Categorie: News

17 March 2026 | Guest lecture by Prof. Sebastian Nehrdich (Tohoku University)

We are pleased to announce the next guest lecture in the Gandhara Corpora Lecture Series on 17 March 2026:

 

DharmaNexus as a Multilingual Graph of Buddhist Intertextuality: Design Choices, Research Uses, and Future Applications

by Prof. Sebastian Nehrdich (Tohoku University)

Time & venue

  • Tuesday 17 March at 17.00 (5 pm) CET
  • In-person: Vergaderzaal 0.1 Simon Stevin, Plateau – Rozier, Campus Boekentoren, 9000 Gent, Belgium
  • Online: please register through this Google Form: https://forms.gle/TwffQCPuVipUpMvk6

Abstract

Locating textual parallels, translations, citations, and topically related passages across vast collections of texts in multiple languages is a basic requirement of philological work in Buddhist Studies. Recent advances in digitization, OCR, and cross-lingual information retrieval have fundamentally changed access to this kind of evidence, with far-reaching implications for how philological research can be conducted. A central component in this context is DharmaNexus: a database that stores intertextual relationships between passages across languages and sources, and that supports the retrieval and comparison functions used in the Dharmamitra tool ecosystem.
In this presentation, I will discuss DharmaNexus as a verifiable “evidence layer” for AI-assisted multilingual research. I will highlight key design choices and show how intertextual relationships are determined and represented. I will also demonstrate how this data is already used in research-facing tools for discovering and inspecting parallels and reuse patterns in Buddhist literature. Finally, I will address limitations and risks that can arise from over-reliance on these systems, and outline further possible research applications enabled by this architecture.

BIO

Sebastian Nehrdich is a tenure-track Assistant Professor at Tohoku University. He completed his PhD in Computational Linguistics at the University of Düsseldorf, co-supervised by Oliver Hellwig and Kurt Keutzer. He holds an MA in Buddhist Studies from the University of Hamburg. His work integrates digital philology, Buddhist textual analysis, and machine learning. He serves as Director of the Dharmamitra project that was founded at the Berkeley AI Research Lab (BAIR), has managed the ML infrastructure of the ChronBMM project, and has led the development of the BuddhaNexus platform 2018-2023, now continued as DharmaNexus.

 

For more information: charles.disimone@ugent.be

11 March – 27 May 2026 | GCSAS lecture series: “More-than-human South Asia: Ecologies, Knowledge, Bodies, and Senses”

The annual online lecture series organised by the Ghent Centre for South Asian Studies (GCSAS) is dedicated this year to the theme “More-than-human South Asia: Ecologies, Knowledge, Bodies, and Senses”.

Composite elephant, Metropolitan Museum of Art

This lecture series explores South Asia as a space of more-than-human relations among humans, animals, plants, environments, and multiple forms of knowledge, with particular attention to bodies and senses as key sites of interaction with ecological and material worlds. It brings together environmental humanities, anthropology, history, religion, politics, geography, and South Asian studies to examine how ecologies, sensory experiences, and knowledge production are deeply entangled across South Asia and its transregional connections.

All our presenters can be followed online (registration required); some lectures will also be available on campus.

Everyone is warmly invited to join: follow the links in the programme below to register!

PROGRAMME & REGISTRATION

Wednesday 11 March, from 5 pm CET

Eduardo Acosta (Stanford University)

Perpetual Fluctuation: The Rivers of Bengal as Historical Agents, 1750–1800

Registration: https://events.teams.microsoft.com/event/bf1b6f63-52e5-4fa9-9c38-c6a1f789e2ff@d7811cde-ecef-496c-8f91-a1786241b99c

 

Wednesday 18 March, from 4 pm CET

Priyanka Basu (King’s College, London)

Songs of Climate and Caution: Human and Non-Human Entanglements in Contemporary Scroll Paintings (Patachitra) from Bengal

Registration: https://events.teams.microsoft.com/event/a7615d65-1052-43f4-b1fb-03e3db1929f8@d7811cde-ecef-496c-8f91-a1786241b99c

