Dear Friends,

I am pleased to announce the next talk in the Gandhāra Corpora Lecture Series, which will also be a talk in the Spring 2026 Permanent Training in Buddhist Studies of the Ghent Centre for Buddhist Studies.

Title:

"Revisiting the Bodhisattva Maitreya in Gandhāran Art"

Speaker:

Dr. Christian Luczanits, SOAS, University of London

 

Timing:

Thursday, April 2 @ 17.00 CET

 

Location: 

Locaal 3.30 - Camelot 

Blandijn, Campus Boekentoren

9000 Gent, Belgium

(also online)

Abstract:

In my presentation, I will return to a topic that has interested me since my student days, namely the depictions and roles of the Bodhisattva and future Buddha Maitreya in Gandhāran art. I have covered some aspects of this topic in previous work, in particular in my contribution on narrative reliefs with a flask-holding Bodhisattva to the 2005 volume of East and West dedicated to Maurizio Taddei, and since have an unfinished monograph on the subject on my virtual desk.
This time, I will revisit my earlier ideas on the subject in light of more recent publications. Among other topics, I will consider the origin of Maitreya, his designation as Buddha in early inscriptions, the concepts of Maitreya’s paradises, Ketumatī and Tuṣita, as potential precursors of Pure Land Buddhism, and Maitreya as a Bodhisattva representing the brahmanic caste.

Bio:

Christian Luczanits is David L. Snellgrove Senior Lecturer in Tibetan and Buddhist Art at SOAS. His primary research areas are early Buddhist art during and after the Kushana period (1st to 5th centuries) and early Tibetan Buddhist art (7th to 15th centuries) within its wider context. Recent research has centered around an AHRC-funded project on “Tibetan Buddhist Monastery Collections Today”, in particular the documentation and assessment of monastery collections in Mustang, Nepal, and Ladakh, India.

All are welcome. The Gandhāra Corpora Lecture Series is in-person and hybrid online. Please register for the series through this Google Form: https://forms.gle/TwffQCPuVipUpMvk6 

(registering once will ensure you will receive links to all future talks in the series)

Please note some additional talks in the series scheduled in the next weeks 

April 22 @17.00 CET

Daniel Stuart: "The Contours of Paradise: Pleasure Gardens and Figurations of the Self in the Heaven of the Thirty-Three"

April 30 @17.00 CET

Samara Broglia de Moura: “New archaeological data on the extension of the Kushan empire and post-Kushan groups in the Himalayan range”

and more to come!