King’s College London Buddhist Studies Research Seminars 2020
This term the series will include a special focus on Buddhism among the Tai. All seminars will take place in Room VB3.01 at 5.00pm (refreshments 4.30pm in the 3rd floor kitchen), Theology and Religious Studies, Virginia Woolf Building, 22 Kingsway, London WC2B 6NR. Free and all welcome. No registration needed. UPDATE: Due to the pandemic, the seminars originally scheduled for March 2020 have been postponed.
Friday 31 January 2020
Masahiro Shimoda, Professor of Buddhist Studies & Indian Philosophy, University of Tokyo
- Buddhism and Digital Humanities
Ligeia Lugli, Newton International Fellow, King’s College London
- Inching towards corpus-driven lexicography for Buddhist Sanskrit: advances in Natural Language Processing and digital infrastructure
Special Focus: Buddhism among the Tai
Friday 28 February 2020
Isara Jay Treesahakiat, PhD Candidate, King’s College, London
- Thai Temples in the UK and
Dr Graham Winyard
- The Role of the Abbot in Thai Forest Monasteries of the Ajahn Chah Lineage in the UK
Friday 13 March 2020
Piyobhaso Bhatsakorn, PhD Candidate, King’s College, London
- The Abhidhamma writings of the 15th century Lānnā monk Ñāṇakitti and
Angela Chiu, Independent Researcher, London
- The Great Relic of Hariphunchai: The Buddha, the King and the Joke
Friday 20 March 2020
Baas Terwiel, Emeritus Professor of Thai Studies Hamburg
- The law of kamma in traditional Thai society
Friday 27 March 2020
Martin Seeger, Professor of Thai Studies, University of Leeds
Film showing and discussion:
- Buddhist performing arts: gender, allegory, and female authorship in modern Thai Buddhism
Convenors
Kate Crosby henrietta.crosby@kcl.ac.uk, Olivia Porter Oliva.C.Porter@kcl.ac.uk,
Thanavuddho Watcharasriroj thanavuddho.watcharasriroj@kcl.ac.uk
Kindly sponsored by Ji Xuegen Research Funding for Buddhist Studies
Abstracts
31 January 2020
Masahiro Shimoda, Professor of Buddhist Studies & Indian Philosophy, University of Tokyo
- Buddhism and Digital Humanities (abstract TBC)
Ligeia Lugli, Newton International Fellow, King’s College, London
- Digital Tools for Buddhist Sanskrit Corpus Linguistics and Lexicology
This talk presents a suite of digital tools for Buddhist Sanskrit Corpus Linguistics and lexicology. The tools comprise (1) a new segmenter, stemmer and lemmatiser, (2) a stemmed and metadata enriched corpus of Buddhist Sanskrit, (3-4) two curated lexical resources based on this corpus, a Visual Dictionary and a Visual Thesaurus of Buddhist Sanskrit, and (5) a tool for manual semantic annotation of Buddhist Sanskrit.
The talk will conclude with a brief discussion of the advantages and limitations of applying these tools and, more generally, a Corpus Linguistics approach to the study of Indic Buddhism.
28 February 2020
Isara Jay Treesahakiat, PhD Candidate, King’s College, London
- Thai Temples in the UK
There are over 20 Thai temples in the UK, the vast majority of which are staffed mainly by Thai nationals with mostly Thai volunteers and supporters. My interest is in the practicalities faced by these temples. How do they navigate both the Thai authorities under whose jurisdiction they fall and UK government regulations? These relate to such issues as recruiting new monks, obtaining religious ministry visas, complying with building control in adapting listing buildings and acquiring planning permission, compliance with tree preservation orders, the disposal of dead bodies, events management, noise control, and dealing with the press. The purpose of my research is to understand what these difficulties arise, i.e. the Thai Buddhist expectations and needs versus the administrative structures on religious organisations and people in general. I give this talk as I set about my PhD research, providing a few examples of what led me to this topic.
