Tibet and Tibetan Studies

This definitive study of Tibetan protector deities reveals much about the early shamanistic base from which the Bon religion developed. The secrecy with which Tibetans surround the cult of the protective deities, especially the ceremonies involving ritual dances, divinations, black magic and weathermaking, was overcome by the author and he received instruction on these topics. He classifies the protective deities, details their appearance and attributes, and describes sacrificial objects, offerings, ceremonies, and oracles--their trances, ceremonies and attire.

Sri Dipamkarjnana, Jo-Bo-Rje the lamp for the path and commentary, together with the newly translated twenty-five key texts

Bodhicharyavatara of Santideva, original Sanskrit text with English transl. and exposition based on Prajnakarmatis Panjika by Parmananda Sharma

Papers presented at a session of a conference held at the University of Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia, in August 1988.

The first survey of its kind based on ancient manuscripts from Dunhuang and told in a modern Tibetan voice, A History of the Tibetan Empire starts with an examination of the dynasty\'s prehistoric origins and then proceeds to trace the line of Pugyal tsenpo, or emperors, from the founding emperor Nyatri Tsenpo in the 5th century BC, until the empire\'s collapse in the 9th century AD following the assassination of the last emperor Uidum Tsenpo (Lang Darma). Along the way,…

The ten papers presented in this eight volume of the Proceedings of the Ninth Seminar of the IATS, 2000, provide examples of the colourful and lively range of Tibetan self-expressions that exist within the modern homeland and in exile. The scholars here represent the fields of anthropology, sociology, literary studies, history, and political science. Four papers are based in studies in the modern Tibet Autonomous Region, five are grounded in the Tibetan diaspora, and one deals with both classical Tibetan…

The Great Perfection (rDzogs chen in Tibetan) is a philosophical and meditative teaching. Its inception is attributed to Vairocana, one of the first seven Tibetan Buddhist monks ordained at Samye in the eight century A.D. The doctrine is regarded among Buddhists as the core of the teachings adhered to by the Nyingmapa school whilst similarly it is held to be the fundamental teaching among the Bonpos, the non-Buddhist school in Tibet. After a historical introduction to Tibetan Buddhism and the…

A remarkable personal account of a sojourn of nearly eight years in Tibet, ending in 1952, compiled from the notes, sketches and photographs of Peter Aufschnaiter. An Austrian agricultural engineer, Aufschaiter developed a deep love and sympathy for the Tibetan people, sentiments which were readily reciprocated. Throughout his stay in Tibet, Aufschnaiter worked tirelessly not only to understand the people, their culture and religion, but also to share his skills in any area which could improve their lot.

This volume aspires to be useful to experts in Tibetan art, to art historians wishing to integrate Tibetan subjects into their teaching and to the growing body of amateur admirers of Tibetan thankas. In 1984, when Pratapaditya Pal wrote his ground breaking book \'Tibetan Painting\', probably fewer than 50 of these 11th-14th century Tibetan paintings on cloth were known. Since then over 300 early thankas have appeared. These works provide a plethora of new data for the art historian, and…

This book on the pre-modern Tibeto-Burman languages represents a movement to establish a field of Tibeto-Burman comparative-historical linguistics according to the classical Indo-European model. The book contains papers by T. Takeuchi on Old Zhang-zhung, A. Zadoks on Old Tibetan, K. Tamot on Early Classical Newari; C. Beckwith on Pyu, R. Yanson on Old Burmese, S. Chelliah and S. Ray on Early Meithei, D. Bradley on Tibeto-Burman, and C. Beckwith on Sino-Tibetan. Glossaries of several early Tibeto-Burman languages are included. It…

The ten papers presented in this eight volume of the Proceedings of the Ninth Seminar of the IATS, 2000, provide examples of the colourful and lively range of Tibetan self-expressions that exist within the modern homeland and in exile. The scholars here represent the fields of anthropology, sociology, literary studies, history, and political science. Four papers are based in studies in the modern Tibet Autonomous Region, five are grounded in the Tibetan diaspora, and one deals with both classical Tibetan…

Proceedings of the Ninth Seminar of the IATS, 2000, Volume 10 The Many Canons of Tibetan Buddhism Edited by Helmut Eimer and David Germano

This book investigates Tibetan recovery from the devastation of High Socialism and a new engagement with attempts to modernize the region in the era of reform and opening in post-Mao China. With chapters on the negotiation of culture and identity in Amdo in contributions on public debate about traditional culture, on attempts at language standardization, and on sexuality. Concerning religion, there are contributions on critical perspectives on reincarnate lamas, and on cases of revival and reinterpretation of popular rituals. Amdo…

Which places does Tibet include? Are people Tibetan merely because of living in those places? Territory and Identity are notions that are widely present in academic and popular discourses on Tibet. In 1992 a group of French and Austrian researchers who had studied some of the mountain deities and sacred landscapes of Tibet began meeting to discuss the links between territory and identity in Tibetan culture. Eight years later an interdisciplinary group of scholars met in Leiden in Holland to…

Increasing accessibility of Tibet has provided important new insights on the history and context of Tibetan art. This book discusses the impact of Tibetan patronage on Buddhist artistic monuments from both the heartland of Tibet as well as its far (cultural) borders. A score of experts here explore the dialectic between local and foreign traditions. Thus the role of Indian artistic traditions, the merging with Chinese, Kidan and Turkic artistic features come to the fore, while at the same time…

This volume focuses upon the relationships between the past and the present evoked in Tibetan historiography, ritual literature, and Buddhist esoteric writings. It offers diverse perspectives on a critical period in Tibet is history when Tibetans found themselves caught up in the tides of political turmoil and forced into the center of a much larger Central Eurasian struggle for power and territorial control between the Manchu rulers of the Qing empire and the Mongols of the north. The volume highlights…

Since the occupation of Tibet by the Peoples Republic of China in 1959, former border principalities and feudatories of the former realm of the Dalai Lama have broken away and have developed sociopolitical and economic bonds with other states. Sikkim, Bhutan, Ladakh, and the Tibeto-Burman speaking regions of Burma, Nepal, and others have all developed strong ethnic identities apart from Tibet. Eleven well-known scholars working in these borderlands of Tibet present in this volume aspects of their current historical, linguistic,…

These essential readings in the emerging field of Tibetan literary studies offer specialists and non-specialists provocative new studies of contemporary Tibetan literature and criticism, ranging from discussions of individual works to theoretical interventions. The nature of Tibetan literature as both a regional voice within China and a transnational voice in the world is explored by L. Hartley on the relationship between the terms rtsom-rig, wen, and literature, F. Robin on historical fiction, L. Maconi on literature in the Yunnan Tibetan…

This volume focuses on the interface between Mongolian and Tibetan cultures and aims to create a platform to encourage the development of new forms of scholarship across geographical and disciplinary boundaries. This forum lets new materials emerge and brings to the fore a variety of different approaches to studying Mongolian and Tibetan cultures and societies. The papers in this volume deal not only with the substantial Mongolian contribution to and engagement with Tibetan Buddhism, but also with multiple readings of…

This is the first major publication in the West to study modernity and its impact on contemporary Tibet. Based on field work by researchers from the fields of anthropology, sociology, environmental science, literature, art and linguistics, it presents essays on education, economics, childbirth, environment, caste, pop music, media and painting in Tibetan communities today. The findings emerge from studies carried out in Ladakh, Golok, Lhasa, Xining, Shigatse and other areas of the Tibetan world. It will provide important and sometimes…