Chen, Ming

CHEN Ming is currently a Professor and Head of the Department of South Asian Studies at Peking University. Since he was awarded a doctoral degree by Peking University in 1999, with a dissertation on Indian Medical Science, he has focused on the history of cultural communication between China and Central & South Asia in the Medieval Period, mainly but not exclusively in terms of medicine. His academic interests have also been extended to a study on Buddhist literature in Sanskrit-Chinese, and the influence of ancient South Asian literature on China. He has published six books all in Chinese as follows:

(1) On the Sanskrit Medical Book Siddhasāra (2002, 2014);

(2) Medical Manuscripts Discovered in Dunhuang and Western Regions: Foreign Medicine in Medieval China (2005);

(3) A Study on Sanskrit Medical Text of Jīvaka-pustaka from Dunhuang (2005);

(4) Foreign Medicine and Culture in Medieval China / (2013);

(5) Texts and Languages: A Comparative Study on Some Manuscripts Unearthed from the Silk Road and Early Chinese Buddhist Canon/ (2013);

(6) Indian Buddhist Mythology: Its Writing and Transmission (2016).

Now he is also interested in comparative study of Buddhist literature and vocabulary in Sanskrit and Chinese, and the transmission of tales and related images in pre-modern Eurasia. He has two funded projects: A collection of illustrated texts of ancient Eastern literature and related studies, and Studies on exchanges of culture and literature between China and South Asia in pre-modern period.