Рет қаралды 2,358
Dr Stephen F Teiser’s keynote presentation titled ‘The Lotus Sutra: Creating Buddhist Scripture’. This presentation was given on 15 December 2022 at the British Library conference 'The Lotus Sutra: The teachings, transmission and material culture of a sacred Buddhist text'.
Who created the Lotus Sutra, a text richly represented among the Dunhuang manuscripts? This talk draws on the British Library and other collections to explore how the scripture was both understood as an eternal truth and recreated in countless material forms in medieval China. Questions include: Who was the author or originator of the text? Who translated it into Chinese? Who produced it, and in what media? How was it preached and recited? Which versions were popular? What did believers think about the text, and how did they make it come alive?
Organised to celebrate the successful close of the Lotus Sutra Project (2017 - 2022), the conference brought together an international group of scholars and the Project team to present on the impact of the Lotus Sutra as a critical Buddhist text. The conference investigated the teachings of the Lotus Sutra, the Lotus Sutra as represented at Dunhuang, and the methodology and results of the Lotus Sutra Project, which has now conserved, digitised and published nearly 800 Lotus Sutra manuscripts in the British Library’s collections.