Online Program Book

This is the preliminary program for the 2024 in-person Annual Meeting, hosted with the Society for Biblical Literature in San Diego, CA - November 23-26. Pre-conference workshops and many committee meetings will be held November 22. If you have questions about the program, contact annualmeeting@aarweb.org. All times are listed in local/Pacific Time.

A24-317 Language, Poiesis, and Buddhist Experiments with the Possible Seminar Theme: Emergent Forms: Buddhist Poetical Language and Its Contexts, Session 1 Sunday, 3:00 PM - 4:30 PM Convention Center-1B (Upper Level West) Roy Tzohar, Tel-Aviv University, Presiding Did poetical language and Buddhism co-create each other around the turn of the Common Era in South Asia? If so, how? And what are the implications for the beginnings of Indic literature and for the development of Buddhist, Vedic, Jain, and other literary and religious traditions of Asia? Our seminar hosts four research presentations on sources from early to early medieval South Asia, bringing them into conversation with each other through formal responses and general discussion. In this first session, Stephanie Jamison and Charles Hallisey examine the Rig Veda, Therīgāthā, Theragāthā, and other texts to revisit the historical problem of the beginnings of Indic literature and the role of Buddhist sources in contributing to forms of poiesis. Laurie Patton's and Thomas Mazanec's responses will broadly contextualize their presentations and raise questions in light of major scholarly paradigms concerning the history and development of Indic and Chinese literature. Stephanie Jamison, University of California, Los Angeles “Kāvya in the Dark Ages: The Source and the Missing Link” Abstract In this paper, building on earlier work of my own, I will argue that the art poetry that dominated Classical Sanskrit literary culture, kāvya, has as its stylistic source the elaborate and self-conscious style of the earliest Sanskrit text, the Rig Veda. Despite the large chronological gap between the Rig Veda and Classical kāvya, and the apparent absence of this genre in Sanskrit in the intervening centuries, a missing link can be identified in the discourses of power in Middle Indic languages and in early Buddhist literary works. Both the similarities in poetic devices and the shaping of subject matter will be addressed, with ample examples. Charles Hallisey, Harvard University Before Literature: Poeisis in the Poems of the First Buddhist Women and Men Abstract In his The Language of the Gods in the World of Men (2006), Sheldon Pollock argues that Buddhists played a key role in the “the astonishing expansion of the discursive realm of Sanskrit in the century or two around the beginning off the Common Era” (75). This is not only a historical issue. Pollock begins his exploration of this expansion self-consciously by saying, “To speak of beginnings, especially literary beginnings, is to raise a host of conceptual problems” (75). This paper explores how we see important literary beginnings in the Therīgāthā and the Theragāthā, collections of poems of the first Buddhist women and men, and how we can see in them traces of the protean emergence of Literature as a cultural form of poeisis in South Asia. This conceptual exploration focusing on Pali texts suggests that the historical problem of the beginnings of Literature in India is ripe for reconsideration. Responding Laurie Louise Patton, Middlebury College Thomas Mazanec, University of California, Santa Barbara
A24-419 Language, Poiesis, and Buddhist Experiments with the Possible Seminar Theme: Emergent Forms: Buddhist Poetical Language and Its Contexts, Session 2 Sunday, 5:00 PM - 6:30 PM Convention Center-1B (Upper Level West) Nancy Lin, Institute of Buddhist Studies, Presiding Did poetical language and Buddhism co-create each other around the turn of the Common Era in South Asia? If so, how? And what are the implications for the beginnings of Indic literature and for the development of Buddhist, Vedic, Jain, and other literary and religious traditions of Asia? Our seminar hosts four research presentations on sources from early to early medieval South Asia, bringing them into conversation with each other through formal responses and general discussion. In this second session, Andrew Ollett and Aleksandra Restifo respectively examine the cultivation of kāvya by Buddhist poets in the first three centuries of the common era, and how Jains envisioned aesthetic experience in the context of renunciation through early dramatic literature. Laurie Patton's and Thomas Mazanec's responses will broadly contextualize their presentations and raise questions in light of major scholarly paradigms concerning the history and development of Indic and Chinese literature. Andrew Ollett, The University of Chicago Other Kuṣāṇa-period Poets Abstract Aśvaghōṣa is a good candidate for the “first author” of Sanskrit literature: the first historical person who is remembered to have composed a literary text. (Earlier authors composed non-literary texts, and earlier literary texts are attributed to non-historical persons.) Of course this is not quite true: Aśvaghōṣa belonged to a community of Buddhist monks who had, for several generations, been experimenting with writing kāvya. Although very little of their work survives in Sanskrit (or other languages, such as Gandhari, in which it was composed), this talk will examine the cultivation of kāvya by Buddhist poets other than Aśvaghōṣa in the first three centuries of the common era: Saṅgarakṣa (ca. 125 CE), Mātr̥cēṭa (ca. 125 or 230 CE), and Kumāralāta (ca. 250 CE). I am primarily concerned with the general outlines of their literary program, evinced by the formal features of their works and their explicit statements about literature and speech. Aleksandra Restifo, Florida International University The Effect of Drama: Towards a Theory of Aesthetic Experience in Early Jainism Abstract Renunciant traditions are known for their ambiguous views on drama since aesthetic experience distracts mendicants and laypeople from the right path rooted in equanimity and self-discipline. Having recognized the powerful effects of drama, however, Jains developed some of the earliest theories on drama and aesthetics, which they imbued with social and ritual efficacy. For instance, in the Piṇḍanijjuti, a drama about the world-emperor Bharata encourages five hundred kṣatriyas to renounce the world. In the Rāyapaseṇiya, a devotional performance by the god Sūriyābha represents a ritual internalization of the Jina’s biography. Through the analysis of these and other examples from early Jain literature, this paper argues that Jains envisioned aesthetic experience produced by drama and poetry as a source of social and ritual transformation, which affected individuals and communities. Responding Laurie Louise Patton, Middlebury College Thomas Mazanec, University of California, Santa Barbara Business Meeting Roy Tzohar, Tel-Aviv University, Presiding

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