 

Wednesday 1 April, from 4 pm CET

Gerrit Lange (Ruhr-Universität Bochum)

A Family Meeting with Nagini Mata: Establishing Relations with the Serpent World, Trees, Grasses and Rivers in a Himalayan Valley

Registration: https://events.teams.microsoft.com/event/6d25f018-b0d3-4bed-95ac-cd4d049455b5@d7811cde-ecef-496c-8f91-a1786241b99c

 

Wednesday 22 April, from 4 pm CET

Nuno Grancho (University of Copenhagen)

Shared and Contested Sacred Spaces in South Asian Colonial Cities

 

Wednesday 29 April, from 4 pm CET

James McHugh (University of Southern California)

Surā’s Many Cups: A Survey of Humans using Plants to make Mind-Altering Substances in Pre-modern South Asia

 

Wednesday 13 May, from 4 pm CET

Andrea Gutiérrez (University of Texas at Austin)

Alongside Captive Elephants: History and Religion between Species

 

Wednesday 20 May, from 4 pm CET

Muhamed Riyaz Chenganakkattil (Ghent University)

Camelbacks, Hoofprints, and the Hajj: South Asian Archives of Non-Human Lifeworlds in the Journey to Mecca

 

Wednesday 27 May, from 4 pm CET

Andrew Halladay (London School of Economics)

Tails from Colonial North India: The Lives and Companions of Street Dogs in the United Provinces

 

2 March 2026 | Guest lecture by Prof. Dr. Mau Das Gupta (University of Calcutta)

We are delighted to be hosting the guest lecture “Unmarried Women in Early Indian Texts: From the Ṛgveda to Buddhist Literature” by Prof. Dr. Mau Das Gupta (University of Calcutta)

The event will take place in a hybrid format:

→ Time:

Monday March 2nd, 16:00 CET

→ On campus:

Lokaal 0.8, Blandijnberg 2, 9000 Ghent

→ Online: link via Teams

 

Abstract

This lecture explores the position of unmarried women in early Indian literature, tracing developments from the Ṛgveda to early Buddhist texts. Ṛgvedic hymns reveal educated maidens engaged in ritual, inheritance, and social negotiation, even while marriage remained the normative ideal—albeit with certain notable exceptions, such as Āmbhṛṇī Vāc and Urvaśī. Buddhist sources—especially the Therīgāthā, Avadānaśataka, and Jātakas—present new possibilities through the saṃgha, where unmarried women from diverse social backgrounds pursued celibacy, learning, and salvation. By comparing these traditions, the lecture highlights both continuity and change: from ritual participation and limited autonomy in Vedic society to more explicit recognition of female spiritual agency in Buddhism, revealing a complex, non-linear history therein.

 

Speaker bio

Prof. Mau Das Gupta is Professor in Sanskrit at Calcutta University. She was awarded the prestigious Eashan Scholarship and the University gold medal along with many other prizes for her outstanding results in graduate and post-graduate examinations of the University of Calcutta. She did her PhD at Jadavpur University. She is currently serving as Professor of Sanskrit at the University of Calcutta and is, for the second time, the Head of the Department of Sanskrit. A Vedic scholar, Das Gupta has interests in various other fields of literature. A poetess herself, she is also known for writing on various issues concerning Sanskrit and Bengali literature. She is a Sahitya Akademi Awardee (2015) for her translation of Hazari Prasad Dwivedi’s Anamdas ka Potha (2012) into Bengali, and a recipient of the Shivdasani Visiting Fellowship (for the Michaelmas Term, 2019) of the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies of Oxford University.

 

 

Prof. Nayanjot Lahiri keynote speaker at EASAA Ghent, 6 – 10 July 2026

We are delighted to announce that Professor Nayanjot Lahiri (Ashoka University) will deliver the keynote address at the 27th International Conference of the European Association for South Asian Archaeology and Art (EASAA 2026), which will take place at Ghent University from 6 to 10 July 2026.

