Jan Nattier

Jan Nattier is an American scholar of Mahāyana Buddhism.[1]

Early life and education

She earned her PhD in Inner Asian and Altaic Studies from Harvard University (1988), and subsequently taught at the University of Hawaii (1988-1990), Stanford University (1990-1992), and Indiana University (1992–2005). She then worked as a research professor at the International Research Institute for Advanced Buddhology, Soka University (2006–2010) before retiring from her position there and beginning a series of visiting professorships at various universities in the U.S.[2]

Career

Nattier is one of a group of scholars who have substantially revised views of the early development of Mahāyana Buddhism in the last 20 years. They have in common their attention to and re-evaluation of early Chinese translations of texts.[3]

Her first notable contribution was a book based on her PhD thesis which looked at the Chinese Doctrine of the Three Ages with a focus on the third i.e. Mofa (Chinese: 末法; pinyin: Mò Fǎ) or Age of Dharma Decline. She showed that the latter was a Chinese development with no India parallel. The translation and study of the Ugraparipṛcca published as A Few Good Men: The Bodhisattva Path according to The Inquiry of Ugra (Ugraparipṛcchā)[4][5] in 2003 also contained an extended essay on working with ancient Buddhist texts, particularly in Chinese.[6]

Nattier's notable articles include a study of the Akṣobhyavūhya Pure Land texts,[7] which asserts the early importance of this strand of Mahāyāna ideology; an evaluation of early Chinese Translations of Buddhist texts and the issue of attribution (which summarises several earlier articles on the subject); and a detailed re-examination of the origins of the Heart Sutra (1992), which proposes that the sutra was composed in China.[8]

Private life

Nattier was married to John R. McRae (1947-2011)[9], a professor and researcher who specialized in the study of Chinese Chan Buddhism and was the author of The Northern School and the Formation of Early Chan Buddhism (University of Hawai`i Press, 1986) and Seeing through Zen: Encounter, Transformation, and Genealogy in Chinese Chan Buddhism (University of California Press, 2003).

Select bibliography
  • Nattier, Jan (1990), Once Upon a Future Time: Studies in a Buddhist Prophecy of Decline, Asian Humanities Press, ISBN 978-0895819260
  • Nattier, Jan (1992), "The Heart Sūtra: a Chinese apocryphal text?", Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies, 15 (2): 153–223
  • Nattier, Jan (2000), "The Realm of Akṣobhya: A Missing Piece in the History of Pure Land Buddhism", Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies, 23 (1): 71–102
  • Nattier, Jan (2003), A Few Good Men : The Bodhisattva Path According to the Inquiry of Ugra (Ugraparipṛcchā), University of Hawai'i Press, ISBN 978-0824830038
  • Nattier, Jan (2006), A Greater Awakening, Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, retrieved August 2, 2019
  • Nattier, Jan (2008), "A Guide to the Earliest Chinese Buddhist Translations: Texts from the Eastern Han and Three Kingdoms Periods" (PDF), X, Bibliotheca Philologica et Philosophica, IRIAB, pp. 73–88, ISBN 978-4-904234-00-6

References
  1. Richter 2017.
  2. Academia.edu profile. https://berkeley.academia.edu/JanNattier
  3. Drewes 2010.
  4. Drewes 2010, p. 59.
  5. Kapstein 2005, pp. 528-530.
  6. Nattier 2003.
  7. Nattier 2000.
  8. Nattier 1992.
  9. Lion's Roar Staff 2011.

Sources
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