Emmrich, Christoph
Contact Information
3359 Mississauga Road N.
Mississauga, Ontario
L5L 1C6
Christoph Emmrich, Assistant Professor of Buddhist Studies, engages with fields as diverse as Newar Buddhism, Pali and Burmese literature and Tamil Jainism. He has recently been working on and with Newar girls and young women in the Kathmandu Valley (Nepal) studying their involvement in Buddhist practices related to marriage, image consecration, temporary ordination and female education. In this particular project he confronts the personal and ethnographic remembrance of singular religious events with the history of their local and academic exegesis and contrasts both with the prescriptive/descriptive literary history of ritual manuals in Newar and Sanskrit reaching back to the early 17th century. Christoph Emmrich’s doctoral work dealt with expressions denoting time in Pāli canonical literature. He further works on the literary representation of Buddhist monastic networks, lineage and travel between Nepal, Yangon and Mawlamyine (Burma) as well as on the historiography of Tamil Digambara Jain temple ritual in North and South Arcot (Tamil Nadu, India) addressing questions of assimilation and resistance.
He is currently on leave as Chair of the University of Toronto / McMaster University Yehan Numata Program in Buddhist Studies.
Areas of Interest
- Buddhism and Jainism in South and Southeast Asia
- Nepalese (particularly Newar), Burmese (particularly Mon) and Tamil (particularly Jain) religion
- Sanskrit, Pali, Prakrit, Newar, Burmese and Tamil literatures
- time and religion, children and religion, travel and religion
- the historiography and poetics of ritual
Publications
Selected Articles
- “The Ins and Outs of the Jains in Tamil Literary Histories.” Journal of Indian Philosophy 39, no. 6 (2011), 599-646.
- „Śvetāmbaras, Digambaras und die Geschichte ihres Kanons als Besitz, Verlust und Erfindung“ (Śvetāmbaras, Digambaras and the History of their Canon as Property, Loss and Invention). Kanonisierung und Kanonbildung in der Asiatischen Religionsgeschichte. M. Deeg, O. Freiberger and C. Kleine (eds.). Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philosophisch-historische Klasse, Sitzungsberichte, vol. 820. Wien: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2011, 105-129.
- “Emending Perfection. Prescript, Postscript and Practice in Newar Buddhist Manuscript Culture”. In Buddhist Manuscript Cultures: Knowledge, Ritual and Art. Stephen Berkwitz, Juliane Schober and Claudia Brown (eds.). Routledge: London 2008, 140-155.
- ‘Aśoka’, ‘Ātmanastusti’, ‘Bhutanese Law’, ‘Sadācāra’, ‘Vyavahāra’. Entries in Encyclopedia of the History of Law. Werner Menski (Ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.
- Ujyā. Ein Letzter Ritus der Vajrācāryas von Lalitpur (Ujyā. One Last Rite of the Vajrācāryas of Lalitpur). Der Abschied von den Toten. Trauerrituale im Kulturvergleich. Jan Assmann, Franz Maciejewski, Axel Michaels (Eds.). Göttingen: Wallstein. 2005 (2nd revised edition 2007); 223-234.
- “All the King’s Horses and All the King’s Men. The 2004 Red Matsyendranātha Incident in Lalitpur”. Indologica Taurinensia 32 (2006), 31-65.
- ‘South Asian Fiction and Religion’. Entries in Encyclopedia of Religion. L. Jones (Ed.) 2nd Edition. New York: Macmillan Reference. 2006.
- When Two Strong Men Stand Face to Face. The Indologist, the Pandit and the Re-Making of the Jaina Scholarly Tradition. Boundaries, Dynamics and Construction of Traditions in South Asia. Federico Squarcini (Ed.). Kykéion Studi e Testi. Scienze delle Religioni, 1.3) Firenze: Firenze University Press & Munshiram Manoharlal. 2005; 571-587.
- How Many Times? Monism or Pluralism in Early Jaina Temporal Description. Aspects of Jainism. Marek Mejor & Piotr Balcerowicz (Eds.). Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass 2003; 69-88.
- (With Adele Fiske) The Use of Buddhist Scriptures in Dr. B.R. Ambedkar’s ‘The Buddha and his Dhamma’. Reconstructing the World: Dr. Ambedkar and Buddhism in India. Surendra Jondhale & Johannes Beltz (Hrsg.) Delhi: Oxford University Press 2003; 97-119.
- Some Remarks on the Terminological Construction of kāla in Kundakunda. Vasantagauravam. Essays in Jainism Felicitating Professor M. D. Vasantha Raj of Mysore on his Seventy-fifth Birthday. Jayandra Soni (Ed.). Bombay: Vakils, Feffer & Simons 2001; 73-84.
- Zeitbegriff und Zeiterfahrung im Sutta-piṭaka. (Concept and Experience of Time in the Sutta-piṭaka). Berliner Indologische Studien 9/10 (1995/1996); 139-150.