L’Inde au carrefour des imaginaires : perspectives comparées. « Distinguished lectures » du Grand programme de recherches PSL « Les fabriques de l’antique ».

Study day organised by Vincent Eltschinger, Vassa Kontouma, Andreas Stauder, Directors of Studies at EPHE-PSL; Co-leaders of the PSL Grand Programme de Recherches (Major Research Programme) "Les fabriques de l'antique" (The Making of Antiquity) with the support of the Paris IAS. 

Presentation 

The PSL Grand Research Programme ‘Les fabriques de l'antique’ (The Making of Antiquity) inaugurates its series of distinguished lectures with a day devoted to representations of India in different ancient and medieval cultural and religious areas.

India, as we know, profoundly influenced the ancient imagination as a land abundant in riches and monstrous creatures, wisdom and marvellous prestige. The Latin, Greek and Arabic Middle Ages saw ancient knowledge and representations enriched and considerably refined thanks to the accounts of travellers on more ambitious journeys and more systematic methods. China and Tibet, and beyond them Korea and Japan, also developed extremely rich imaginations of India around the transmission of Buddhism, one of the most remarkable scholarly acculturation projects ever known to humanity.

The lectures by John Marenbon (Cambridge) and Leonard van der Kuijp (Harvard) will be followed by a round table discussion in which several specialists will be invited to reflect on the ways in which knowledge and imaginations related to India were transmitted, represented and constructed from the comparative and trans-areal perspective characteristic of the PSL Grand Programme de Recherche ‘Les fabriques de l'antique’ (The Making of Antiquity).

Program

10:30 a.m-Welcome and introduction (Vincent Eltschinger, EPHE-PSL)

11:00 a.m.-John Marenbon (University of Cambridge)
« Medieval Christian and Islamic Views of Indian Culture »

12:30 a.m-Lunch break  

2:00 p.m-Leonard van der Kuijp (Harvard University)
"The Enculturation of the Indic in Tibet: Translators as Cultural Intermediaries and the Idea of the Scholar"

4:00 p.m. - 4.20 p.m-Coffee break

4:20 p.m.-5.20pm-Round table (moderation Vincent Eltschinger, EPHE-PSL)
Muriel Debié (EPHE-PSL), Leonard van der Kuijp (Harvard University), Alexis Lycas (EPHE-PSL), John Marenbon (University of Cambridge), Isabelle Ratié (Collège de France)

6.p.m.- End

Condition of participation 

Event open to the public. Registration required via the following link :https://iea-fan.eventbrite.fr
Contact : contact@fab-antique.fr