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Spectacular discoveries of Buddhist texts engraved on stone have been made in China in the last decades. The largest corpus is a unique library of ca. 15,000 stone slabs which was excavated in the Monastery Yunjusi near Beijing. Rock engravings under the open sky have been found in remote regions, especially in Shandong province. The inscriptions begin in the 6th century and were made with the expectation that the world was soon coming to an end. The writing in stone was meant to survive the conflagrations of the apocalypse and preserve the teachings of the Buddha for eternity.
The symposium at the Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften brings together thirty specialists in this new field of research from all over the world. They will report on recent discoveries in China and explore new methodologies in epigraphic studies. Scholars working on stone inscriptions in the Mediterranean and in the Himalaya will present comparative perspectives on two epigraphic projects at the Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften. About one third of the participants are young scholars who will discuss their present and future research.
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