Overlapping Cosmologies In Asia

The history of cosmology is often understood in terms of the development of modern science, but Asian cosmological thought and practice touched on many aspects of life, including mathematics, astronomy, politics, philosophy, religion, and art.
Because of the deep pervasion of cosmology in culture, many opportunities arose for transmissions of cosmological ideas across borders and innovations of knowledge and application in new contexts. Taking a wider view, one finds that cosmological ideas traveled widely and intermingled freely, being frequently reinterpreted by scholars, ritualists, and artists and transforming as they overlapped with ideas and practices from other traditions.
This book brings together ten diverse scholars to present their views on these overlapping cosmologies in Asia. They are Ryuji Hiraoka, Satomi Hiyama, Eric Huntington, Yoichi Isahaya, Catherine Jami, Bill M. Mak, D. Max Moerman, Adrian C. Pirtea, John Steele, and Dror Weil.

Bill M. Mak is a research fellow at the Needham Research Institute, Bye Fellow of the Robinson College, Cambridge University, and Principal Researcher at the Tsz Shan Monastery Buddhist Art Museum, Hong Kong. He received his PhD (2010) from Peking University.

Eric Huntington holds a T. T. and W. F. Chao Assistant Professorship in Transnational Asian Studies at Rice University and a PhD (2013) from the University of Chicago. His book Creating the Universe exposes complex cosmological thinking in Buddhist literature, ritual, art, and architecture.