Professor Lahiri is Professor of History at Ashoka University and one of the most distinguished scholars of South Asian early history and archaeology. Her work has been instrumental in shaping contemporary understandings of South Asia’s ancient pasts and its archaeological practices.

She is the author of a wide-ranging and influential body of scholarship, including Pre-Ahom Assam (1991); The Archaeology of Indian Trade Routes (1992); Finding Forgotten Cities: How the Indus Civilization Was Discovered (2005); Marshalling the Past: Ancient India and Its Modern Histories (2012); Ashoka in Ancient India (2015); Monuments Matter: India’s Archaeological Heritage Since Independence (2017); Time Pieces–A Whistle-Stop Tour of Ancient India (2018); Archaeology and the Public Purpose: Writings on and by M.N. Deshpande (2021); and Searching for Ashoka (2023). She is also co-author of Copper and Its Alloys in Ancient India (1996), editor of The Decline and Fall of the Indus Civilization (2000), and co-editor of Ancient India: New Research (2009) and Buddhism in Asia: Revival and Reinvention (2016).

Professor Lahiri was awarded the Infosys Prize 2013 in Humanities–Archaeology, and her book Ashoka in Ancient India received the 2016 John F. Richards Prize from the American Historical Association for the best book in South Asian history.

We are honoured to welcome Professor Lahiri as our keynote speaker and look forward to welcoming her in Ghent.

Further details on her keynote lecture will follow in due course on the website of the conference: https://easaa2026.ugent.be/en.

19 February 2026 | Guest lecture by Prof. Caley Smith (Georgia College & State University)

The GCSAS is delighted to announce its first guest lecture of 2026: “Prolegomena to Any Future Caste”, by Prof. Caley Smith (Georgia College & State University).

 

The event will take place in a hybrid format:

 

ABSTRACT
The study of the complexities of caste in modernity and the medieval period has flourished, thanks in part to shared interest and methods of historians, anthropologists, sociologists, and scholars of religion, gender, and queer studies. The following monographs represent a broad range of methodologies all applied to understanding the phenomenon of caste: Beyond Caste (Sumit Guha, 2013), Caste in Contemporary India (Surinder Jodhka, 2017), Caste Matters (Suraj Yengde, 2019), The Vulgarity of Caste (Shailaja Paik, 2022). Why has there not been a similar flourishing of caste studies in the earlier period?
Indeed, discussions of the origins of varṇa in recent monographs such as Religions of Early India (Richard Davis, 2024) and India: 5,000 Years of History on the Subcontinent (Audrey Truschke, 2025) are virtually unchanged from The Wonder that was India, vol. 1 (A. L. Basham, 1954). Namely, varṇa is presented as the defining timeless and immutable social hierarchy of India, charitably called “social estate” instead of caste. This inertia is striking when a major challenge to the stability of varṇa’s past had already been issued over twenty years previous in the form of Castes of Mind (Nicholas Dirks, 2001). Indeed, important research on the conceptual history of varṇa has, in fact, been on-going, although without being integrated into a new communis opinio. In this talk, I will discuss why this arrested development may have occurred as well as survey significant scholarly advances from the past twenty years in the study of varṇa in the preclassical period, through which I will suggest how this research might serve as a basis for a new historical narrative the invention and re-invention of varṇa.

 

SPEAKER BIO
Caley Smith is a scholar of early South Asian religious history and political imagination. His work focuses primarily on the conceptual continuities and disruptions between the Vedas and emergent ascetic and householder traditions. His current book project, The Invisible Mask, explores the ritual impersonation of the god Indra and its influence on the recitation traditions of early Jainism, Buddhism, and Hinduism.

Two infosessions about our MA program

For anyone curious about or interested in our new Master’s degree (hybrid), please feel welcome to one of our two online information sessions. During these sessions, we will provide further details about the program, admission and funding opportunities. There will be time for questions and answers.

Both sessions are identical, but accommodate prospective students in different time zones. Click the session below you wish to attend to register and receive the Teams link:

  1. Session 1: January 15th, 2026 at 18:00 CET, 22:30 IST, 12 noon EST, 9:00 PST
  2. Session 2: January 16th, 2026 at 10:00 CET, 14:30 IST, 4:00 EST, 1:00 PST

We look forward to meeting you!

