Transcending Boundaries: Premodern Cultural Transactions across Asia celebrates the scholarship of Osmund Bopearachchi, a pioneering scholar in the fields of art history and numismatics, whose work has impacted numerous other domains of history. Going beyond the traditional approach of cataloguing coins, Professor Bopearachchi has worked to link numismatics with sculptural and pictorial iconography. Across his decades-long career, he has transcended the boundaries of academic disciplines to carry out path-breaking research.

The chapters presented here consist of six themes related to Professor Bopearachchi’s diverse interests: archaeology, material remains and archives form the first segment; the second relates to epigraphic and numismatic sources and interpretative histories; the third deals with texts and their contexts; the fourth deals with art and architecture; the fifth is on religious studies with a special focus on Buddhism; and the final section deals with varied aspects of cultural history and beyond. Through these broadly interconnected themes, the volume transcends boundaries to reflect different aspects of cultural history and the changing vignettes of society in the premodern era based on a study of empirical sources, art historical material and texts.

Contents:

Acknowledgements

Introduction by SUSMITA BASU MAJUMDAR

A Tribute to Osmund Bopearachchi by RICHARD BELESON

Professor Osmund Boppearachchi: Gracious Polymath by ANNE BLACKBURN

 

PART I: ARCHAEOLOGY, MATERIAL REMAINS AND ARCHIVES

1. Finding Forgotten Stories about the Harappan Civilization: Vignettes from the Archives by NAYANJOT LAHIRI
2. Wine-making and Wine-drinking in Central Asia and Gandhāra from the Bronze Age to Pre-Kushan Antiquity by HENRI-PAUL FRANCFORT
3. Giribawa in the Context of Glass Production and Maritime Exchanges in South Asia by ARIANE DE SAXCÉ

 

PART II: EPIGRAPHIC AND NUMISMATIC SOURCES AND INTERPRETATIVE HISTORIES

4. Liako Kusulako and the Era of Maues by HARRY FALK
5. Berenike Brahmi Inscription Revisited by SUSMITA BASU MAJUMDAR
6. A Prosperous Hub in the Hinterland: Situating Junnar in the Early Historic Context by SMITA HALDER
7. Seventeenth-century Pali Inscriptions from Wat Chaiwathanaram, Ayuthaya: The Sambuddhe Verses and Dependent Arising by PETER SKILLING
8. The Indo-Greek Gold Coinages: A New Heliocles II Specimen? by OLIVIER BORDEAUX
9. The Verehakale Hoard of Roman Coins by MICHAEL AMANDRY
10. About Collection of Lieutenant Alexander Burnes and some questions of Bactrian History by KAZIM ABDULLAEV
11. A So Strange Coinage: The Coins of the ‘Western Regions’ in the Chinese Texts of Han period by FRANÇOIS THIERRY
12. Remarks on Lead-Tin Chinese Coins from the Tenth-Century Cirebon Shipwreck by LYCE JANKOWSKI
13. Interpreting Monetary History of Medieval Bengal: Some Issues Reflected through the Prism of Coin Hoards by SUTAPA SINHA

 

PART III: LOOKING THROUGH AND BEYOND THE TEXTS

14. Foreign Geographic Projections in Cosmas Indicopleustes by FEDERICO ROMANIS
15. Archaeology, History, and the Poetic Imagination: Vālmīki’s Rāmāyaṇa as a Tale of Three Cities by ROBERT P. GOLDMAN
16. Demonic Demise: Demons, Dismemberment, and Decapitation in Vālmīki’s Rāmāyaṇa by SALLY J. SUTHERLAND GOLDMAN
17. Cultural Relations between Nāgārjunakoṇḍa and Sri Lanka as Revealed in the Sīhalavatthu by NADEESHA S. GUNAWARDANA
18. Five Weeks After: Post-Enlightenment in Xuanzang’s Record of the Western Regions by MAX DEEG
19. Situating Early Kashmir: Connected Histories in Kalhaṇa’s Rājataraṅgiṇī by SHONALEEKA KAUL

 

