Projects

The ITLR is designed to serve as a digital platform for researchers from the fields of classical Indology, Tibetology, and Buddhology when dealing with Sanskrit/Indic-Tibetan lexical items; and as a long-term basis for collaboration among scholars worldwide from these related fields. The ITLR is thus primarily a digital treasury of reliable and comprehensive Indo-Tibetan lexical data that have been put at the disposal of the broad scholarly community interested in Indian and Tibetan texts and thought. The ITLR will accumulate and store lexical items that are the products (or by-products) of research done within the framework of selected projects devoted to the investigation of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist literature of all genres
the by-products of research of individual scholars, which under normal circumstances would otherwise often end up tucked away in scholarly footnotes and thus remain largely inaccessible.

One of the long-term aims of the ITLR is to provide the necessary infrastructure for collaborative research and other forms of cooperation between scholars from the fields of Indology, Tibetology, and Buddhology, and between traditional and modern academics as well.

Which areas will be covered?

Although lexical items from the various branches of Buddhist philosophy are bound to be in the majority, the entries will not be restricted to Buddhist terminology, but will also include other Indian religio-philosophical terms, and indeed any lexical items and names that occur in the texts. In keeping with the vision of the ITLR to leave the number of entries open-ended lexical items from all fields of knowledge and literary genres will be incorporated. It is envisaged that lexical items from a whole host of fields and sub-fields will flow into the ITLR via multiple channels.

Who is involved?

The aim of the ITLR is to bring together Sanskritists, Buddhologists (with knowledge of Sanskrit or classical Tibetan), classical Tibetologists (with main research interests in Indo-Tibetan and Buddhist materials), and specialists in Digital Humanities. Fortunately, a number of colleagues from several universities and other institutions have already agreed to cooperate, either on an institutional or individual level. Beside scholars from the University of Hamburg, these include scholars from the International Institute for Digital Humanities (DHII) in Tokyo, University of Tokyo, University of Kyoto, University of Naples, Mie University, University of Oxford, Koyasan University, Nishogakusya University, Minobusan University, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Leiden University, Renmin University of China, Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna, Istituto Italiano per l’Africa e l’Oriente in Rome and the China Tibetology Research Center in Beijing. Further potential partners are being sounded out. Scholars who are interested to contribute to the ITLR are welcome to contact us.

History

The ITLR is the first project initiated by Prof. Dr. Dorji Wangchuk (immediately after he assumed his position at the Department for Indian and Tibetan Studies at the University of Hamburg). The first ITLR workshop, “Indo-Tibetan Lexical Resource (ITLR): Conception, Development, Implementation,” took place in Hamburg December 16–17, 2009. The second workshop, “Indo-Tibetan Lexical Resource (ITLR): “TEI Encoding for Classical Asian Texts,” took place July 12–14, 2010. A third workshop, “Indo-Tibetan Lexical Resource (ITLR): Experimentation and Implementation I,” is scheduled to take place in Hamburg July 19–22, 2011, and a fourth, “Indo-Tibetan Lexical Resource (ITLR): Experimentation and Implementation II,” in Tokyo in December 2011. We have been fortunate to gain support for the development of the ITLR database from the International Institute for Digital Humanities (DHII), Tokyo, and from the SAT [Saṃgaṇikīkṛtam Taiśotripiṭakam] Daizōkyō Text Database, Tokyo. Since 2010 meetings, each comprising members of the ITLR team in Hamburg, Mr. Kiyonori Nagasaki (general manager, DHII), and Dr. Toru Tomabechi (DHII), have regularly taken place (May 2010; October 2010; February 2011; May 2011), in which concrete steps towards the development and improvement of the ITLR database were agreed and followed up on. (For more details, see Cooperations).

ITLR-Viewer

Cooperating Institutions:

On account of the success of the pilot project (2014–2018) followed and the first round of the Academic Research Program Initiative (ARPI-I) (2016–2020), we are pleased to announce the launch of the follow-up project (ARPI-II), which will be likewise funded by the Khyentse Foundation for a period of 4 years (July 1, 2020 – June 30, 2024). The ARPI project continues to be the main means of carrying some of the most central objectives of the Khyentse Center for Tibetan Buddhist Textual Scholarship (KC-TBTS), including (a) training traditional scholars in modern historical and philological methods, (b) establishing research centers of Tibetan Buddhism in Tibetan Buddhist monastic institutions in South Asia and promoting cooperation between them and the Western Academia, and (c) developing and supporting research projects with a focus on Tibetan Buddhist textual studies. ARPI-II aims at training a new batch of Tibetan scholars, alongside publication of the research result of the pilots and ARPI-I members. A peculiar characteristics of ARPI-II is its following the train-the-trainer approach, aiming at sustainable research environments in the future. Three research centers will be participating in the project, including Chökyi Lodrö Research Center (CLRC) at Dzongsar Institute (Chauntra), Ngagyur Nyingma Research Center (NNRC) at Namdroling (Mysore), and Shechen Research Division (SRD) at Shechen monastery (Kathmandu).

“gSung-rten” is a collaborative research project of the Khyentse Center and is devoted to the collection, documentation, investigation, and explanation of mostly traditional Tibetan technical terms dealing with Tibetan paleography, codicology, and philology or textual scholarship. The project thus focuses on various aspects of what Tibetan Buddhists refer to as the “receptacle of Speech” (gsung rten), a term that includes not only texts as intangible entities but also books as tangible realities, both of which are the main objects of research for all of us interested in gaining a nuanced and reliable understanding of the Tibetan intellectual world (Geisteswelt). Its database is planned to include (a) technical terms relevant to Tibetan paleography, codicology, and philology, (b) relevant textual passages, (c) bibliography of primary and secondary sources, and (d) images of physical objects, when applicable and feasible.

