Professor Max Deeg Lecture

Between Normativity and Material Emptiness: Indian Buddhist Monasteries in Chinese Travelogues

This lecture will address the odd fact that the “description” of Indian Buddhist monasteries in Chinese texts are rather concentrating on the communal and/or individual aspects of monastic life than on the institution of the monastery and its materiality. These records are therefore, quite naturally, closer to the idealized image of a monastery and the life therein than to the material reality as, partly at least, represented through archaeological evidence. Although not restricting itself to it, the lecture will discuss this this issue with a focus on the work of the Chinese traveler, translator and Vinaya-specialist Yijing.