Skandapurāṇa The “Best Abode of Virtue”: Sattra Represented on a Gupta-Period Frieze from Gaṛhwa,̄ Uttar Pradesh The Skandapurāṇa and Bāṇa’s Harṣacarita Part II: Political Landscapes and Regional Identity Describing the Own Other: Chinese Buddhist Travelogues Between Literary Tropes and Educational Narratives Imperial Languages and Public Writings in Tamil South India: A Bird’s-Eye View in the Very Longue Durée Landscapes, Linkages, and Luminescence: First-Millennium CE Environmental and Social Change in Mainland Southeast Asia Sri Ksetra, 3rd Century BCE to 6th Century CE: Indianization, Synergies, Creation Part III: Religion, Ritual, and Empowerment The Meaning of the Word ārya in Two Gupta-Period Inscriptions Four Syllables for Slaying and Repelling: A Tibetan Vajrabhairava Practice from Recently Recovered Manuscripts of the “Lost” Book of Rwa (Rwa pod) Love, Unknowing, and Female Filth: The Buddhist Discourse of Birth as a Vector of Social Change for Monastic Women in Premodern South Asia A Natural Wonder: From Liṅga Mountain to Prosperous Lord at Vat Phu Index