Dr. Péter-Dániel Szántó (Leiden University): Śrīmitra — A Tantric Buddhist Yogin at the Gāhaḍavāla Court, in the Kathmandu Valley, in Tibet, and in His Afterlife

25 November 2020

17:00 November 25, 2020. Due to the coronavirus pandemic conducted online via Zoom.

Śrīmitra (late 12th to early 13th c.) is one of those very rare historical individuals about whom we have historical information both from India and from Tibet. I will try to reconstruct this remarkable individual’s career chiefly from an inscription in Bodh-Gaya and from Khro phu lo tsā ba’s mostly unstudied biographical works. We will first examine the inscription in its broader context of Gāhaḍavāla patronage patterns and then we will read and discuss some excerpts from Khro phu’s biography focusing on his account of meeting Śrīmitra in Nepal and bringing him to Tibet, as well as his claims about the siddha’s Elvis-like afterlife. I will conclude by sharing some thoughts about this crucial (and tragic) period in Buddhist history.

• Click here to download the invitation [PDF]

The lecture is held online via Zoom. For those who whish to participate, please write a short mail to Prof. Dr. Wangchuk: dorji.wangchuk@uni-hamburg.de

Prof. Dr. Dorji Wangchuk (Director)
Khyentse Center for Tibetan Buddhist Textual Scholarship (KC-TBTS)
Abteilung für Kultur und Geschichte Indiens und Tibets, AAI, Universität Hamburg
Alsterterrasse 1, D-20354 Hamburg