25 November 2025 | Guest lecture by Dr Reinier Langelaar (Austrian Academy of Sciences)

The third lecture of the Gandhāra Corpora Lecture Series will have Dr. Reinier Langelaar (Institute for the Cultural and Intellectual History of Asia, Austrian Academy of Sciences) joining us as the guest speaker, with a talk titled “The Last Words of a God-King: A Corpus of Tibetan Buddhist Narrative Histories”.

All are welcome. The Gandhāra Corpora Lecture Series is in-person and hybrid online.

Time & venue

  • When: Tuesday 25 November 2025, at 17:00 (5 pm CET)
  • Where: Faculteitszaal, Faculteit Letteren en Wijsbegeerte, Blandijnberg 2, 9000 Gent
  • online attendance: please register through this Google Form: https://forms.gle/TwffQCPuVipUpMvk6 

Abstract

This lecture will present a highly influential corpus of Buddhist historiographies, composed and expanded upon from perhaps the 12th c. CE onward. These works are attributed, as so-called ‘treasure texts,’ to the 7th-c. emperor Songtsen ‘the Profound’ (Tib. srong-btsan sgam-po), himself claimed to be an emanation of the bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara. This corpus constitutes a literary meeting ground for a series of pivotal developments in the realm of Tibetan Buddhist religion, political philosophy, and perceptions of Tibet and its people at large. Weaving compelling tales of Tibetan society’s history, it played a central role in formulating and propagating understandings of Tibet as a Buddhist realm under Avalokiteśvara’s special protection. Though eminently focused on Tibet, these works are also embedded in interregional webs of cultural exchange, potentially drawing inspiration from Indian sūtra literature, Newari Buddhism, Chinese and Khotanese notions of bodhisattva kingship, and more. This talk will introduce this body of works, discuss the particular text-historical and methodological challenges it presents, and show what we may hope to gain from its study.

Bio

Reinier Langelaar is a researcher at the Institute for the Cultural and Intellectual History of Asia (IKGA) at the Austrian Academy of Sciences (AAS). His research interests include religious history, pre-modern ethnic identity, religious history, as well as kinship and genealogy. His work has employed historical, text-critical, ethnographic and comparative methods, and has appeared in journals such as Inner Asia, The Medieval History Journal, the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, and the Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies. At present, he is key researcher in the FWF-funded Cluster of Excellence ‘EurAsian Transformations.’ In 2025, he was awarded an ERC starting grant for the project FOUNT: ‘The Narrative Foundations of Tibetan Buddhism,’ to be hosted at the AAS (2026-31).

20 November 2025 | Guest lecture by DiGA Project Team (CERES, Bochum): Sustaining Digital Heritage Beyond Funding: Building on the DiGA Project

The Ghent Centre for South Asian Studies (GCSAS) and the Ghent Centre for Buddhist Studies (GCBS) are pleased to host the second talk in the Fall 2025 iteration of the Gandhāra Corpora Lecture Series on 20 November 2025:

Title

Sustaining Digital Heritage Beyond Funding: Building on the DiGA Project

Speakers

Prof. Jessie Pons (CERES, Ruhr-Universität Bochum)
&co.:
Serena Autiero (Thammasat University, Bangkok), Frederik Elwert (CERES, Ruhr-Universität Bochum), Cristiano Moscatelli (Independent Researcher), Abdul Samad (KPDOAM)

Time & venue

  • Thursday, 20 November 2025 at 17:00 (5 pm CET)
  • in person: Faculteitszaal, Faculteit Letteren en Wijsbegeerte, Blandijnberg 2, 9000 Gent
  • remotely: please register through this Google Form

