About: | Pascale Hugon |
Position: | Key Researcher |
Node: | Communication and Mobility |
The spread of Buddhism across Asia and its subsequent regional developments involved transformations that made these particular traditions distinct to the point that, for centuries, Western travellers and scholars failed to identify them as token expressions stemming from a shared origin. In contrast, recognition of the genetic relation between Indian and Tibetan Buddhism has led scholars – among other approaches – to consider the latter as merely preserving the former. As a middle way between an approach privileging continuity between Indian and Tibetan Buddhism and an approach that exclusively stresses the latter’s autochthonous features, this line of research proposes to look at changes and their agency in this particular process of knowledge transfer. It focuses on the Buddhist tradition of philosophical learning to explore processes of cultural and conceptual translation and adaptation (see Hugon 2016a). The study will build on ongoing inquiries in Hugon’s ERC Cg TIBSCHOL, and will address questions related to language choice and translation (Hugon 2016b, Franco and Preisendanz 2022). It will also explore the influence of personal cross-cultural interactions, and investigate Indian treatises and commentaries that were influential vectors in determining the specific course of the development taken in the Tibetan tradition. In conjunction with these themes, the research explores the way Tibetan scholars have been making sense of the “Indian heritage” that came along with the transmission of Buddhism to Tibet, and how the representation of Indian Buddhism through a Tibetan lens is tied to the self-representation of Tibetan scholars themselves.