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Sanskrit retreat @ Baofeng Temple, Jiangxi
After the summer semester in UTSC, Mahāsiddha and I immediately headed to the Baofeng Temple in Jiangxi. Almost 15 years ago in 2007, while I was pursing my PhD in Peking University, I organized the very first Sanskrit summer camp in this temple, with the support of the Abbot Venerable Yanzhen. This time, the temple organized a Sanskrit reading seminar, with the important Mahāyāna Buddhist text, the Aṣṭasāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra (“Sutra of the Perfection of Wisdom in 8000 verses”), a text which Mahāsiddha and I are currently editing and translating into modern Chinese. Our goal is to complete the collation and the complete Chinese translation of the Aṣṭasāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra in 8000 verses in Sanskrit by the end of the 2023. The seminar lasted 5 days, with around 15 participants. It consisted activities such as Sanskrit texts reading, comparison of various translations, and proofreading the modern translation. We managed to read through the first, introductory chapter of the text, which is the core of Aṣṭasāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā, or described by some scholars as the Urkanon of the Prajñāpāramitā. In addition, we covered also the content of Chapter 2, titled śakra. The current plan is that the seminar will continue in an online format every Sunday night from September onwards. I learned that ten, fifteen people have signed up already, all have learned some Sanskrit in the past. I would like to thank Venerable Yanzhen once again for his support!
Editing the Sanskrit recension of the Aṣṭasāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā based on the historical Chinese translations
5-day Sanskrit seminar in Jiangxi
Seminar @ Baofeng Monastery
