Discursive monumentality in Indo-Nepalese Buddhism: a stratigraphy of the written and iconographic sources in the Guṇakāraṇḍavyūhasūtra

Abstract

This article presents the results of the first year of research conducted on a Buddhist Sanskrit manuscript containing the Guṇakāraṇḍavyūhasūtra􀀑􀀃.

This Indo-Nepalese sūtra has been investigated by means of an interdisciplinary work, combining theoretical and methodological approaches from linguistics, archeology and art history. It focuses on the stratigraphic analysis of written and iconographic sources associated with this sūtra, and aims to understand the socio-religious strategies that permeated its narrative genesis in the new milieu. The results point to a monumentalization of the original mahāyāna sūtra while being transposed into the Buddhist esoteric context of Nepal. The sūtra acquired a narrative transcendence which transformed it into a textual maṇḍala, a formal dimension directly associated with these sacred geometrical schemes which permeate the Nepalese cultural landscape.