Tanya Storch

Tanya Storch (1957 - 2025). A Buddhist studies scholar and translator who taught Religious Studies at the University of the Pacific in California for 23 years. She also taught Asian religions at several universities, including the University of New Mexico, University of Pennsylvania, and University of Florida.

Her academic specialty was Chinese Buddhism, but she also taught and was well-versed in many of the world’s religious traditions. [...] An accomplished linguist and polyglot, Storch could speak more than eight languages and was able to read and translate others, including Greek, Latin, Sanskrit and Old Chinese.

[...]

Storch began her study of Asian religions in St. Petersburg where she was born and raised, earning a master’s degree in East Asian Studies from the University of St. Petersburg. She was among the last refugees from the Soviet Union shortly before its collapse.

She and her family lived in Rome for a short time before immigrating to the United States in the early 1990s. She attended the University of Pennsylvania where she earned a PhD in East Asian studies and taught at the University of Florida before joining Pacific.

In 2010, the Stockton Record profiled Storch’s experience studying religion in the former Soviet Union and subsequent interrogations by the KGB.

Education

Storch holds a PhD from the University of Pennsylvania and an MA from the University of St. Petersburg, Russia.

Publications

Dr. Storch’s publications include:

• Religions and Missionaries in the Pacific, 1500–1800 (editor), Routledge, 2006
• Japan under Snow: Collection of Buddhist Poetry in Russian and English. Philadelphia: The Coast Publishing, 2010
• The History of Chinese Buddhist Bibliography: Censorship and Transformation of the Tripitaka, Cambria Press, 2015
• Textbook in Dream Analysis for College and University Students, LAP LAMBERT Academic Publishing, 2017
• Mastering the Five Elements, Press on Qi Productions, 2020

Overall, she has nearly thirty academic and artistic publications in the field of Asian religion and spirituality.

She also wrote poetry in Russian and English.

See also: Tanya Storch CV

The History of Chinese Buddhist Bibliography

The History of Chinese Buddhist Bibliography "focuses on the development of Chinese Buddhist catalogs from their first appearance in the third century to the eighth century, when printed editions of the canon took over the catalog's role of identifying and delimiting the Chinese Buddhist canon."

From the publisher:

This study is a thorough examination of the entire historical scope of the Chinese Buddhist bibliography, including its historical foundations, textual classifications, criteria of authenticity, and collections made by individual catalogers. [...] This is the first study that covers the entire historical scope of Buddhist bibliography in China in any European language, as well as the only study that provides detailed descriptions of all influential catalogs of the Buddhist canon written in the second through the end of the tenth centuries. It is the first attempt, in both European and Asian languages, to provide a comparative analysis between ideas, and these theological and historiographical principles used in creation of an authoritative canon by Christian and Buddhist scholars.

In this text, Storch asserts that:

• the early transmissions of Buddhist thought from Central Asia to China were transmitted orally, and then written down in the Chinese language (this was followed by later translations of Sanskrit texts)
• due to the incluence of Confucian texts ("book culture"), the written word was valued more than oral recitation
• the early Chinese Buddhist bibliographers were influenced by the structure of Confucian bibliographies

Videos

Search for videos:

• Search YouTube for: Tanya Storch Buddhism

Selected videos:

• An Interview with Dr. Tanya Storch

  Description: Dr. Storch discusses her book, “The History of Chinese Buddhist Bibliography: Censorship and Transformation of the Tripitaka.” This book examines the history of compiling Chinese Buddhist sacred canon and makes typologically appropriate comparisons between this and the histories of other canonical collections such as Confucian and Christian. It also looks at Chinese scriptural catalogs in comparison with those by Greeks and Romans.

• 2014 Book Launch: Tanya Storch

  Description: Dr. Tanya Storch discusses her book, The History of Chinese Buddhist Bibliography: Censorship and Transformation of the Tripitaka, at the AAS 2014 annual conference in Philadelphia.

Further reading

• Beloved former religious studies professor dies at 68: ‘She was the teacher you always wanted, University of the Pacific
• Ex-religious refugee finds her path in the land of the free, Stockton Record
• The History of Chinese Buddhist Bibliography (book review), New Books Network