Dynamics in the History of Religions – serie

This exploration of early paths for Buddhist transmission within and beyond South Asia retraces the footsteps of monks, merchants, and other agents of cross-cultural exchange. A reassessment of literary, epigraphic, and archaeological sources reveals hisorical contexts for the growth of the Buddhist saṅgha from approximately the 5th century BCE to the end of the first millennium CE. Patterns of dynamic Buddhist mobility were closely linked to transregional trade networks extending to the northwestern borderlands and joined to Central Asian silk routes by capillary routes through transit zones in the upper Indus and Tarim Basin. By examining material conditions for Buddhist establishments at nodes along these routes, this book challenges models of gradual diffusion and develops alternative explanations for successful Buddhist movement.

This first volume of the series “Dynamics in the History of Religions” reviews the opening conference of the "Käte Hamburger Kolleg” at the Ruhr-University Bochum. The first section concentrates on the formation of what later come to be termed "world religions" through inter-religious contact, the second part focuses on the significance of interreligious contacts also during their expansive phase. Methodological problems of multi-perspective research and especially the lack of a general religious terminology are discussed in the third chapter, while the final papers outline various aspects of secularization and (re-)sacralisation in the age of globalisation as an effect of multicultural contacts in a world wide web of religious interferences.Contributors include: Marion Steinicke, Volkhard Krech, Peter Wick, Victor H. Mair, Heiner Roetz, Patrick Olivelle, Jens Schlieter, Guy Stroumsa, Sarah Stroumsa, Nikolas Jaspert, Michael Lecker, John Tolan, Eun-jeung Lee, Michael Lackner, Stephen C. Berkwitz, Sven Bretfeld, Lucian Hölscher, Jan Assmann, Robert Ford Campany, Russell McCutcheon, Tim H. Barrett, Francesca Tarocco, Ronald M. Davidson, Markus Zehnder, Aslam Syed, Marion Eggert, Peter Schalk, Peter Beyer, Ian Reader, José Casanova, Heinz Georg Held.

Purity is a cultural construct that had a central role in the forming and the development of religious traditions in the ancient Mediterranean. This volume analyzes concepts, practices and images associated with purity in the main cultures of Antiquity, and discusses from a comparative perspective their parallel developments and transformations. The perspective adopted is both synchronic and diachronic; the comparative approach takes into account points of contact and mutual influences, but also includes major transcultural trends. A number of renowned specialists contribute a large variety of perspectives and approaches, combining archaeology, epigraphy and social history; in addition, particular attention is given to concepts of purity in ancient Israel and early Judaism as a ‘test-case’ of sorts. Through its extensive coverage, the volume contributes decisively to the present discussion about the forming of religious traditions in the ancient Mediterranean world.Contributors include: Philippe Borgeaud, Beate Ego, Christian Frevel, Linda-Marie Günther, Michaël Guichard, Gudrun Holtz, Manfred Hutter, Albert de Jong, Michael Konkel, Bernhard Linke, Lionel Marti, Hans-Peter Mathys, Christophe Nihan, Joachim Friedrich Quack, Benedikt Rausche, Noel Robertson, Udo Rüterswörden, Ian Werrett, and Jürgen K. Zangenberg.

Religion and Secularity traces the history of the conceptual binary of religion and secularity in Europe and the repercussions it had in other regions and cultures of the Eurasian continent during the age of imperialism and beyond. Twelve authors from a wide range of disciplines, deal in their contributions with the trajectory, the concepts of „religion“ and „secularity/secularization“ took, as well as with the corresponding re-configurations of the religious field in a variety of cultures in Europe, the Near and Middle East, South Asia and East Asia. Taken together, these in-depth studies provide a broad comparative perspective on a penomenon that has been crucial for the development of globalized modernity and its regional interpretations.

In Religions and Trade a number of international scholars investigate the ways in which eastern and western religions were formed and transformed from the perspective of "trade." Trade changes religions. Religions expand through the help of trade infrastructures, and religions extend and enrich the trade relations with cultural and religious "commodities" which they contribute to the “market place” of human culture and religion. This leads to the inclusion, demarcation and densification as well as the amalgamation of religious traditions.In an attempt to find new pathways into the world of religious dynamics, this collection of essays focuses on four elements or “commodities” of religious interchange: topologies of religious space, religious symbol systems, religious knowledge, and religious-ethical ways of life.Contributors include: Christoph Auffarth, Izak Cornelius, Georgios Halkias, Geoffrey Herman, Livia Kohn, Al Makin, Jason Neelis, Volker Rabens, Abhishek Singh Amar, Loren Stuckenbruck, Joan Goodnick Westenholz, Peter Wick, Michael Willis, and Sylvia Winkelmann.

While comparative studies on purity and impurity presented in the last decades have mostly concentrated on the ancient world or on modern developments, this volume focusses the hitherto comparatively neglected period between ca. 300 and 1600 c. E. The collection is innovative because it not only combines papers on both European and Asian cultures but also considers a wide variety of religions and confessions. The articles are written by leading experts in the field and are presented in six systematic sections. This analytical categorization facilitates understanding the functional spectrum that the binomial purity and impurity could cover in past societies. The volume thus presents an in-depth comparative analysis of a category of paramount importance for interfaith relations and processes of transfer.Contributors are: Aziz al-Azmeh, Matthias Bley, Sven Bretfeld, Miriam Czock, Licia Di Giacinto, Hans-Werner Goetz, Elisabeth Hollender, Nikolas Jaspert, Stefan Köck, Stefan Leder, Hanna Liss, Christopher MacEvitt, Hermann-Josef Röllicke, Paolo Santangelo, and Ephraim Shoham-Steiner.

