Colophons to the Diamond Sutra on Mount Tai (seminar)

Prof. Lothar Ledderose (Heidelberg)

Abstract

With its more than 1,800 remaining characters the Diamond Sutra engraved on Mount Tai, Shandong, at the end of the 6th century AD is the largest sutra under the open sky in China. It is further unique, because about sixty colophons have been engraved around it in the course of the centuries. They allow us to trace in detail how the sutra was viewed and appreciated, but also how it was criticised. One of the last colophons was written in 1961 by China’s foremost Marxist intellectual, Guo Moruo. In the seminar we will discuss representative colophons from several periods. 

Bio

Lothar Ledderose is senior professor of the history of East Asian art at the University of Heidelberg, member of the Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften and fellow of the British Academy. His books include Mi Fu and the Classical Tradition of Chinese Calligraphy (Princeton 1979), and Ten Thousand Things (Princeton, 2000). He is the series editor of Buddhist Stone Sutras in China, of which 7 volumes have appeared so far. In 2005 Lothar Ledderose was awarded the Balzan Prize.