The Award
The Prize named in Professor Mary Boyce’s honour comes with a cash award of £250 and is given for an outstanding article on the study of religion, anywhere in Asia and at any time, that has been published in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society.
About the Prize
The Prize was instigated in 2007 by the Society in memory of Professor Mary Boyce. The Prize is given intermittently as and when an eligible, meritorious article is published.
Mary Boyce (1920–2006) was Professor of Iranian Studies at SOAS, distinguished scholar of Iranian Languages (including Manichaean, Zoroastrian Middle Persian and Parthian) and a leading authority of Zoroastrianism. In 1963–64, she conducted fieldwork among orthodox Zoroastrians of the 24 villages of Yazd, Iran, a research trip that proved formative for her understanding of the faith and its followers. Professor Boyce was a long-term Fellow of the Society, member of Council, and recipient in 1973 of the Sir Richard Burton Medal.
Past Recipient
Awarded in 2007
Julius N. Tsai, for the article, Reading the ‘Inner Biography of the Perfected Person of Purple Solarity’: Religion and Society in an Early Daoist Hagiography
Latest Recipient
Awarded in 2009
Alexander Wynne
for the article
The Buddha’s ‘skill in means’ and the genesis of the five aggregate teaching