Tangut workshop at Cambridge

From: Chinese manuscripts by Imre Galambos

Posted on 10/26/2014 by imre

On 25 September 2014 we held a workshop at the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Cambridge. The title of the workshop was “Text, Language and Script in the Tangut state” and it was a continuation of a similar event held last year at SOAS in London (A day of Tangut studies). This was a one afternoon gathering of mostly European researchers interested in the study of Tangut texts and language. The programme of the workshop is as follows:

• Kirill Solonin (Renmin University), “Dipamkara in Tangut context” (over Skype)
• Guillaume Jacques (CNRS, CRLAO), “Converbs and non-finite verbal forms in Tangut”
• Lin Ying-chin (Academia Sinica), “Further exploration on Tangut personal pronominal suffixes”
• Sam van Schaik (IDP, British Library), “Tangut translation of Tibetan Buddhist texts: An overview”
• Romain Lefebvre (Artois University). “Introduction to new Tangut manuscripts found at the National Library of France. Approaches and difficulties.”
• Andrew West, “Ode to the Tangut Tripitaka”
• Imre Galambos (University of Cambridge), “What the Tanguts knew about the history of the Chinese writing”

Of these, Kirill Solonin could not be with us in person and we listened to his presentation via Skype. Non-presenting participants included Emma Goodliffe (IDP, British Library), Yang Fu (University of Cambridge) and Nathan Hill (SOAS), who had organised the last year’s Tangut workshop in London. We hope that next year we will be able to hold the third Tangut workshop in Paris, thereby officially making this an annual event.

The participants of the workshop

Workshop group photo

Lin Ying-chin writing Tangut characters

Guillaume Jacques presenting