Chandrasekhar, Chaya. Pāla-Period Buddha Images: their hands, hand gestures, and hand-held attributes. PhD Dissertation, Ohio State University, 2004. xvi+375 pp. [official site / PDF (779.3 MB)]
From the Abstract
This study identifies and classifies the Buddha images of the Pāla period (ca. eighth-twelfth centuries) of eastern India and Bangladesh. Specifically, the study examines the number of hands—whether a single pair or multiple pairs—hand gestures, and hand-held attributes of the Buddha images, and analyzes these elements in relation to the essential teachings of Mahāyāna and Vajrayāna Buddhism. […]
About 963 Buddha images among the known Pāla artistic corpus serve as the primary documents for the study.
Lee, Eun-Su. On defining Buddhist art in Bengal: the Dhaka region. PhD Dissertation, University of Texas at Austin, May 2009. 498 pp. [official site / PDF (224.3 MB)]
From the Abstract
This dissertation addresses the significance of regional developments in Indian art, focusing on the Buddhist art tradition of the Dhaka region in East Bengal from approximately the seventh to twelfth century CE.
Marylin M. Rhie; Robert A. F. Thurman, contrib.; Maria R. Heim, contrib.; Paola Zamperini, contrib.; Camille Myers Breeze, contrib. Picturing Enlightenment: Tibetan Tangkas in the Mead Art Museum at Amherst College. Amherst: Mead Art Museum, August 2012. 152 pp. 71 color illus. USD$34.95. ISBN 978-0-914337-34-8. [official site]
“This lavishly illustrated book with an extensive catalogue and three essays by noted scholars, [sic] introduces the outstanding collection of eighteen Tibetan paintings in the Mead Art Museum at Amherst College.” (Exhibition Catalogue.)
Bhagavān Kālacakra. 18th c. Mead Art Museum 1952.33.
Li, Shenghai 李勝海 [academia.edu]. ‘Candrakīrti’s Āgama: A Study of the Concept and Uses of Scripture in Classical Indian Buddhism’. PhD diss., University of Madison-Wisconsin, 2012. 311 pp.
From the Abstract
This dissertation examines scripture as a concept and the various roles that authoritative Buddhist texts play as such in the intellectual history of Buddhism. While it considers what Buddhist authors explicitly speak about scripture, the project brings into focus the recorded uses of authoritative texts, with an interest in discovering intellectual practices and learning about the management and transmission of knowledge. The main source materials of this study consist of instances of scriptural references found in the scholastic and commentarial works of several influential Indian and Tibetan authors, all of whom are connected with the pivotal figure of Candrakīrti (ca. 570-640), whose major writings lie at the center of the investigation. […]
Highlighting a keen awareness of the problem of reifying reason displayed by certain Buddhist writers from the Madhyamaka School of thought, the dissertation argues more specifically that the Buddhist scholastic tradition is cognizant of the hermeneutical condition of understanding and of reason’s contingency upon language, context, and tradition.
Gudrun Bühnemann. The Life of the Buddha: Buddhist and Śaiva Iconography and Visual Narratives in Artists’ Sketchbooks from Nepal. By Gudrun Bühnemann, with Transliterations and Translations from the Newari by Kashinath Tamot. Lumbini: Lumbini International Research Institute, 2012. ISBN 9789937553049, 204 pp. USD$50. [available from Vajra Books]
About the Book
This book describes, analyses and reproduces line drawings from two manuscripts and a related section from a third manuscript. These are: 1) Manuscript M.82.169.2, preserved in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (circa late nineteenth century) 2) Manuscript 82.242.1-24, preserved in the Newark Museum (from the later part of the twentieth century) and 3) A section from manuscript 440 in the private collection of Ian Alsop, Santa Fe, New Mexico (early twentieth century). The line drawings depict Hindu/Śaiva and Buddhist deities and themes, but the Buddhist material is predominant, as one would expect in artists’ sketchbooks from Patan. […]
Nancy Grace Lin. ‘Adapting the Buddha’s Biographies: A Cultural History of the Wish-Fulfilling Vine in Tibet, Seventeenth to Eighteenth Centuries’. PhD diss., University of California at Berkeley, 2011. 319 pp. ISBN 9781267228482, ProQuest ID 928450843.
