ERC Advanced Grant · 2023
Buddhism’s Early Spread to Tibet: Dunhuang and the Influence of Sinitic Scriptures
Modern scholarship follows emic accounts in situating the origins of Tibetan Buddhism squarely in India, tacitly accepting Tibet’s claim to be heir to the orthodox tradition. This oversimplifies the complex history of Buddhism’s two transmissions to Tibet, in the 7th and 11th centuries, eliding the formative early contributions of Sinitic sources, principally imparted from the Silk Road oasis of Dunhuang, a crucial locus of interaction between Tibetan and Chinese cultures in the 8th-11th centuries. Manuscripts preserved in the Dunhuang caves evidence this Sino-Tibetan nexus in native compositions and translations from Chinese into Tibetan. Efforts to trace Chinese and Sino-Tibetan…
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