Friday 24th April, 5.30pm Dr. Margaret Cone The Joys and Sorrows of Pali Margaret Cone has been writing a Dictionary of Pali for the last 30 years. With two volumes published and further parts in preparation, it has been described as “a truly significant publication for both Pali studies and Buddhist studies more generally” and is likely to remain the principle lexical resource for scholars working with Pali texts for some generations to come. In this talk Dr. Cone will discuss this remarkable project and some of its most significant …
Bodhisatta vs. the Big Stick
The Cambridge Shorts scheme allows University of Cambridge researchers to work with artists and filmmakers to make films that are creative, accessible and engaging. Charles Li, researcher at the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, Cambridge, has collaborated with film-maker Eleonora Mignoli to make Bodhisatta vs the Big Stick, a short film looking at one of most popular of the Jātaka tales: a story about one of the past lives of the Buddha as a bodhisatta, named Mahosadha. The film, part of which is filmed at the Ancient India …
RAS Sinor Gold Medal Awarded to Nicholas Sims-Williams
The Royal Asiatic Society have announced that the triennial Denis Sinor Gold Medal for Inner Asian Studies will be presented to Professor Nicholas Sims-Williams in 2016. Professor Sims-Williams is Research Professor of Iranian and Central Asian Studies at the Department of the Languages and Cultures of Near and Middle East, SOAS, whose research interests include Iranian and Central Asian philology, and Christian and Manichaean texts from Central Asia. He is Chair of the Ancient India and Iran trust in Cambridge. The Royal Asiatic Society says: “The Society is pleased to …
Lecture by François de Blois
Friday 6 March, 5.30pm, François de Blois, University College, London, Sasanian royalist ideology and Zoroastrian millennialism. François de Blois has published widely on Semitic and Iranian languages and on the history of religions in the Near East in pre-modern times. Notably, he contributed to the multi-volume work Persian Literature, which had been initiated by C.A. Storey and published by the Royal Asiatic Society. He served as Professor of Iranian Studies at Hamburg University from 2002 to 2003. Currently he is a research fellow at University College London where he is engaged in …
Lecture by Vesta Curtis
Friday 20th February, 5.30pm at the Ancient India & Iran Trust, Cambridge Vesta Curtis, British Museum The power and purpose of iconography in Ancient Iran Vesta Sarkhosh Curtis is Curator of Middle Eastern Coins at the British Museum. She is responsible for the Museum’s collection of pre-Islamic Iranian coins (from the third century BC until the middle of the seventh century AD), which includes both Parthian period and Sasanian coins. She is Joint Director of the International Parthian Coin Project, The Sylloge Nummorum Parthicorum (SNP), and Joint Editor of the …