The interdisciplinary volume Transfer of Buddhism across Central Asian Networks (7th to 13th Centuries), edited by Carmen Meinert, offers a new transregional and transcultural vision for religious transfer processes in Central Asian history. It looks at the region as an integrated (religious) whole rather than from the perspective of fragmented sub-disciplines and analyses the spread of Buddhism as a driving force in a societal and cultural change of pan-Asian importance. One particular dimension of this ‘Buddhist globalisation’ was the rise of local forms of Buddhism. This volume explores Buddhist localisations through manuscripts and material culture in the multiethnic oases of the Tarim basin, the Transhimalyan region of Zangskar, Ladakh and Kashmir and the Western Tibetan Kingdom of Purang-Guge.Contributors are: Kazuo Kano, Deborah Klimburg-Salter, Rob Linrothe, Linda Lojda, Carmen Meinert, Henrik H. Sørensen, Monica Strinu, Gertraud Taenzer, Sam van Schaik, and Jens Wilkens.

This collection of articles is an innovative contribution to religious studies, because it picks up concepts developed in the wake of the so-called "spatial turn". Religions are always located in a certain cultural and spatial environment, but often tend to locate (or translocate) themselves beyond that original setting. Also, many religious traditions are not only tied to or associated with the area its respective adherent live in, but are in fact "bi-local" or even "multi-local", as they closely relate to various spatial centers or plains at once. This spatial diversity inherent to many religions is a corollary to religious diversity or plurality that merits in-depth research. The articles in this volume present important findings from a series of settings within and between Asia and Europe.Contributors are: Anna Akasoy, Christopher I. Beckwith, Stephen C. Berkwitz, Alexandra Cuffel, Ana Echevarria, Reinhold F. Glei, Tsering Gonkatsang, Georgios T. Halkias, Nikolas Jaspert, Adam Knobler, Zara Pogossian, Henrik H. Sörensen, Knut Martin Stünkel, John Tolan, Dorothea Weltecke, and Michael Willis.

Encounters, networks, identities and diversity are at the core of the history of Buddhism. They are also the focus of Buddhist Encounters and Identities across East Asia, edited by Ann Heirman, Carmen Meinert and Christoph Anderl. While long-distance networks allowed Buddhist ideas to travel to all parts of East Asia, it was through local and trans-local networks and encounters, and a diversity of people and societies, that identities were made and negotiated. This book undertakes a detailed examination of discrete Buddhist identities rooted in unique cultural practices, beliefs and indigenous socio-political conditions. Moreover, it presents a fascinating picture of the intricacies of the regional and cross-regional networks that connected South and East Asia.

The ERC-funded research project BuddhistRoad aims to create a new framework to enable understanding of the complexities in the dynamics of cultural encounter and religious transfer in pre-modern Eastern Central Asia. Buddhism was one major factor in this exchange: for the first time the multi-layered relationships between the trans-regional Buddhist traditions (Chinese, Indian, Tibetan) and those based on local Buddhist cultures (Khotanese, Uyghur, Tangut, Khitan) will be explored in a systematic way. The first volume Buddhism in Central Asia (Part I): Patronage, Legitimation, Sacred Space, and Pilgrimage is based on the start-up conference held on May 23rd–25th, 2018, at CERES, Ruhr-Universität Bochum (Germany) and focuses on the first two of altogether six thematic topics to be dealt with in the project, namely on “patronage and legitimation strategy” as well as "sacred space and pilgrimage."

The ERC-funded research project BuddhistRoad aims to create a new framework to enable understanding of the complexities in the dynamics of cultural encounter and religious transfer in pre-modern Eastern Central Asia. Buddhism was one major factor in this exchange: for the first time the multi-layered relationships between the trans-regional Buddhist traditions (Chinese, Indian, Tibetan) and those based on local Buddhist cultures (Khotanese, Uyghur, Tangut) will be explored in a systematic way. The second volume Buddhism in Central Asia II—Practice and Rituals, Visual and Materials Transfer based on the mid-project conference held on September 16th–18th, 2019, at CERES, Ruhr-Universität Bochum (Germany) focuses on two of the six thematic topics addressed by the project, namely on "practices and rituals", exploring material culture in religious context such as mandalas and talismans, as well as “visual and material transfer”, including shared iconographies and the spread of ‘Khotanese’ themes.

There is no religion lest there are two religions. Therefore, it is only possible to examine the history of religions by taking the crucial situations of contact into account. Contact needs concepts. Not only scholars but also participants in situations of contact are forced to conceptualize themselves and the other. Taking its point of departure from the contact-based approach to the study of religion, the present volume examines and reassesses a selection of concepts and models (attraction, dynamics and stability, tradition, transcendence/immanence, senses, secret, space) used to come to terms with the phenomenon of contact as the dynamizing element of the history of religions.

This book includes a collection of articles by leading researchers on the topic of religious contact in the study of religion. Resulting from the final conference of the Käte Hamburger Kolleg "Dynamics in the History of Religions"–one of the largest research initiatives in the interdisciplinary study of religion worldwide in recent years (2008-2020)—this book encapsulates the twofold aim of this conference: first, to "step back" and reflect upon the merits and challenges of studying religious dynamics as a result of intra-, inter-, and extra-religious contact, and second "to look beyond" and pave ways for future approaches to study religion as a social phenomenon.

Secrets in Contact presents a revolutionary perspective on religious secrecy—revealing how the concealed becomes a bridge between faiths rather than a barrier. This ground-breaking collection of essays challenges conventional wisdom by demonstrating how secrets function as powerful catalysts for religious contact and exchange. From Paul's "Unknown God" to Daoist-Buddhist exchanges, this volume unveils the sophisticated strategies through which religious traditions use secrecy to communicate, influence, and transform one another. Essential reading for scholars seeking fresh insights into the hidden mechanisms that shape inter-religious encounters across cultures and centuries.