Abstract

From 2021 to 2024, the DiGA project (“Digitization of Gandharan Artefacts: A project for the preservation and study of the Buddhist art from Pakistan”) documented a collection of approximately 1,500 Gandharan sculptures preserved at the Dir Museum in Chakdara, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Province (KP), Pakistan. These sculptures originated from a dozen archaeological sites in the Shah-kot/Talash zone (around present-day Chakdara), excavated by the Directorate of Archaeology and Museums, KP, and the Department of Archaeology at Peshawar University in the 1960s and 1970s. As one of the few Gandharan sculptural corpora with established archaeological provenance, this collection provides a solid foundation for reassessing key questions in Gandhara studies, particularly regarding the history of Buddhism on the right bank of Swat River. The database of the collection is now available on the heidICON platform, ready to lend itself to exciting research avenues.

 

With the project officially coming to an end, however, new questions emerge: how can such a project remain active and relevant beyond its institutional and financial framework? How can its data continue to be curated, enriched, and mobilized for research and public engagement once the funding period ends? This presentation will report some of the project’s activities in the post-funding phase. It will share results from recent research based on the DiGA corpus, sketch the outline of a research program building on the project’s legacy, and discuss ongoing initiatives with KPDOAM on community engagement. Ultimately, this talk invites reflection on the broader question of how digital heritage projects can evolve sustainably once their formal lifecycle has ended.

 

Bios

Jessie Pons (CERES, Ruhr-Universität Bochum):
Jessie Pons is Professor for the History of South Asian Religions at the Center for Religions Studies at Ruhr-Universität Bochum. Trained as an art historian, Jessie Pons explores how religion and art intersect and how material objects shape religious communication, lived experiences, and scholarly interpretation.

 

Serena Autiero (Thammasat University, Bangkok):
Serena Autiero is an archaeologist and material culture historian. She is currently a researcher at Thammasat University. Her research interests include cultural exchange in Afroeurasia in pre-modern times, globalization studies, and a special focus on the Indian Ocean World. She authored several publications in international journals and co-edited Globalization and Transculturality from Antiquity to the Pre-Modern World for Routledge.

 

Frederik Elwert (CERES, Ruhr-Universität Bochum):
Frederik Elwert is associate professor at the Center for Religious Studies, Ruhr University Bochum. His background is in religious studies and sociology. He has applied digital humanities methodologies in different areas of the study of religions.

 

Cristiano Moscatelli (Independent Researcher):
Cristiano Moscatelli specialises in Gandharan studies. His research interests focus on Buddhist visual and material culture and on the interactions between Buddhism and local religious systems in the ancient north-western Indian subcontinent. In addition to his work with DiGA, he was a research fellow with the eartHeritage project – A cultural rescue initiative for earthen heritage, investigating clay and stucco Buddhist sculpture from Central Asia through the development of a digital database for the collection, preservation, and dissemination of archaeological data.

 

Abdul Samad (KPDOAM):
Abdul Samad is Secretary of Tourism, Culture, Archaeology and Museums, Government of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (KP) Pakistan as well as Director General of Archaeology & Museums KP. He has two decades of experience in South Asian archaeology, history, and culture, extensively exploring Pakistan’s rich heritage, focusing particularly on the Gandhara and Kalash civilizations. As the Director of the Directorate of Archaeology and Museums in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, he has led numerous initiatives to preserve and promote the cultural legacy of KP through national and international Projects.

 

All are welcome. The Gandhāra Corpora Lecture Series is in-person and hybrid online (Google Form for online participation: https://forms.gle/TwffQCPuVipUpMvk6).

 

13 November 2025 | GCSAS, ViDi (UAntwerp), and Curator-Filmmaker Harsha Vinay on Multimedia Documentation of Art and Religion in India

The third and final screening event of the Ghent Centre for South Asian Studies (GCSAS) for November 2025 on the artistic and religious landscapes of India takes place in Antwerp in collaboration with the Visual and Digital Cultures Research Center (ViDi), University of Antwerp.

Filmmaker and exhibition curator Harsha Vinay will be present to introduce and discuss his work. The programme features two of his documentaries, exploring the ritual and material worlds of Jainism and Hinduism—millennia-old religions that continue to thrive globally, including in Belgium’s vibrant Indian community of Antwerp.
Both films merge ethnography and aesthetics, transforming museum projects into cinematic explorations of how religion is lived, performed, and materialised.

