Buddhist Miracles: Narrative Literature in Life and Memory

Workshop, 4–5 April 2025

Akademischer Senat, Main Building, Edmund-Siemers-Allee 1, East Wing  (ESA O 123)

Fri: 13h–17h; Sat: 10h–17h

This two-day in-person workshop at the University of Hamburg will bring together various specialists on the miraculous in Asia (i.e. India, Tibet, Japan, China). The purpose of this workshop is to discuss the interplay between Buddhist narrative literature, material culture, and the religious communities they represent. Other topics will also be broached, such as divination practice and religious culture in Asia.
Across the many disparate places and cultures that were influenced by ‘Buddhist’ teachings and practices, the greatest ‘emissaries’ for this missionary religion were not the doctrines or rites associated to Buddhism, but those other ‘representatives’ that were present on the ground: the scriptures, the cult-objects, the holy structures, as well as the human (and superhuman) proponents of the tradition—merchants, monks, nuns, lay practitioners, deities, buddhas, etc. Their stories were recorded by various means in the narrative literature traditions of the Buddhist world: the jatakas, avadanas, miracle tales, apologues, biographies, histories, and more. Miraculous phenomena marked places, things, or people with a seal of authority by verifying their supernormal and sacred qualities via miracles. This was, in turn, confirmed by witnesses and recorded by authors and compilers for dissemination. In many ways, the miracles associated to these objects, places, or people, were just as important in their respective narrative traditions as the objects, places, or people themselves.
This workshop is interested in defining the contours of the ‘miraculous’ in Buddhist narrative literature as well as describing the various ways in which miracles are represented—and used—in stories related to cult-objects, sacred places and holy figures. Moreover, by studying narrative literature across the many traditions of the world, this workshop looks to investigate various facets of one of the most potent mediums for self-representation in the Buddhist tradition: narrative literature. Indeed, the experience of ‘Buddhism’ for most—people both past and present—is limited to more personal and localized encounters, while the broader contour of the tradition is evoked and lived through its stories. These stories are part of a larger project of worldmaking adopted by missionaries, authors, compilers, artists, and others attempting to represent their faith in an accessible format: one that was written, read, recited, sung, or otherwise committed to memory and performed. These stories constituted a network of meaningful religious representations while simultaneously projecting the self-conscious representations of a time and a religious community.

The workshop program can be viewed and downloaded here.