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lecture podcast
New Archaeological Evidence from the Southern Silk Road: Debating the Origins of Bronze Production in Myanmar
16 Sept 2009 | Wednesday | 7-8.30pm
Archaeological exploration in the past decade has revealed a new Bronze-iron Age culture in central Myanmar. As most finds are located along the Samon River valley, they have become known as the Samon culture. Principally mortuary goods, many of the artifacts are unique and not found outside Myanmar. Other objects, however, parallel bronzes of the elaborate Shizhaishan Dian cultures of Yunnan. These include Heger I cowrie-drum containers and decorated mouth organs. Potential links are also seen in recent Shizhaishan excavation of headless burials and Samon headless bronze 'mother-goddess' figures used to decorate coffins as well as disarticulated inhumations found in both Samon and Dian cultures. There are few radiocarbon results for the Samon culture (circa 600 BCE-400 CE) but most predate the early centuries CE. This lecture will examine the origins of bronze production in the Myanmar-Yunnan cultural sphere.
About the speaker:
Elizabeth Moore obtained her PhD in Archaeology from the Institute of Archaeology, University College London. Her first degree, BA in Art History, was obtained from Pomona College, Claremont, California. She is currently a Reader in the Department of Art & Archaeology at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), London. Her doctoral and subsequent research included classification of proto-historic sites in Northeast Thailand from aerial photographs, and detection of prehistoric sites in the region of Angkor using radar imagery of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. In more recent years, her research has focused on landscape change in Myanmar where her father was born.
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5| Part 6
The Making of a Pilgrimage: Marking the Sites of Buddha’s Life
13 August 2009 | Thursday | 7-8.45pm
The talk will focus on the four sites associated with the life of the Buddha, the ones that he initially admonished his followers to visit: the site of his birth, his enlightenment, his first sermon and his death. Recognising that consensus since the third century BCE has agreed on the geographic identity of these sites, the talk presents some variant claims, most of them quite recent, and asks how these places came to be identified as the locus of these four events in the Buddha’s life. It then examines how they have been fabricated by the accounts of pilgrims, by nineteenth-century archaeologists, and by the authorities vested with the responsibility of maintaining and presenting them to a public that includes both the devout and the curious.
This lecture is jointly organised by the Research and Publication Unit of the ACM.
About the speaker:
Professor Frederick Asher is a specialist in South Asian art who is also interested in the developing field of world art history. His current research considers historiographic issues, the architecture of contested religious space and issues related to art as commodity, particularly looking at patterns of trade as they relate to works of art in India, and the site of Bodhgaya. His select publications include: The Art of Eastern India: 300-800 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, l980); Art of India (Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2002); and Bodhgaya (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2007). His forthcoming publications include historiographic articles on Buddhist sites and art of third century BCE in Artibus Asiae and in a volume being published by Routledge, and a work on “What is an Image” in a book edited by James Elkins.
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5
Why Buddhism and Not Hinduism? Reexamining the Successful Transmission of Buddhism to China
4 June 2009 | Thursday | 7-8.45pm
Buddhist interactions between ancient India and ancient China were complex and multifaceted. The uniqueness of these interactions and their importance to Asian and world history have been highlighted in textbooks as well as in recent scholarly and popular books. Despite the extensive coverage, many fundamental issues and commonly accepted notions need to be reexamined and rectified. This talk will focus on some of these issues by trying to answer the following four questions: What was the role of Indians in the early transmission of Buddhism to China? When and why did Buddhist interactions between India and China decline? Did Buddhism conquer China or was it transformed by the Chinese? Why did Hinduism, unlike Buddhism, fail to penetrate the Chinese society?
This lecture is jointly organised by the Research and Publication Unit of the ACM and Nalanda-Sriwiaya Centre, ISEAS.
A repeat lecture was held on 23 June 2009 due to overwhelming response.
About the speaker:
Tansen Sen is Associate Professor of Asian history and religions at the City University of New York, USA. He received his M.A. from Peking University and his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania. He has special scholarly interests in Buddhism, India-China interactions, Indian Ocean trade, and Silk Road archeology. Prof. Sen is the author of Buddhism, Diplomacy, and Trade: The Realignment of Sino-Indian Relations, 600-1400 ( University of Hawai’i Press , 2003) and several articles on intra-Asian interactions. He is working on a monograph that examines cross-cultural trade in Asia during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. He is currently a visiting senior research fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore, where he is heading the recently established Nalanda-Sriwijaya Centre.
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5
The Wheel of Rebirth in Buddhist Temples
4 September 2008 | Thursday | 7-8pm
Sponsored by Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton
In association with École française d’Extrême-Orient and Musée Guimet, Paris
Venue: Ngee Ann Auditorium, ACM
About the talk:
One of the first sights encountered by visitors to Buddhist temples is a large painting of the wheel of rebirth, depicting in horrific detail the pains (less often the pleasures) that await people after death. In this talk, Stephen F. Teiser explains how these representations of the Buddhist worldview have been imagined in Buddhist art over the centuries. The lecture offers an introduction to Buddhist cosmology, Buddhist art, and the spatial and ritual organisation of Buddhist temples in India, Central Asia, China, and Tibet.
About the speaker:
Stephen F. Teiser is the D.T. Suzuki Professor in Buddhist Studies and Professor of Religion at Princeton University (U.S.). He is a specialist in Chinese Buddhism and collaborates closely with colleagues in Europe and Asia. He is interested in how the fundamental concepts of Buddhism are understood and practised on a broad scale by common people in traditional Asian civilisations. His recent book, Reinventing the Wheel: Paintings of Rebirth in Medieval Buddhist Temples (2006), was awarded the Prix Stanislas Julien by the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres (Institut de France).
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