Buddhism in Central Asia a new volume published by Brill

Buddhism in Central Asia

Rome [ENA] The academic Editor Brill Published on January 2020 the book Buddhism in Central Asia I. The Editors are Carmen Meinert and Henrik Sørensen The ERC-funded research project BuddhistRoad aims to create a new framework to enable understanding of the complexities in the development of cultural encounter and religious transfer in pre-modern Eastern Central Asia. The volume is the proceedings of the start-up conference

“Establishing of Buddhist Nodes in Eastern Central Asia 6th to 14th C. Part I: Sacred Space, Pilgrimage, Patronage, Legitimation Strategies” of the BuddhistRoad project, which was held at Ruhr-Universität Bochum on 23–25 May, 2018. The topics chosen for this volume are similar to those that constitute the research clusters of the BuddhistRoad project, and are thus part of an effort to cover the most noticeable and observable distinctive attributes that manifested in the Buddhist centres along the networks of the Silk Road and beyond.

These themes reflect the research interests and competences of the project’s participants. It goes without saying that a volume such as the present one cannot cover all relevant topics pertaining to Silk Road studies. What the authors a seek to do here is to offer a series of case studies, each of which highlights specific aspects of the history of Buddhism along the Silk Road. Even though there are a great number of articles and historical studies on selected aspects of Buddhism at various sites, there is not a single, book-length recent study of Buddhism on the Silk Road in any Western language. Central Asia has had in scholarly circles for more than a century a particular interest, however, there are difficulties of coming to terms

with the Silk Road and Buddhism in Eastern Central Asia under the cover of a single study. Surely there are enough source materials of chief importance and archaeological data available by now to at least produce an introductory study of Buddhism on the Silk Road, even if it requires a potential author to be able to cover several linguistic fields. This book is an excellent resource to students, educators, and Asian Studies enthusiasts.