Dartmouth Events

Co-sponsored by Society of Fellows and the Department of Religion

Thursday, February 8, 2024
4:30-6:00 PM 
Rockefeller Center 001
Free and open to all

Stealing Signs: The Invention of Asceticism and the Decline of Indian Buddhism

From at least the 3rd century BCE, much of Buddhist ritual focused on stupas, stylized replicas of the mounds of earth in which early Buddhists interred relics of the Buddha and other important figures. Beginning in the first millennium CE, the Buddhist sangha increasingly shifted their ritual attentions to Buddha images while simultaneously developing new, more ascetic, versions of Buddhism. As Buddhist monasteries increasingly withdrew from regular contact with the Buddhist laity, nascent Hindu sects appropriated former Buddhist signs, spaces, and practices for themselves. In the end, the invention of Buddhist asceticism in the first millennium CE led to the decline of Buddhism in India in first half of the second millennium CE.

Bio

Lars Fogelin is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Arizona (PhD: Michigan 2003). His primary interests are the archaeology of ancient Buddhism in South Asia and architecture. More generally, he also works on the archaeology of religion, epistemology, and archaeological theory. His most recent books are An Archaeological History of Indian Buddhism (Oxford 2015) and An Unauthorized Companion to American Archaeological Theory (https://arizona.academia.edu/LarsFogelin 2019).