Linked Data Methodologies in Gandhāran Buddhist Art and Texts
Frederik Elwert & Jessie Pons, Center for Religious Studies
Ruhr-University, Bochum
Background
Gandhāra is an ancient region corresponding to present day Pakistan and Afghanistan. Located at the crossroads of trade-routes, it was in ancient times a pivot point between the Western Mediterranean, Central and South Asia. While Gandhāra is today a predominantly Muslim region, it was considered in Antiquity a second Buddhist holy land along with the Ganges Valley, the homeland of the Buddha.
Buddhism was introduced in Gandhāra under the Indian king Aśoka Maurya (ca. 268–232 BC) and it remained the dominant religious current in the region until the conquests of the Hephtalites (Huns) in the 6th century CE. The rich Buddhist history is documented by numerous traces, including some of the oldest surviving Buddhist manuscripts, ruins of ancient Buddhist monasteries and countless sculptures in stone, stucco or clay representing the Buddha, Bodhisattvas, tutelary deities, as well as narrative events of Siddhārtha Gautama’s last and past existences (jātakas). These were produced during the first quarter of the first millennium CE. Some of the objects were discovered fortuitously, but most were unearthed during archaeological excavations undertaken since the 19th century by French, Italian, British, Japanese, Afghani, and Pakistani teams. The Buddhist artefacts have been distributed over diverse collections across the world and very few remain in situ. These objects which bear testimony to the manifold religious and cultural heritage of the region have never ceased to be at the center of scholarly studies since their discovery. Unfortunately, accessibility to the various collections varies substantially.
Aims
In the last decade, several isolated initiatives have been instigated to develop databases of collections of Buddhist sculptures and manuscripts. However, while some tools already exist for the description of these artefacts, several desiderata regarding standard terminologies and interoperability await to be fulfilled. The networking event will capitalize on the growing interest of the scientific community and will group actors in field of Gandhāran studies to collectively reflect upon best practices for data interoperability. The following three areas will be at the fore of the working group’s agenda:
1. Buddhist archaeological sites: toponyms, geo-referencing, classification
The tumultuous geo-political history of the region as well as the evolution of the structure of the institutions in charge of the study and preservation of its archaeological heritage complicate the reconstruction of the archaeological map of Gandhāra. The toponym of a site as well as information regarding its precise geographic localization may vary from one source to the next. Sites may also cluster around an area, but no standard terminology exists to refer to these clusters. The working group will assess the suitability of resources currently available (e.g. Pleiades, Trismegistos, The Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names Online, GeoNames, Olivieri & Pons 2019 census of Gandhāran Buddhist sites), suggest directions for improvements and evaluate the pertinence and practicalities of the publication of a gazetteer as a linked data vocabulary.
2. Standard repertory for the description of motifs and of Buddhist narratives
There exist several established vocabularies used for the description of architecture and works of art, prominently The Getty Art & Architecture Thesaurus Online, and Iconclass. However, these focus on Western forms and are not adequate to describe Gandhāran artefacts. The Repertory of Terms for Cataloguing Gandhāran Sculptures (hereafter Repertory of Terms), published in 2007, is more specific to the discipline of Gandhāran art history. Unfortunately, it is not yet published as a digital resource and primarily relies on material excavated in one region within Gandhāra (the Swat valley) by the Italian Archaeological Mission in Pakistan. The working group will build on these existing resources and expand them with the following twofold goal in mind: a. publishing a more comprehensive labelling and classification of motifs found across Gandhāran art as a linked data vocabulary, b. reaching consensus on how to designate a certain group of scenes (i.e. Buddhist narratives and generic images of the Buddha or bodhisattvas flanked by monks, devotees or donors). The working group will encourage the definition of a concordance system between internal indexes of topics used by individual projects. This will form the basis for the third area:
3. Linking instances of Buddhist narratives in Gandhāran texts and art
The relationship between texts and images in the representation of Buddhist narratives has been a key topic in research on Gandhāran art and Gandhāran Buddhism. While some biographical episodes depicted on the reliefs do find an echo in Buddhist texts, others do not. In order to facilitate comparison between corpora of Buddhist images and texts, shared vocabularies for the annotation of both should be developed, and technical instruments for cross-linking text and image annotations should be implemented. By bringing together experts of Buddhist texts and Buddhist art, the working group will lay the foundations for future interdisciplinary research in this area. The results of the Linked Texts working group will be taken into account when addressing text passages in a linked data environment.
The Working Group
The working group brings together scholars, curators, and Digital Humanities specialists around the theme of Linked Data Methodologies applied to the fields of Gandhāran Art and Gandhāran Buddhism. So far, the group includes:
- Peter Stewart (Director, Classical Art Research Centre, University of Oxford)
- Gregory Parker (IT Director, CARC, University of Oxford)
- Anna Filigenzi (Professor, University of Naples l’Orientale)
- Antonio Amato (Former research assistant on the DiGA project)
- Luca Maria Olivieri (Director, ISMEO, Italian Archaeological Mission in Pakistan)
The idea for the group came from the DiGA project (Digitization of Gandhāran Artefacts) funded by the German Ministry of Education and Research. Its project leaders are also coordinators of this working group:
- Jessie Pons (Professor, Center for Religious Studies, Ruhr University Bochum)
- Frederik Elwert (Digital Humanities Coordinator, Center for Religious Studies, Ruhr University Bochum)
We are seeking to expand the group and are already in contact with other partners in museums and archives interested in the topic.
A final word
The working group aims at meeting direct needs in the research community on Gandhāran Buddhism and art. It will develop a set of guidelines and best practice examples for publishing and linking resources, fostering interoperability between currently unrelated institutions and activities. In doing so, it will also contribute to the larger Pelagios community. Firstly, it will expand the geographic scope of linked data resources concerned with historical places (e.g. Pleiades) and iconography (e.g. IconClass). Secondly, given the close historical links between Gandhāra and the Mediterranean West, it can potentially shed new insights on the connections between Greece and Rome and Ancient India in Antiquity. Finally, with its attention to linking texts and material objects through shared vocabularies of motifs, it will build upon the working group Linked Texts and engage in a discussion that goes beyond the thematic focus on Gandhāran Buddhism.
