Toward building a Typology of Chos Grub's Calligraphy
13 October 2020 - Channa Li (Vienna)
Toward Building a Typology of Chos Grub's Calligraphy: Palaeographical Studies of the Tibetan Dunhuang Manuscripts written in the Monastic Style
public online lecture at the BuddhistRoad project, CERES, Ruhr-Universität Bochum
Manuscripts are not only bearers of texts but also artefacts. Beyond conveying intellectual or literary messages, a manuscript is per se an archaeological object, the tangible outcome of social and human endeavor. In her presentation Channa Li is about to establish a typology of the calligraphy of Chos grub, the famous bilingual translator from Dunhuang. Sifting through the manuscripts falling into Chos grub’s intellectual ‘legacy’ this presentation seeks to contribute to a better reading of manuscripts with this certain type of script and, moreover, serves as the benchmark for further recognition of Chos grub’s works. Channa Li is currently a Post-doc Research Associate in IKGA, the Austria Academy of Sciences. With a Ph.D. at Leiden University in 2019, her fields of interest range widely from the Buddhist cultures and materials along the Silk Road (esp. Dunhuang, Kizil), to the significance of Buddhist narratives in helping us visualise the ideological history of Buddhism in ancient India, China, and Tibet. She also focuses on Buddhist Mahāyāna translations made by medieval Chinese and Tibetan monks, especially Tibetan sūtras translated from Chinese.