A collaborative project between Tel Aviv University (TAU), The Blavatnik School of Computer Science, and Universität Hamburg (UHH), Asien-Afrika-Institut, the Department of Indian and Tibetan Studies, financed by the German-Israeli Foundation for Scientific Research and Development (GIF).

The project focuses on a Tibetan textual corpus known as the bKa’ gdams gsung ’bum or The Collected Writings of the bKa’-gdams-pa School, one of the three main schools that emerged during the second period of propagation of Buddhism in Tibet (ca. 11th–13th centuries) whose monasteries were famed as centers of learning. The corpus accordingly contains numerous texts of various genres that were mainly produced in the period between the eleventh and fourteenth centuries and is by and large written in a variety of dBu-med (“headless”) scripts, most of which are peculiar to this corpus. Following the rise of the dGe-lugs school and the Dalai Lama hegemony, the bKa’-gdams-pa school declined and finally disappeared; thus its textual scholarly legacy has fallen into oblivion. The bKa’ gdams gsung ’bum bears testimony to the intensity and extensity of intellectual engagement in the Tibetan Buddhist civilization, and a nuanced understanding of the Tibetan intellectual history and intellectual culture seems hardly possible without investigating this textual corpus and its content. Due to the fact that this enormous corpus has only recently been made available, most of the material contained therein has yet to be studied by modern scholars. The project aims at studying the emergence of this corpus in terms of place and time and in relation to its philosophical contents, by employing tools and methods of both textual scholarship and computer science. The project thus focuses on the development of a codicological and paleographical scheme for analyzing Tibetan manuscripts and xylographs, mainly focusing on textual corpora of the bKa’-gdams-pa tradition, and of new tools and techniques for investigating Tibetan texts in general, including their contents and forms, so as to facilitate Tibetan Buddhist textual scholarship.

In the center of our efforts of developing develop a codicological and paleographical scheme stands the bKa’-gdams material with its distinct dBu-med script including its various subtypes, with the main aim to enable identifying “joins” of separated fragments, dissolved and scattered collections, and stray manuscripts and xylographs, on the one hand, and determining periodical and regional characteristics with the help of which manuscripts and xylographs could be dated and their provenance determined, on the other. Apart from the immediate benefit of developing such a scheme for the study of the bKa’-gdams material, it is envisioned that in the future it could serve as a model and, in fact, as a basis for a more comprehensive study of the development of Tibetan scripts and script styles over the centuries and in different regions.

In regard to the textual aspect, the projects aims at developing open-source software and digital tools that will be put at the disposal of the community of scholars of Tibetan Buddhist scholarship for the study of any Tibetan written material. The envisioned functions of such software and digital tools will include the processing of not only (i) transliterated Tibetan Buddhist texts, including, for example, advanced approximate text matching methods for easily locating shared texts and citations in a huge amount of written material, and thus better our understanding of the emergence of various Buddhist corpora, but also (ii) images of manuscripts and xylographs including automatized determination of different or similar scripts and, in more advanced techniques, even of different or similar hands, and automatized determination of different or similar layouts and artistic features presented in the manuscripts and xylographs, and encoding of imaged text.

Project Members:

Prof. Nachum Dershowitz, TAU
Prof. Lior Wolf, TAU
Prof. Dorji Wangchuk, UHH
Dr. Orna Almogi, UHH
Eric Werner, UHH

Cooperating Institutions

A project led by Dr. Orna Almogi, funded by the DFG

The main subject matter of this project is the study of the history of the formation, production, and transmission of the bsTan 'gyur from the early stages, which took place in sNar thang monastery at the beginning of the 14th century, to the later stages, which are reflected in the five available bsTan 'gyur editions. The project also aims at contributing to the better understanding of the role of editors in the three levels of formation, production, and transmission concerning Buddhist corpora within the Tibetan cultural sphere, and it is intended to be carried out on two levels: bibliographical and historical. While the study of the catalogue of the Old sNar thang edition, which was compiled by dBus pa blo gsal (b. 13th c.), one of the main editors of this first edition, stands at the centre of the bibliographical investigation, the assessment of numerous Tibetan sources among a wide range of literary genres stands in the centre of the historical investigation, particularly findings concerning the history of the production and transmission of various bsTan 'gyur editions.

See DFG project desription

Ever since the establishment of the Khyentse Center for Tibetan Buddhist Textual Scholarship (KC-TBTS), it has never lost sight of three of its main objectives and activities namely, (a) to train students to investigate Tibetan Buddhist texts using historical-philological tools and techniques, (b) to promote and establish cooperation between the Center and international institutions and scholars, particularly from the target regions (Tibet/China, India, Nepal, and Bhutan), and (c) to develop and support research projects with a focus on Tibetan Buddhist textual studies. The “Academic Research Program Initiative” (ARPI), funded by the Khyentse Foundation (ARPI-I: three years between 2015–2020; ARPI-II: four years between 2020–2024), is a direct outcome of the workshops conducted in South Asia by the Center since it foundation. ARPI has been conceived with the sole aim of training traditional Buddhist monk and nun scholars in pursuing modern academic (i.e. historical-philological) study of Tibetan Buddhist texts and ideas and helping to establish research centers within Tibetan Buddhist monastic institutions that will operate independently, on the one hand, and create an environment for fruitful collaboration between traditional and modern scholars from western universities, on the other. The activities of the ARPI are being carried out under the auspices of the Khyentse Center.