Relic practice has long been identified as the most significant element of Buddhist religious culture in ancient Gandhāra. While scholars have noted the relic cult’s special vitality, its significance has not been subject to critical investigation. Why this lacuna? 

Earlier Western scholars tended to see relics and associated devotional practices as a sop to the Buddhist laity. They located ‘true’ Buddhism in Buddhist texts – just like the Protestant theologians who located ‘true’ religion in the ‘Word’. The ‘Word’ or canonical texts were reified. Practice was ignored. Because ‘true’ Buddhism was located in the ‘Word’, epigraphical sources which dealt with practice rather than doctrine were neglected. This talk will address this lacuna by investigating Buddhist relic practice in Gandhāra between the 2^nd century BCE and the 2^nd century CE via an examination of contemporary relic inscriptions. Kate Howell’s preliminary research has suggested that relic establishment orders time and space via the creation of a network of spatial and temporal references. Her thesis is building on that research by employing in-depth analyses of the relic inscription genre and its language. This analysis alongside an examination of recent scholarly work will elucidate why the relic cult was a lynchpin of Buddhist religious culture in Gandhāra. 

Speaker:Kate Howell has had a varied career in public relations and information technology during which she twice held academic positions. Her interest in early South and Southeast Asia is longstanding. During her undergraduate degree at Cornell, her final term research project was a new translation of the oldest Malay hikayat (‘history’), the Hikayat Raja Raja Pasai. At SOAS University of London, she commenced an MPhil on Mon conceptions of kingship and kingdom employing Mon texts and inscriptions as well as Portuguese sources. She studied Sanskrit at ANU and trained in Gandhari language with members of the Early Buddhist Manuscripts Project (UW, Seattle). Kate Howell is now an MPhil candidate in the ANU School of Culture, History and Language in the College of Asia and the Pacific.