From the Abstract
The Wish-Fulfilling Vine of Bodhisattva Avadānas (Skt. Bodhisattvāvadānakalpalatā, Tb. Byang chub sems dpa’i rtogs pa brjod pa dpag bsam gyi ’khri shing) by Kṣemendra is an eleventh-century Sanskrit anthology of stories about the previous existences of the Buddha and his disciples, along with events from the Buddha’s final life. Translated into Tibetan circa 1270 and incorporated into the Tibetan Buddhist canon, by the seventeenth century the Vine occupied a place of high prestige in Tibet. I argue that adaptations of the Vine—condensed literary digests, paintings, and woodcuts—constitute sophisticated forms of commentary that reveal the ingenuity and concerns of their producers. […]
In Chapter One I trace how the Fifth Dalai Lama (1617-1682) and his court popularized the Vine through public instruction, paintings, and literary activities. These conspicuously cultured displays promoted renewed interest in Sanskrit and the Indic origins of Buddhism, while contributing to broader projects of knowledge production and state-building. In Chapter Two I demonstrate how the lay Pho lha dynasty (r. 1728-1750) appropriated the Vine, sponsoring two large-scale multimedia productions while developing models for lay kingship and patronage. In Chapter Three I argue that Si tu Paṇ chen Chos kyi ’byung gnas (1700-1774), an influential monk of Sde dge in eastern Tibet, articulated his vision of the ideal monastic through the design of Vine paintings and other literary and visual productions on the Buddha’s life. In Chapter Four I study Zhu chen Tshul khrims rin chen (1697-1774), court chaplain of Sde dge, and his work on the Vine as commentaries on cultural production.
Christian K. Wedemeyer. Making Sense of Tantric Buddhism: History, Semiology, and Transgression in the Indian Traditions. South Asia Across the Disciplines. Columbia University Press, 2012. ISBN 9780231162401.
The Asian Classics Input Project recently announced the “complete distribution of the long awaited Kangyur (བཀའ་འགྱུར་) and Tengyur (བསྟན་འགྱུར་) etext collections in Tibetan unicode script”. Big up to the ACIP: this is quite an achievement. It’s old news for some, but when I recently asked some colleagues about this, none had any inkling that etexts of the full bKa’ ’gyur were available.
Using the ACIP etexts requires working in Tibetan script and registration — the latter possibly encouraging lying (it’s doubtful that most registrants will have anything like formal permission to read the entire tantric corpus).
However, there is alternative online access to the same body of scripture — though not necessarily the same electronic corpus (THL’s bKa’ ’gyur is specified as sDe dge, rather than ACIP’s Lha sa) — at the Tibetan and Himalayan Library: http://www.thlib.org/encyclopedias/literary/canons/kt/catalog.php#cat=d/k. Type Wylie or Tibetan Unicode text in the search box and you’re away. (Thanks to J.)
Traffic is up about 375% over last year, according to one metric. Many of the new visitors are sentient beings.
The top three countries from which readers visit Jinajik are the USA, Japan and Germany (not necessarily in that order). Great nations like the great yāna, it seems.
There may be no such thing as a free bhojana, but the lure of it is precisely what brings many of you here. The most clicked-on tag in 2011 is Sanskrit text, closely followed by PDF.
The most read article this year, by far, was last year’s announcement of Michael Allen’s The Daśakarma Vidhi. (For those who might want more, I have a short review forthcoming in the Journal of the Oriental Society of Australia.)
Complaints received in 2011: 0. Compliments received: 1. (A ratio that would please Mr. Micawber.)
DiValerio, David Michael. ‘Subversive Sainthood and Tantric Fundamentalism: An Historical Study of Tibet’s Holy Madmen’. Ph.D. diss., University of Virginia, 2011, 727 pp. ProQuest document ID: 2516363731.
From the Abstract
This dissertation is an historical study of Tibetan Buddhists generally referred to as “madmen” (smyon pa), whose “madness” carries a positive valuation more often than a negative one. Technically they are referred to as “mad siddhas” (grub thob smyon pa) or “mad yogis” (rnal ‘byor smyon pa). […] This study views this eccentric behavior as strategic, purposeful activity, rather than being the byproduct of a state of enlightenment. This study also considers how these holy madmen have been understood by Tibetans and Euro-Americans, with the purpose of highlighting certain lines of thinking that have become commonplace within those respective discourses.
This study takes into consideration “madmen” living from the 12th century to the present, but with a special focus on the three most famous exemplars of the tradition: Sangyé Gyeltsen (better known as the Madman of Tsang, 1452-1507), Drukpa Künlé (better known as the Madman of the Drukpa, 1455-1529?) and Künga Zangpo (better known as the Madman of Ü, 1458-1532).
