Between the 11th and 14th centuries CE, Buddhist authors on the Tibetan Plateau crafted a set of ‘national’ charter myths that were to attain immense cultural staying power. The narrative literature that promoted this mythology would inflect the cultural, religious, and political landscape of Tibet even into the 21st century, and impact Mongolia, the Himalayas, and other Asian Buddhist communities as well.
Because this Buddhist literature promoted the existence of an intimate relationship between the country’s patron deity (the bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara), a divine ruler (the 7th-c. emperor Srong-btsan), and the Tibetans themselves, it throws important light on premodern relations between religion, politics, and collective identity. As such, it has world-historical implications.
Yet the genesis and even original content of this literature is only poorly understood. The lack of text-historical groundwork ensures that scholars who wish to consult these materials, which were subject to centuries-long copying, adaptation, and mutual borrowing, immediately find themselves on unfirm ground. Using newly identified and until now unstudied manuscripts, the FOUNT project will:
1) establish a sound text-historical basis for using these influential sources;
2) illuminate the rise of major elements of Tibetan Buddhist culture, including a Tibetan culture hero (Srong-btsan) and the mythology of the land’s patron deity;
3) situate these developments in their broader Eurasian contexts.
This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the Horizon Europe research and innovation program (grant agreement No 101222259).
Project fact sheet on CORDIS: https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/101222259
Media report: ERC Starting grants in Austria (in German), https://www.derstandard.at/story/3000000286325/21-renommierte-erc-starting-grants-gehen-nach-oesterreich