After the screening, an open discussion with the filmmaker moderated by researchers from GCSAS and ViDi will delve into heritage documentation, and the role of film in representing living traditions.

TIME & VENUE

  • When: Thursday 13 November 2025, from 17:00 to 19:00 (5 pm – 7 pm CET)
  • Where: S.M.003, De Meerminne (Stadscampus), Faculty of Social Sciences – University of Antwerp, Sint-Jacobstraat 2, 2000 Antwerp
  • Contacts: letizia.trinco@ugent.be; sara.mondini@ugent.be; paolosh.favero@uantwerpen.be

OPEN TO ALL. NO REGISTRATION REQUIRED.

TRAILERS

Short Films for Being Jain. Art and Culture of an Indian Religion
2022

Originally made for the Museum Rietberg’s exhibition Being Jain. Art and Culture of an Indian Religion (2022-2023), these short films explore key aspects of ritual and material culture within Jainism — including pilgrimage, asceticism, manuscript traditions, ritual death, and everyday lay practices — and have since been screened across the USA, Europe, and India.

 

Mirrors of Malabar
2019

Produced for the Museum Rietberg’s exhibition THE MIRROR – Our Reflected Self (2019) and subsequently screened internationally, Mirrors of Malabar document the making and ritual use of mirrors in worship and possession practices of coastal Kerala (southwestern India).

Guest speaker’s bio

Harsha Vinay is the Founder Director of Green Barbet Ltd, India, with over ten years’ experience in curating exhibitions for international museums, cultural programming, administering an artist residency, production of research publications and documentary films.

Harsha holds an MA from the School of Arts & Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, and a BFA in Painting from College of Fine Art, Bangalore. From 2013 to 2015 he worked at the National Gallery of Modern Art, Bangalore, as Assistant Curator in-charge of exhibitions, programmes and outreach. Prior to this he was the ‘Specialist Writer & Subject Expert’ on the curatorial team of the ICCR sponsored exhibition ‘The Body in Indian Art and Thought’, Bruxelles 2013. Here, Harsha was entrusted with research and collation of documentary films from the archives of the IGNCA and Sangeet Natak Akademi on the living traditions of India.

In 2016, Harsha Vinay moved to Varanasi as Director of the Alice Boner Institute, a residency space for academic and artistic research founded to keep alive the legacy of Swiss artist and scholar Padma Bhushan Dr. Alice Boner. Here he organised artist residencies, exhibitions, symposiums, and cultural events with a range of international institutions.

In 2018, Harsha started his own cultural enterprise in Bangalore – ‘Green Barbet: a company for art and culture in South Asia‘, which provides consultancy and advisory services for museums and cultural organisations within and outside India. Under the aegis of this company, Harsha Vinay has co-curated and collaborated on large exhibitions at Museum Rietberg, including ‘Alice Boner – Artist and Scholar’, 2015-18, ‘Mirror – The Reflected Self’, 2018-19, ‘Being Jain: Art and Culture of an Indian Religion’, 2022-23 and more recently ‘Ragamala – Pictures for all the Senses‘, 2024-25.

Harsha has organised numerous international programmes such as Dialogues on Alice Boner Symposium, January 2018, large public events and workshops in Zurich and Varanasi for a diverse audience. Harsha is co-editor of the publication series Alice Boner Dialogues, initiated in 2020. His experience includes facilitating exchange workshops for traditional artisans for the Crafts Council of India, Chennai and documenting craft traditions of Varanasi through short demonstrational videos by artisans. His interests also extend to art education, capacity building and integrating communities with museum spaces.

Harsha lives and works between Varanasi and Bangalore.

