Shaoyong Ye
Ye Shaoyong is Associate Professor of Sanskrit Language and Buddhist Literature at Peking University, and director of the Research Institute of Sanskrit Manuscripts & Buddhist Literature. He earned his Doctorate in Indian Ancient Languages and Literature in 2009, with his dissertation, “Mūlamadhyamakakārikā and Buddhapālita’s Commentary,” receiving the National Top-100 Excellent Doctoral Dissertations of China award. From 2006 to 2008, he was the recipient of the Bukkyō Dendō Kyōkai Fellowship and pursued studies at the International Research Institute for Advanced Buddhology at Soka University, Japan.
Ye completed his Master’s degree in the same field at Peking University in 2005, during which he participated in an exchange programme sponsored by the Indian Council for Cultural Relations, studying for one year at the Department of Buddhist Studies, Delhi University, India. He previously obtained a Bachelor’s degree in Traditional Chinese Painting from the Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing, in 2002.
Ye’s research interests encompass Sanskrit manuscripts and Madhyamaka philosophy. In recent years, he has identified a series of long-lost Sanskrit manuscripts (including fragments) from collections preserved in Tibet, such as the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā, Buddhapālitamūlamadhyamakavṛtti, Yuktiṣaṣṭikāvṛtti, Tathāgatamahākaruṇānirdeśa, and Nyāyamukha, and has prepared critical editions for many of them.
He has published several books in Chinese, including An Annotated Chinese Translation of the Buddhapālitamūlamadhyamakavṛtti (Shanghai 2021), Mūlamadhyamakakārikā: New Editions of the Sanskrit, Tibetan and Chinese Versions, with Commentary and a Modern Chinese Translation (Shanghai 2011) and Mūlamadhyamakakārikā and Buddhapālita’s Commentary: A Philological Study on the Basis of Newly Identified Sanskrit Manuscripts (Shanghai 2011). He also co-authored Yuktiṣaṣṭikākārikā: Editions of the Sanskrit, Tibetan and Chinese Versions, with Commentary and a Modern Chinese Translation (Shanghai 2014).
Since 2012, Ye has led the Fanfo Dictionary Project, an open database for dictionaries of Sanskrit, Pali, Tibetan, and Chinese languages. He is one of the editors-in-chief of Studia Indica (Vol. 1 published in Shanghai in 2024) and serves on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Tibetan Palm-leaf Manuscript Studies (Lhasa).
For further information about Ye Shaoyong’s research and publications, please see his Academia page.
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Prof Ye and Prof Jan Westerhoff will be running a reading class on Nāgārjuna’s Yuktiṣaṣṭikā in Michaelmas 2025. They will be reading the text in Sanskrit, Tibetan, and Classical Chinese, though knowledge of more than one of these languages is not required to participate in the class.
The class will meet on Tuesdays, 14.00-15.00 in weeks 1-8 during the Michaelmas term in the Old Library at All Souls. The first meeting will be on Tuesday, 14th October 2025.
A copy of the edition used can be found here.
As background reading the following two works are also recommended:
Joseph Loizzo: Nāgārjuna's Reason Sixty with Chandrakīrti's Reason Sixty Commentary, American Institute of Buddhist Studies, New York, 2007 (2nd ed 2024).
Cristina Scherrer-Schaub: Yuktiṣaṣṭikāvṛtti: commentaire à la soixantaine sur le raisonnement, ou, Du vrai enseignement de la causalité, Institut belge des hautes études chinoises, Bruxelles, 1991.
For any questions please get in touch with Jan Westerhoff at jan.westerhoff@lmh.ox.ac.uk.
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Prof Ye is the TORCH / All Souls Global Professor 2025 - 2026.
