Centre for Tantric Studies

We are pleased to announce recent appointments in projects connected with the Centre for Tantric Studies:

• The Early Tantra project brings Dr. Martin Delhey to the ‘Nepalese Manuscript of the Mañjuśrīmūlakalpa‘ sub-project.
• The Manuscript Cultures Research Group has two sub-projects of relevance to tantric studies. Mr. Camillo Formigatti, M.A., comes to Hamburg for the ‘Indian and Nepalese Manuscript Annotations‘ sub-project. Dr. Orna Almogi is attached to the ‘Variants in Manuscripts of the rNying ma rgyud ‘bum‘ sub-project.

For further information, please see our page on research projects.

A summary of the presentation recently given by Prof. Francesco Sferra is now online:

The Nāda Theory of Language:
A Śaiva Perspective on Verbal Communication.

Asia-Africa Institute, University of Hamburg, 30 April 2007.

This semester’s Numata Professor, Jacob Dalton, currently visiting from Yale University, is teaching two classes in tantric studies at the University of Hamburg.

In the seminar ‘Tibetan Sādhanas from Dunhuang’, a number of manuscripts connected with the Sarvatathāgata-tattvasaṃgraha are being read: IOL Tib J 417, 447, 448 and others (*Tattvasaṃgraha sādhanopāyikas) and Pelliot tibétain 300, 792, and others.

In the ‘Developments in Early Tantric Ritual’ lectures, Prof. Dalton surveys the historical factors at work in the first formative periods of tantric Buddhism, starting with Brahmanical and proto-tantric liturgy and concluding with the advent of Mahāyoga tantras in the eighth and ninth centuries.

Prof. Dalton’s classes are offered as part of the Asia-Africa Institute’s ongoing teaching in tantric studies.