Position:

Visiting Associate Researcher

Faculty / College Address:

Oriental Institute / Wolfson College

Email:

georgios.halkias@orinst.ox.ac.uk

Research Interests:

• Pure Land Buddhism in Tibet and Central Asia
• Buddhism in imperial Tibet
• Vajrayāna meditation traditions and rituals
• Indo-Tibetan border-lands

Current Projects:

• Buddhism in the Hellenistic Far East (Ruhr-Universität Bochum)
• Cultural and religious history of the North-western Himalayas (University of London)
• Index Buddhicus. Principle Editor and consultant for Tibetan and Central Asian bibliographies on Buddhism (Leiden, Brill Publishers)
• Tibet-Islam: Cultural, Religious and Scientific Interactions, 8th-17th centuries (Warburg Institute)

Courses Taught:

• Tibetan religious literature; Indo-Tibetan Buddhism; classical Tibetan language

Recent Publications:

Books:

• Forthcoming. (ed. with A. Akasoy et al) Religious Secrecy as Contact: Secrets as Promoters of Religious Dynamics, two volumes. Brill Publishers.
• 2012. Luminous Bliss: a Religious History of Pure Land Literature in Tibet. With an Annotated Translation and Critical Analysis of the Orgyen-ling golden short Sukhāvatīvyūha-sūtra. University of Hawai‘i Press.
• 2009. (ed. with B. Dotson et al) Proceedings of the First International Seminar of Young Tibetologists, SOAS, London 2007. Contemporary Visions in Tibetan Studies, Serindia Press.

Articles:

• 2012a. “The Enlightened Sovereign: Kingship and Buddhism in Indo-Tibetan Traditions.” In  A Companion to Buddhist Philosophy, ed. Steven Emmanuel. Wiley-Blackwell Publishers.
• 2012b. “Translating the Foreign into the Local: Production and Reproduction of Buddhist Texts from Imperial Tibet.” In Proceedings of the Fourth Asian Translation Traditions Conference, ed. Lawrence Wang-chi Wong. The Chinese University of Hong Kong: Research Centre for Translation.
• 2012c. “When the Greeks Converted the Buddha: Asymmetrical Transfers of Knowledge in Indo-Greek Cultures.” In Trading Religions: Religious Formation, Transformation and Cross-Cultural Exchange between East and West, ed. Volker Rabens. Brill Publishers.
• 2012d. “The Earliest Scriptural Transmissions of Pure Land Buddhism in Tibet.” The Middle Way Journal.
• 2012e. “Fire Rituals by the Queen of Siddhas: The Aparimitāyur-homa-vidhi-nāma in the Tengyur.” In Variations of Homa: from Vedic to Hindu and Buddhist, ed. Richard Payne. Oxford University Press.
• 2011. “The Muslim Queens of the Himalayas: Princess Exchange in Ladakh and Baltistan.” In Islam-Tibet: Interactions along the Musk Routes, eds. Anna Akasoy et al. Ashgate Publications, pp. 231-252.
• 2009a. “Compassionate Aspirations and their fulfilment: Dol-po-pa’s A Prayer for Birth in Sukhāvatī.” In As Long As Space Endures: Essays on the Kālachakra Tantra in Honour of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, ed. Edward Arnold. Snow Lion Publications, pp. 259-275
• 2009b. “Loss of Memory and Continuity of Praxis in Rampur-Bashahr: An itinerant study of seventeenth-century Tibetan murals.” In Contemporary Visions in Tibetan Studies, ed. Brandon Dotson, et al. Chicago: Serindia Publications, pp. 139-155.
• 2009c. “Until the Feathers of the Winged Black Raven Turn White: the Tibet-Bashahr Treaty of 1679-1684.” In Mountains, Monasteries and Mosques: Recent Research on Ladakh and the Western Himalaya, eds. John Bray et al. Supplement to Rivista Degli Studi Orientali, Nuova Serie, Volume LXXX, pp. 61-86.
• 2008. “Meditation Traditions in Tibet.” In Buddhist Meditation: An Introduction, ed. Sharah Shaw. London/ New York: Routledge Press, pp. 159-186.
• 2007. “Between Breaths.” In Going Aerial: Air, Art, Architecture, ed. Monika Bakker. Jan van Eyck Academie, Maastricht, Netherlands, pp.48-61
• 2006. “Pure-Lands and other Visions in Seventeenth-Century Tibet: a Gnam-chos sādhana for the pure-land Sukhāvatī revealed in 1658 by Gnam-chos Mi-’gyur-rdo-rje (1645-1667).” In Power, Politics and the Reinvention of Tradition: Tibet in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century, ed. B. Cuevas et al. Leiden: Brill Publishers, pp.121-151.
• 2004. “Tibetan Buddhism Registered: Imperial Archives from the Palace-Temple of ’Phang-thang.” The Eastern Buddhist, Kyoto. Vol. XXXVI, Nos. 1 & 2: pp. 46-105.

Further Info:

Consultant, Himalayan Cultural Heritage Foundation, Ladakh, India (2010–)
Fellow, Oxford Centre of Buddhist Studies, Oxford (2009–)