Dr Graham Winyard
- The Role of the Abbot in Thai Forest Monasteries of the Ajahn Chah Lineage in the UK
This paper examines the challenges faced by abbots of the western Thai forest monasteries of the Ajahn Chah tradition, and the reasons, identified through interviews with contemporary senior post holders, why there is such reluctance to undertake the role. It suggests that many current difficulties relate to fundamental and unresolved ambiguities in the way the modern role has developed, and its perceived sources of authority. While the move to the west has created some additional bureaucratic burdens, it also creates an opportunity for the lineage to take a fresh look at these issues.
13 March 2020
Piyobhaso Bhatsakorn, PhD Candidate, King’s College, London
- The Abhidhamma writings of the 15th century Lānnā monk Ñāṇakitti
During the fifteenth to the sixteenth century, Lānnā Kingdom was known as the golden age of Pali literary works because many scholar monks of Lānnā origin had written Pāli manuscripts. One such monk was Ñāṇakitti. Over a period of nineteen years (1485-1504), Ñāṇakitti contributed 12 Pāli literary works, eight of which were about the Abhidhamma. From his works which mainly focus on the Abhidhamma, we may infer that Ñāṇakitti was a master of Abhidhamma studies, capable of composing works descriptive of the Abhidhamma texts and their commentaries. As an Abhidhamma scholar, Ñāṇakitti might himself have found that students needed a good foundation in the Abhidhamma. Therefore, he composed the atthayojanā with the intent of advancing Abhidhamma teaching and supporting students who wished to learn the Abhidhammapiṭaka.
Angela Chiu, Independent Researcher, London
- The Great Relic of Hariphunchai: The Buddha, the King and the Joke
Hariphunchai was a polity, centered in the present-day city of Lamphun in northern Thailand, that especially flourished during the 12th and 13th centuries. Its influence is still visible today in the imitations elsewhere of its distinctive pyramidal Buddhist monuments. In 1292, Hariphunchai was conquered by Mangrai (1239-1311), founder of the so-called Lanna kingdom. Even after Mangrai built Chiang Mai, 35km distant, four years later to be his royal city, the Phra That (Great Relic) Hariphunchai reliquary stupa continued, for centuries, to be an important sacred site for the Lanna kingdom. Indeed, it was at times its most important site, even as Hariphunchai was not the capital city and Sri Lankan orders establishing themselves in Lanna in the fifteenth century tried to promote other sacred monuments and objects. The account of how the Great Relic was first discovered in Hariphunchai (probably in the 12th century) was set in writing in Pali around the early 15th century. It is unusual among accounts of Buddhist relics in that it incorporates a joke: the relic was discovered underneath the king’s toilet. I would like to analyse the joke as not merely entertainment but as an expression meaningful within conceptions of Buddha relics, kings and cities in Lanna.
Friday 20 March 2020
Baas Terwiel, Emeritus Professor of Thai Studies, Hamburg
- The law of kamma in traditional Thai society
What does Kamma mean for Theravada Buddhists? To what degree is a life determined by past kamma?
What circumstances cause a Theravada Buddhist to think of his or her kamma? Can Kamma be transferred from one person to another? This paper will address these questions from the perspective of Thai Theravada Buddhists, whilst noting the futility of some Europocentric views.
Friday 31 March 2020 film showing and discussion
Martin Seeger, Professor of Thai Studies, University of Leeds
- Gender, allegory, and female authorship in modern Thai Buddhism
Independent Thai scholar Naris Charaschanyawong and I have demonstrated that a key Buddhist treatise, previously attributed to one of Thailand’s most famous and influential monks, Luang Pu Man Bhuridatto (1871-1949), revered by many Thai Buddhists as an arhat, was in fact authored by the hitherto little-known devout Buddhist woman Khunying Damrongthammasan (Yai Wisetsiri, 1882-1944). Following our discovery of further texts by Khunying Damrongthammasan and a number of other texts important for an understanding of female practice and monastic education before 1940, Naris and I published three edited volumes. We also developed innovative ways of using these texts to make larger numbers of Thai Buddhists engage more effectively with concepts of female renunciation, practice and authorship in modern Thai Buddhism, as well as difficult Pali canonical doctrines. This resulted in three documentary films, and – with the help of Thai academics, directors and actors – four public plays of Buddhist performing arts. During my presentation, I will show and discuss my two most recent films (of altogether 55 minutes)