PART IV: ART, ARCHITECTURE AND BEYOND

20. Seeking Survivals in Buddhist Art: Ananda Coomaraswamy’s Early Development edited JANICE LEOSHKO
21. The Archery Competition of Siddhārta and the Pre-Marital Ceremony in Gandhāran Art: An Example of Shared Traditions in Buddhism and Indian Epics edited by LAURA GIULIANO
22. Bodhisattvas or Deified Portraits in Gandhāran Art? Some Thoughts edited by VINCENT LEFEVRE
23. 23. From Gandhara to Kucha and Back Again: Identifications of Gandharan Reliefs by Means of Kuchean Iconography by MONIKA ZIN
24. Iconographical Remarks on the Mural Fragments from the Kizil Grottoes in the Hirayama Ikuo Silk Road Museum, Japan by SATOMI HIYAMA
25. The Relationship between a Portrait of Prince Shōtoku (c.573–622) and Tang Royal Murals: On the Materialitof the Cultural Identity of the Tang by PEI YING LIN
26. The Indian Elements of the Qingzhou Style of Buddha Images in China by TIANSHU ZHU
27. Morphing Icons: Radiant Iconotext Paintings in Medieval Jōdo Shin Buddhism by MARK L. BLUM
28. An Ancestral Skill: The Decorative Motifs of Sinjali Architecture (West Nepal) by DAVID C. ANDOLFATTO
29. Embodying Prosperity: The Treasures Saṅkhanidhi and Padmanidhi’s Long Auspicious Journeying by JOHN GUY
30. 30. Finding Fua Haribhitak (1910–1993), Thailand’s First National Artist, in Śāntiniketan, India: Discerning Methodology and Thickening Discourse by YIN KER

 

PART V: FUSION AND DIFFUSION: RELIGION WITH SPECIAL FOCUS ON BUDDHISM

31. On Pious Ladies and Merchants Making Money for Buddhist Monks: An Inscription         and a Rule by GREGORY SCHOPEN

32. Towards Identifying Bhikṣuṇis in Gandhara by ASHWINI LAKSHMINARAYANAN
33. A Lost Copy of the Buddha’s Footprint by DONALD STADTNER
34. A Moveable Court: Itinerant Kingship, Royal Temples, and Buddhist Monasteries during the Kuṣaṇa Era by SANJYOT MEHENDELE
35. Bamiyan Buddhist Caves and Squinches by SHUMPEI IWAI
36. A ‘Hindu Buddha’? Inclusive Propensities and Philosophical Difference by JOHN CLIFFORD HOLT
37. Early Tibetan Uses of the Mañjuśriyamūlakalpa by JACOB P. DALTON
38. Avalokiteśvaro Viśvarūpī by LAUREN M. BAUSCH
39. Revisiting Aśvaghoṣa’s Kāvya: Innovations in Transmission of Buddhism by NUPUR DASGUPTA
40. Fusion and Diffusion: Various Factors in the Images of the Buddhist Guardians of Khotan by CHEN SUYU AND RUAN JINYI
41. Mokṣa: When Mokṣa Does Not Mean Mokṣa by PATRICK OLIVELLE

 

PART VI: HISTORY AND BEYOND

42. India, History and Comparativism: The Case of the Dumézil’s Para-Vedic Theory by GUILLAUME DUCŒUR
43. On the Trail of the Yavanas by UPINDER SINGH
44. Travellers and Travel ‘Rations’: Mapping Connections between Indo-Iranian Borderlands and Persepolis by SUCHANDRA GHOSH
45. Who Killed Eukratides the Great? by FRANK L. HOLT
46. Social Transformation in a Micro Zone: A Case Study of the Pudukkōṭṭai Region by K. RAJAN
47. The Early Medieval Port of Balipattana in the Light of Maritime Epigraphy and the Documentary Geniza by RANABIR CHAKRAVARTI
48. A Story about Wrong Viewers in a 1112 AD Shrine: What For? by LILIAN HANDLIN
49. Trans-Oceanic Exchanges: Towards a Connected History of India and Cambodia by PARUL PANDYA DHAR
50. The Stronghold of the Nandana: History, Memory and Heritage by MUHAMMAD KASHIF ALI AND  MUHAMMAD HAMEED
51. Blurred Lines: Mobility, Landscape and Space in Central Asia by FIONA KIDD
52. A Study of the Probable Replication of the Sacred Landscape of Magadha in Western India by MANJIRI BHALERAO

Index