IABS Congress CFP, ‘Buddhist Philosophy between India and China: From Madhyamaka to Sanlun and Beyond’

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

As part of the XXth Congress of the International Association of Buddhist Studies, to be held at Leipzig University on 10-15 August 2025, I warmly invite paper proposals for the open panel titled ‘Buddhist Philosophy between India and China: From Madhyamaka to Sanlun and Beyond’. 

Recent research on Madhyamaka philosophy has been intense. Much of the work in this field has sought to elucidate the metaphysical, epistemological, and ethical positions of Madhyamaka in India and Tibet, but this has hitherto been coupled with a relative dearth of scholarship on Chinese forms of Madhyamaka. These Chinese elaborations—known as the Sanlun 三論 or Three Treatise school and most closely associated with Sengzhao 僧肇 (374-414) and Jizang 吉藏 (549-623)—are the focus of this panel.

More specifically, this panel is primarily devoted to Sanlun Buddhist philosophy in conversation with its later Chinese elaborations. That is, the aim of this panel is to study the extent and manner in which Sanlun ideas and arguments persisted into later Chinese Buddhist philosophy in a bid to unearth and evaluate the influence of Sanlun thought upon the Chan 禪, Huayan 華嚴, Jingtu 淨土, Tiantai 天台, and Weishi 唯識 systematic schools of Chinese Buddhist thought and practice following the hitherto largely assumed effective demise of Sanlun at the death of Jizang. Other topics relating to Sanlun philosophy more broadly may be considered if space permits.

In line with the congress requirements, paper abstracts should not exceed 500 words, and should be submitted to the panel convenor for collective submission as a single panel to the congress organizers by 1 October 2024. Please thus email paper proposals to [email protected] at least one month prior to this date; that is, by 1 September 2024.

Please note that a workshop on the same topic as this congress panel is provisionally scheduled to be held at the Institute for the Intellectual and Cultural History of Asia of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna in the days immediately preceding the IABS congress. Participants in the congress panel are very welcome to also present papers at the workshop, for which a call will be issued separately in due course.

With best wishes,

Rafal K. Stepien

Institute for the Intellectual and Cultural History of Asia

Austrian Academy of Sciences