HisTochText - History of the Tocharian texts of the Pelliot Collection
This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No. 788205)
DOT September 2022
Presentation program
Date
September 12-17, 2022
Place
The Freie Universität Berlin
Name
Program DOT (German Orientalist Day) 2022
Description
The DOT was organized for the first time in 1921 by the German Oriental Society (DMG) in Leipzig. The DMG is the oldest scientific association of German orientalists. Its members deal primarily with the languages and cultures of the Middle East and parts of Asia, Oceania and Africa. The DOT established itself as the largest and most important event in German cultural studies on Africa and Asia. The 34th DOT at Freie Universität Berlin marks its centenary. Participation is possible worldwide for all scholars, students and the interested public and is not tied to membership in the DMG. Conference languages are the usual scientific languages.
Athanaric Huard (EPHE, PSL), with Adam Alvah Catt (Kyoto University) and Yuima Inaba (Kyoto Kōka Women’s University) - The Tocharian Lexicon from an Abhidharmic Perspective
Date
September 15, 2022
Place
34. Deutscher Orientalistentag 12.-17.09.2022 Freie Universität Berlin 100 Jahre.
Description
In this talk we will show how an Abhidharma perspective can clarify some aspects of the Tocharian lexicon. We will introduce findings from our study on the Tocharian A manuscripts 384–386, a commentary on the Abhidharmāvatāra-prakaraṇa. Among the many new proposals we make are masal-yamtsune ‘causality’ as a partial calque of Skt. pratyaya; tkāllune ‘elucidation,’ translation of Skt. vicāra, from the root tkälā - ‘illuminate;’ yulā as an adverb used to calque the Sanskrit preverb ava; and the meaning of the root rätk- ~ ritk- ‘raise, arouse’. We will also address Abhidharmic elements in other texts, especially in the Udānālaṅkāra. This text helps to demonstrate that TB waräṣṣälñe and TA wrāṣlune, the translations of Skt. bhāvanā ‘ development, cultivation’, are based on the Abhidharmic explanation of this term as vāsana ‘perfuming, infusing’.
Véronique Madeleine Kremmer (Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes (Paris), France) - The Tocharian A Saundaranandacaritanāṭaka
Date
September 15, 2022
Place
34. Deutscher Orientalistentag Freie Universität Berlin 100 Jahre.
Description
A non-negligible portion of the preserved manuscripts in Tocharian A, especially from the Berlin Collection (Tocharische Handschriften Turfan, THT), have been identified by Sieg & Siegling (1921) as a retelling of Aśvaghoṣa's Saundarananda, a Sanskrit kāvya work detailing the life of the Buddha's handsome half-brother Nanda. The Tocharian work, presumably based on Aśvaghoṣa's epic, is a poetic campūcomposition alternating prose and verse. Its title could be restored as Saundaranandacaritanāṭaka, indicating that it was intended to be performed in front of an audience, possibly in the form of a recitation rather than a dramatic reenactment. Almost a hundred years after their initial publication, the subsisting fragments have remained largely untranslated due to their poor state of preservation. Recent discoveries of parallel texts and manuscript joinings have made it possible to interpret and translate some portions. The findings seem to suggest that the Tocharian work, while certainly presenting clear parallels to Aśvaghoṣa's Saundarananda, also significantly expands on it and draws from various sources. This paper will present the results of an in-depth philological study of the fragments usually attributed to the Tocharian Saundaranandacaritanāṭaka (THT 89 - 143, parts of THT 144 - 211). The aim of this project is to restore as much as possible of the text and plot, as well as establish the exact relationship of this Buddhist drama with Aśvaghoṣa's epic and other Buddhist texts known in Central Asia at this time. (Sieg, Emil, Siegling, Wilhelm. 1921. Tocharische Sprachreste. I. Band. Berlin / Leipzig: Walter De Gruyter.)
Georges-Jean Pinault, "New findings in Tocharian literature and language"
Date
September 15,2022
Place
34. Deutscher Orientalistentag 12.-17.09.2022 Freie Universität Berlin 100 Jahre DOT
Description
Since the Vienna conference (Juin 2013, edited in 2015), the Tocharology has enjoyed advances based on the study of Tocharian texts in their religious, i.e., Buddhist, cultural and historical contexts. The HisTochText (History of the Tocharian texts of the Pelliot collection) project ( supported by the European Research Council. Advanced Grant. Action number 778205, 2018-2023), aims to investigate the manuscript culture of Buddhism in the Kucha region, through crossing of several relevant parameters: materiality of the manuscripts, formatting of Buddhist books, paleography, genres of Tocharian (A and B) literature, Buddhist phraseology, etc. This multidisciplinary approach leads to significant results in the identification of Tocharian manuscripts. A case in point is the series of leaves PK NS 1-6, belonging to a manuscript found in Subashi, but in Tocharian A, not in Tocharian B, as expected in the Kucha region. A new edition is in preparation by A.Huard, K.Laclavetine and G-J Pinault. The interpretation has much benefited from new images and their treatment through several filters, in the frame of the HisTochText project. This rare manuscript provides a Tocharian parallel to the Bower manuscript (Bodleian Library, Oxford), 5th/6th century CE, written in Sanskrit, which has been found in Buddhist ruins, also near Kucha, edited and translated by A.F. Rudolf Hoernle (Calcutta, 1912). The content of the TA manuscript is heterogeneous as well: first, a magical text (mixed with Sanskrit formulas), and second, part of a book of omens through wooden sticks, which has further parallels in Central Asia.
Timothée Chamot-Rooke, Athanaric Huard (École Pratique des Hautes Études, Paris / ERC HisTochText) - The literary making of the Maitreya-avadāna-vyākaraṇa and the Maitreyasamiti-nāṭaka
Date
September 12, 2022
Place
34. Deutscher Orientalistentag, Freie Universität Berlin 100 Jahre DOT
Description
Our contribution aims to explore the connections between two Tocharian A works on Maitreya, the Maitreya-avadāna-vyākaraṇa (MAV) and the Maitreyasamiti-nāṭaka (MSN). Since Lévi (1925), it is admitted that the MSN bears close connections with an Avadāna collection related to the Sūtra of the Wise and the Fool (Xián yú jīng 賢愚經). We argue that another important source for the composition of the MSN is the MAV. This conclusion can be reached from linguistic and literary arguments. Most importantly, both texts are very close to each other and share exclusive similarities, as shown in recent literature (Chamot-Rooke 2022 and Huard 2020). This opens a new angle for interpreting the composition of both texts in the broader perspective of Maitreyan literature.
Chamot-Rooke, Timothée. 2022."Back to the Caustic Lye Stream: A Revision of the Tocharian Fragment A 226 from the Maitreyāvadānavyākaraṇa." Tocharian and Indo-European Studies.
Huard, Athanaric. 2020. "The End of Mahākāśyapa and the Encounter with Maitreya: Two Leaves of a Maitreya-Cycle in Archaic TB." Tocharian and Indo-European Studies 20: 1-82.
Lévi, Sylvain. 1925. "Le Sūtra du sage et du fou dans la littérature de l'Asie Centrale." Journal Asiatique 207: 305 - 332.
