IKGF Video Documentaries Series ID:522

During the research stay of former IKGF visiting fellow, Prof. Dr. Donatella Rossi (Sapienza Univ. of Rome), who worked on the ancient Tibetan Zhang Zhung Ju thig divination system, Tibetan Bon-master Lopon Trinley Nyima Rinpoche was invited to a two-week research visit at the IKGF. Since 1992, Venerable Trinley Nyima Rinpoche has been the appointed Lopon (Head Teacher) of the Bon Dialectic School in Dolanji, India, which is the Bon religion’s major institution of higher education in exile. During his stay, a video featuring an interview on Zhang Zhung Ju thig and other Tibetan divination methods, as well as an actual divination carried out by him, was produced.

The “Book of Changes” plays a leading role in the development of prognostication in China. As a specialist on I Ching research, Visiting Fellow Wenzhi Zhang (Center for Zhouyi and Ancient Chinese Philosophy, Shandong Unviersity, IKGF Cooperation Partner) explains in a dialogue with Xiaokun Song (IKGF) with the help of a concrete example – a question on the Consortium’s future of the IKGF – how the book was and remains used in Asian culture and how it is possible to draw conclusions from milfoil divination.

In the discussion led by Lothar von Falkenhausen, three eminent scholars of Early Chinese history meet. Three fields of specialty are involved: early material culture and archaeology (von Falkenhausen), early Chinese philology and oracle bone inscriptions (Kenichi Takashima) and early intellectual history (Michael Puett). Together, the three scholars debate on the Shang and Zhou dynasties: while Ken Takashima focuses on divinatory texts of the 13-11 centuries B.C. and their diction, Michael Puett considers the Western terms of “Fate, Freedom and Prognostication” in the context of Early China. In cooperation with both, Lothar von Falkenhausen attempts better to understand and classify the divinatory material objects of early Chinese archeology. In the discussion led by Lothar von Falkenhausen, three eminent scholars of Early Chinese history meet.