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James Ward

As an undergraduate, James Ward studied Russian and German at the University of Tulsa, Oklahoma. In the early 1990s he completed one year of graduate work in Tibetan area studies at Indiana University at Bloomington, in what was then known as the Department of Uralic and Altaic Studies. It was at this time that he was introduced to the study of the Chinese Buddhist canon, which he has since pursued out of a desire to understand the history of Buddhism and cultural interactions in early medieval Central Asia. He is particularly interested in the dramatis personae of the sutras, and has recently begun a study of the bodhisattva lists to be found in them, hoping that a map of their associations may shed some light on doctrinal and textual relationships as well as revealing new information about the translation communities in China. He also looks forward to playing some part in increasing the quantity of scholarly material available in English concerning Chinese history between the fall of the Han Dynasty and the advent of the Tang, and hopes that others more competent than he will do the same. James has provided the names of a number of bodhisattvas found in the Vimalakīrti-sūtra (T 474) [2005/07/05]