Reading Group:
Megan Bryson

Between China and Tibet: Mahākāla Worship and Esoteric Buddhism in the Dali Kingdom

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University of Toronto/McMaster University
NUMATA BUDDHIST STUDIES PROGRAM 2017-18

MEGAN BRYSON (University of Tennessee Knoxville)

READING GROUP: “Between China and Tibet: Mahākāla Worship and Esoteric Buddhism in the Dali Kingdom”
THURSDAY, March 8, 2018, 3-5 pm, UTSG, JHB 317

LECTURE: Imagined Networks: Esoteric Buddhism in the Dali Kingdom (937-1253)
FRIDAY, March 9, 2018, 4-6 pm, McMaster, University Hall 122

The Dali kingdom ruled a large swath of territory in what is now Southwest China. Its proximity to Tibetan, Bengali, Burmese, Vietnamese, and Chinese cultural regions means that people in Dali encountered different forms of Buddhism along the many routes of the Southern Silk Road. This talk examines not only how esoteric Buddhism in the Dali kingdom developed through network interactions, it also explores how the Dali court imagined those networks of religious exchange. Juxtaposing documented and imagined networks will allow for deeper consideration of what network models offer in understanding how people transmit and transform Buddhism as it travels from place to place.

MEGAN BRYSON is an assistant professor of Religious Studies at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Her research focuses on Buddhism and local religion in the Dali region of southwest China as well as the themes of gender and ethnicity in Chinese religions. Professor Bryson has published several articles on these topics in journals such as Asian Ethnology, Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies, and Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society. Her monograph, Goddess on the Frontier: Religion, Ethnicity, and Gender in Southwest China was published by Stanford University Press in 2016.

To receive the reading group materials and for further information, please contact Christoph Emmrich at christoph.emmrich@utoronto.ca.