Transcultural Cartographies: The Japanese Buddhist World Map and the Birth of Asian Studies in Europe

It traces the intellectual history and material aspects of cartographic representations of the Buddhist world, produced in eighteenth-century Japan by monastics, intellectuals and publishers, as well as the transmission, translation, and reproduction of these maps by the founding figures of the academic disciplines of Buddhist Studies and Sinology in nineteenth-century Europe – Heinrich Julius Klaproth (1783-1835), Jean-Pierre Abel-Rémusat (1788-1832), and Stanislas Julien (1799-1873). In doing so, it seeks to shed light on the unrecognised contributions of Japanese Buddhist cartography to the European understanding of the geography of Buddhism in China, Central Asia and India, and to the development of Buddhist Studies in the West.

PROGRAM

• Transcultural Cartographies: The Japanese Buddhist World Map and the Birth of Asian Studies in Europe
  D. Max Moerman (Columbia University, New York)
  
  Discussant:
  Diana Lange (Universität Hamburg)

THE LECTURE SERIES

Maps and Mapping in Global History and Culture I

The lecture series is jointly organised by Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Max-Planck-Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte and Einstein Center Chronoi.