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Abstract

The early second millennium C.E. was a time of substantial and rapid changes in the Buddhist world of Southern Asia. Such changes included innovations in textual cultures, monastic institutional settings, and the work of politics. Looking at this period from the perspective of intellectual history and textuality, one vector to follow is Pali language and Pali-language textuality. Alert to who is engaging with Pali textuality in particular ways and why such engagements took the shapes they did within the region’s richly multilingual environment, it is fruitful to unite studies of Pali language textual culture with histories of Southern Asian political formations and Indian Ocean histories. Examining specific case studies from what are now Thailand and Burma/Myanmar, we can see how transregional maritime and riverine movements of people, goods, and texts interacted with specific local histories to make possible new articulations of sovereignty between 1200 and 1550.

About Speaker

Anne Blackburn was first drawn to the study of Buddhism at Swarthmore College thanks to Donald Swearer, a scholar of Northern Thai Buddhism who developed innovative analytical perspectives on Buddhist history working across the domains of Thai Buddhist historiography, politics, Buddhist material culture, and Buddha biography. She received further training as an historian of religions at the University of Chicago, mentored by Frank Reynolds in a program shaped by historical sociology and hermeneutics. Her secondary supervisor at Chicago, Steven Collins, conducted research in Buddhist Studies and South Asian Studies, working with great originality at the intersection of historical sociology, philosophy, and the study of Buddhist literature in Pali. Studying with Charles Hallisey and P.B. Meegaskumbura introduced Blackburn to the rich history of Sinhala Buddhist literature and historiography, as well as approaches to South Asian literary vernaculars.

This event is supported in part by grant funding from the U.S. Department of Education’s Title VI National Resource Centers program. Outreach content does not necessarily represent the policy of the U.S. Department of Education, and you should not assume endorsement by the Federal Government.

Sponsored by: South Asia Institute (UT-Austin)