Centre for Tantric Studies

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.

The inaugural lecture for Trinity term in Oxford’s Numata Distinguished Guest Speaker Series was given by Prof. Harunaga Isaacson (visiting from the Asia-Africa Institute, University of Hamburg):

Words of the Yoginīs:
Reflections on the Textual History of the Buddhist Yoginītantras

• Date: Friday, 25th April 2008, 5 pm
• Venue: Lecture Room 1 (LR1), Oriental Institute (Oxford University Faculty of Oriental Studies), Pusey Lane, Oxford, UK
• Convenor: Dr. Robert Mayer, Oriental Institute, Oxford

A number of classes relating to tantric studies are being taught in the summer semester at the AAI, University of Hamburg:

• Conceptions of bodhi in Indian Tantric Buddhism (Prof. Harunaga Isaacson)
• Besitzer von [magischem und soteriologischem] Wissen (rig ’dzin: vidyādhara) in tibetischen tantrischen Texten (Dr. Dorji Wangchuk)
• Die [durch] Gold [erworbenen] Lehren (gser chos): Tantrische Schriften der Shangs-pa-bka’-brgyud-Schule (Dorji Wangchuk)
• Ausgewähle Passage aus dem Mila rnam mgur (Dr. Klaus-Dieter Mathes)

We will also offer two classes specifically in tantric studies, both to be taught from May by this semester’s Numata Professor, Jacob Dalton, visiting from Yale University:

• Developments in Early Tantric Ritual
• Tibetan Sādhanas from Dunhuang

For further details, please see our full list.