Euro-Asian History of Religions

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All religions, which are commonly known as world religions, have their origin in the vast territories between the Mediterranean and the Pacific. Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam originated in Asia. The same holds true for the Hindu religions, Confucianism, and rather less known traditions such as Jainism, Sikhism or Zoroastrianism. Besides these religions the Eurasian history of religions was also determinated by religions, which are today either mariginal or even extinct such as the religious system of the Roman Empire, the Babylonian religion or Manichaeanism.

Given this situation, CERES has dedicated an entire focus area to the history of religions in Eurasia. This area includes the European as well as Western, South, Central and East Asian history of religions in past and present times.

One of the central assumption of this focus area is that initially regional religious fields emerged and developed further to bigger entities due to processes within the history of religions. Today, there is a tendency towards a worldwide religious field with global networks between different religions.

Current Projects

Armenia Entangled

Reimagining Cultural Encounters and Connectivity in Medieval Eurasia 9th - 14th Century

The ERC-project Armenia Entangled deals with the entangled history of the Armenian plateau and its adjacent areas. It is based …

CRC 1475 „Metaphors of Religion“

Religious Meaning-Making in Language Use

Religious meaning-making occurs in and through metaphors. In metaphors, meaning is trans-ferred from one semantic domain to another. Religion, which …

INCENTER

EntanglINg CENTERs: Religious, cultural and political interactions between the Khitan Empire, the Chinese Song Dynasty, the Tangut Empire and local Tibetan rulers between the 10th and 13th centuries

This research project deals with the contacts and exchanges between different centers of power coexisting in pre-modern Asia during a …

Metaphors of Conversion in Latin Late Antiquity

This project is the first extensive study on conversion metaphors for Latin Late Antiquity. Using cognitive-linguistic metaphor theories and model …

Research Focus "Missionary Collections"

CERES researchers, together with colleagues from museums and other universities, are studying the material dimension of cultural and religious contacts …

Zoroastrian Middle Persian: Digital Corpus and Dictionary

The Middle Persian language played a prominent historical and cultural role in the first millennium CE as the official language …

Completed Projects

An Enquiry into the Development of the Dzogchen Tradition in the Commentaries of the Tibetan Scholar Nubchen Sangye Yeshe (10th Century)

The Tibetan scholar Nubchen Sangye Yeshe (10th century) was an influential figure in Tibet’s intellectual history, who played a …

Ancient Religion(s) in Contact: Contemporary Religious Phenomena and Their Ancient Predecessors

The teaching-learning-project "Ancient Religion(s) in Contact" (ARELINCO) enables students from the fields of religious studies, history, archaeology, philology, and related …

Betä Ǝsraʾel Autonomy in the Sǝmen Mountains and Its Wars with the Solomonic Kingdom

Medieval and early modern Jews usually lived as a minority under non-Jewish rule, but there are a few known cases …

BuddhistRoad

Dynamics in Buddhist Networks in Eastern Central Asia 6th to 14th Centuries

The objective of the research project Buddhist Road is to create a new framework to enable understanding of the complexities …

DiGA

Digitization of Gandhāran Art

The DiGA project will digitize (2D and 3D) and catalogue a corpus of 1,791 Buddhist sculptures from Gandhara currently kept …

Digitization of Gandharan Artefacts

The project DiGA (Digitization of Gandharan Artefacts) proposes to conceptualise the digitization of a corpus of Buddhist sculptures …

Dynamics of Text Corpora and Image Programs

Representations of Buddhist Narratives along the Silk Route

The network of long distance trade routes through Central Asia designated by Ferdinand von Richthofen as "Silk Road" have provided …

Humboldt Research Award

Tibetologist Dr. Jan-Ulrich Sobisch has received the Humboldt Award for a research fellowship. During his fellowship between November 2017 and …

Jainism in the West

Jain Communities in Europe between internal Self-Insurance and strategic Self-Representation

Jainism is the third religion, along with Buddhism and Brahmanism ("Hinduism"), that originated in ancient India and continues to exist …

Jews and Christians in the East

Strategies of Interaction between the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean

The encounters and interactions between Jews and Christians in the Middle East, Ethiopia, India and the Caucasus, which have hitherto …

Käte Hamburger Kolleg

Dynamics in the History of Religions between Asia and Europe

The Käte Hamburger Center Dynamics in the History of Religions between Asia and Europe, headed by Prof. Dr. Volkhard …

Linked Data Methodologies in Gandhāran Buddhist Art and Texts

The working group brings together scholars, curators, and Digital Humanities specialists around the theme of Linked Data Methodologies applied to …

Nyang ral's Codification of rNying ma Literature and Ritual

A Study of Tibetan Sources for the Formation of Tibetan Buddhism (10th to 12th Centuries)

The 12th century marked a watershed in the formation of Tibetan religion, from which emerged its forms familiar to us today. …

Religion and Labor

For a long time Japanese companies were recognized as innovative role models for their western counterparts. High productivity, low absenteism …

The Development of Aspect in Middle Persian

Iranian languages usually exhibit aspect as a morphologically marked category of the verb. The verbal stems can be identified as …

The Logic of Gomyō

Japanese monk Gomyō (ca. b. 750, d. 834) dealt with theories of logic that were originally formultated in India. He …

The Neo-Sannya Movement in Western Germany in the 1970s and 1980s

This research project explores the neo-sannyasins or also known as Rajneesh movement and their impact in West-Germany in the 1970s …

The Ten Lost Tribes

A Cross-Cultural Approach

The project, The Ten Lost Tribes: Cross-Cultural Perspective, sponsored by the German-Israel Foundation (GIF), brings together scholars from Germany …

Tradition Building Processes among the Kagyüpas

Based on a Mid to Late-Thirteenth Century Manuscript of Jigten Sumgön’s dGongs gcig

With the purpose of providing philologically well-grounded research concerning tradition building processes among the Tibetan Buddhist Kagyüpa traditions in the …