 

 

 

 

Developed in continuity with the Internationalisation@Home session at Ghent University on 12/11/2025, this event is organised in collaboration with Museum Rietberg (Zurich), Green Barbet Ltd (India), and the Visual & Digital Cultures Research Center, University of Antwerp. Funded by the Department of Languages and Cultures, Faculty of Arts and Philosophy, Ghent University, and FWO (Odysseus Type II grant: “The Mosques of Kerala. Artistic Vocabularies in the Identity-Building of Muslim Communities”).

13 November 2025 | Guest lecture by Dr Keiki Nakayama, University of Leipzig

On 13 November 2025, the Ghent Centre for South Asian Studies (GCSAS) and the Ghent Centre for Buddhist Studies (GCBS) are pleased to welcome Dr Keiki Nakayama (University of Leipzig) for a lecture entitled Resituating the Yogācārabhūmi Corpus: Potential Gandhāran Links and Sūtra-Grounded Practice.

This event is part of The Gandhāra Corpora Project Lecture Series.
All are welcome: The Gandhāra Corpora Lecture Series is in-person and hybrid online.

Time & venue

  • Thursday, 13 November 2025, 17:00 (5pm) CET
  • Location: Faculteitszaal, Faculteit Letteren en Wijsbegeerte, Blandijnberg 2, 9000 Gent

Abstract

The Yogācāra school, together with the Madhyamaka, is well known as one of the two major streams of Indian Mahāyāna Buddhism. Yet its foundational text, the Yogācārabhūmi, contains numerous passages that follow the modes of description characteristic of the Śrāvakayāna tradition. The author(s) of this work are thought to have belonged to a lineage that transmitted the Mūlasarvāstivāda Vinaya. Thus, while the Yogācārins were moving away from the Sarvāstivāda mainstream, they also inherited many of its scholastic and disciplinary elements.
The first part of this presentation reconsiders the position of the Yogācārabhūmi—and hence early Yogācāra—in relation to the Sarvāstivāda tradition. The Yogācāra school appears to have shared doctrinal affinities with internal Sarvāstivādin groups such as the Dārṣṭāntikas and Vibhajyavādins mentioned in the Mahāvibhāṣā. Focusing on the Gandhāra region, I examine evidence suggesting that the “Western Masters” (Pāścāttyas), associated with Gandhāra, held positions that coincide with those of the Yogācārabhūmi, thereby indicating possible intersections between Yogācāra and Gandhāran Buddhism.
Later but related materials include numerous Mūlasarvāstivāda Vinaya manuscripts discovered in Gilgit, part of Greater Gandhāra. These texts notably embed a variety of sūtras. If the sūtras employed in the Yogācārabhūmi correspond to those appeared in the Mūlasarvāstivāda Vinaya, this strengthens the view that the Yogācārabhūmi originated from a tradition closely linked to the transmitters of the Mūlasarvāstivāda Vinaya. The recently studied Dīrghāgama (Long Discourses) manuscripts from Gilgit also deserve attention.
The latter half of the talk examines how the Yogācārabhūmi actively incorporates and reinterprets sūtras within its structure of practice. Focusing on the Śrāvakabhūmi, the earliest stratum of the text, I argue that the Yogācāra school, though renowned as meditative practitioners, grounded their practice in close engagement with the words of the Buddha.

Bio

Keiki Nakayama is a guest researcher and lecturer at the Institute for South and Central Asian Studies, Leipzig University. Having recently fulfilled the requirements for a PhD at Kyoto University, he is currently conducting research on the interpretation of canonical scriptures within the Yogācāra school, supported since 2023 by the Bukkyō Dendō Kyōkai (BDK). His publications include a co-authored article with Jens-Uwe Hartmann, “One Hundred and Eight Distinctions of Craving: The Tṛṣṇā-sūtra of the Saṃyuktāgama,” in Mind, Text, and Reality in Buddhist Studies: Engaging the Scholarship of Rupert Gethin (Bloomsbury, 2025), and a co-authored monograph with Izumi Miyazaki et al., The Seventy-five Elements (Dharma) in the Madhyamakapañca-skandhaka, in Bauddhakośa: A Treasury of Buddhist Terms and Illustrative Sentences, Volume VIII (The International Institute for Buddhist Studies, 2022).