[INDOLOGY] Publication announcement

[Kie Pue]

Dear list members,

We are pleased to announce the publication of Studia Indologica Universitatis Halensis | Volume 26

Petra Kieffer-Pülz

The Dispute about the Validity of the sīmā of Bālapiṭiya in 19th-century Lanka, I: 
Ñeyyadhamma’s Sīmāvivādavinicchayakathā, Edition and Translation

Halle (Saale): Universitätsverlag Halle-Wittenberg, 2026, X, 180 pages.
1st edition Hardback edition. ISBN 978-3-86977-258-5


The dispute over the legal validity of the monastic boundary (sīmā) of Bālapiṭiya in Sri Lanka began in 1851 and lasted for over three decades. During this period various authors produced a number of texts in the middle Indic language Pāli, as well as in Sinhalese and Burmese.

A sīmā (“boundary”) defines the area within which a local Buddhist monastic community (saṅgha) can perform legal procedures (kamma), such as full ordination (upasampadā). The Bālapiṭiya sīmā, a “water-splashing boundary” (udakukkhepasīmā), was the first sīmā established by the Amarapuranikāya, a monastic lineage which originated in Sri Lanka in the first half of the 19th century. 

This volume contains a brief introduction to the dispute, describing the period up to the second Sinhalese delegation to Burma in 1860. It furthermore includes an edition and translation of the Sīmāvivādavinicchayakathā (“Exposition of the Judgement on the Boundary Dispute”), a text written in Pāli in 1858 by Ñeyyadhamma, the saṅgharāja (head of the Buddhist community) in Burma, in response to a request from the first Sinhalese delegation to Burma which arrived in 1858. Although this text was already edited by the Russian Indologist J. P. Minayeff in 1887, a new edition was required, since Minayeff’s text, based on a single Sinhalese manuscript, contains various lacunae. The new edition is based on three Burmese manuscripts and one Sinhalese manuscript, as well as on Kalyāṇa’s gloss (nissaya) to the text, accessible in a single Burmese manuscript.



The book can be ordered from the publisher (https://uvhw.de/studia-indologica.html) or through bookstores (excluded Amazon).


With best wishes,
Petra Kieffer-Pülz

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Email: kiefferpuelz at gmail.com




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