Buddhism and Material Culture

Monastic life is usually studied in the context of philosophical debates, monastic treatises, artistic endeavours, or political events. Daily life is more difficult to assess, primarily due to a shortage of obvious sources. Nevertheless, the objects and practices of monastic life can tell us a great deal about the values of monastic life, how these values develop over time, and how Buddhist monasteries interact with the contexts in which they function. Two large corpora of source material – Indian disciplinary texts and later Chinese commentaries on those texts – contain extensive details of these items and practices. Moreover, non-Buddhist texts, stelae inscriptions, archaeological findings, and artworks provide a wealth of supplementary information. The Buddhism and Material Culture project will focus on what these resources can teach us about material culture not only within Buddhist monasteries but throughout Ancient Indian and Medieval Chinese society.