The Western roots of many aspects of modern Chinese thought have been well documented. Far less well understood, and still largely overlooked, is the influence and significance of the main exemplar of Indian thought in modern China: Yogacara Buddhist thought. This situation is all the more anomalous given that the revival of Yogacara thought amongst leading Chinese intellectuals in the first three decades of the twentieth century played a decisive role in shaping major currents in modern Chinese thought. Furthermore, the legacies of the revival of Yogacara thought in key areas of contemporary thought (New Confucianism, in particular) are ongoing.

Objectives

This project has three broad objectives:

1. It will explain why this Indian philosophical system proved to be so attractive to influential Chinese intellectuals at the very moment in Chinese history when traditional knowledge systems and schemes of knowledge compartmentalization were being confronted by radically new knowledge systems introduced from the West;
2. It will demonstrate how the revival of Yogacara thought informed early Chinese responses to the challenges of modernity and shaped major currents in modern Chinese thought and philosophy.
3. It will show how the legacies of sustained critical engagement with Yogacara thought in contemporary China "New Confucianism, in particular" remain vibrant, ongoing and ripe with possibility.

The Project undertakes to achieve these aims this by coordinating and drawing on the combined resources of a unique body of expertise in a highly innovative collaborative undertaking. The Project involves the collaboration of a network of twelve specialists around the globe: Australia, the Netherlands, Taiwan, USA, Canada and China. It brings together the expertise of scholars of Buddhism (covering Indian, Tibetan, Chinese, Korean and Japanese traditions of Buddhism) and scholars of Chinese intellectual history. A specialist of modern Japanese ethics has been added to provide a point of comparison helping the team to contextualize its findings within a larger East Asian Framework.

Funding and timeframe

The project is funded by the NWO (Dutch Scientific Organisation) under its 'Internationalisation' scheme from 2011 until the end of 2013.
The projectbudget awarded for the Leiden part of this project is Euro 33.600.

Projectdirector

Axel Schneider (personal page - in German) professor of Modern China Studies, Ostasiatisches Seminar, University of Göttingen; founder and former director of MEARC (2006-2008)

2011 Workshop

This third workshop took place in January 2011 in Kerala, during which several texts that are central for understanding the influence of Yogacara Buddhism on important modern Chinese intellectuals were read and discussed in great detail. The team spent nearly one week reading, analyzing and discussing four texts published during the first 25 years of the 20th century.

2010 Workshop

In July 2010 the second workshop took place, this time at the conference hotel Waldschlößchen near Göttingen. During three days of intensive discussion the project participants presented and discussed the results of the first year of research. Special attention was paid to questions of concrete textual issues, i.e. identifying important texts, the main problematic issues relate to these texts and alternative reading strategies. It was agreed that the next workshop in January 2011 should focus on concrete hermeneutical matters of how to understand these difficult core texts.

2009 Workshop

The research project The Indian Roots of Modern Chinese Thought: Yogacara Buddhism started in July 2009 with a first conference in Leh, Ladak, India. During the workshop the discussions started from the research questions of each project participant aiming at establishing a common understanding of the agenda of the project, its course in the coming three years and the concrete steps to be taken by each participant
in his research work.