People – Jinajik

2017-07-292018-01-20

Dina Bangdel (1965–2017)

Dr Dina Bangdel (5.12.1965–25?.7.2017) is well known among Nepal specialists as a historian of religious art. Her 1999 dissertation, Manifesting the Mandala, and co-authored 2003 exhibition catalogue, Circle of Bliss, emphasised the visual culture of the Cakrasamvara cycle in Newar Buddhism, which is traditionally kept secret. Dr Bangdel had been planning to show a selection of this and related art on a world-travelling exhibition and was scheduled to speak at the “New Research on Newar Buddhism” panel at IABS. This week Dr Bangdel passed away, reportedly after complications following surgery. She is survived by her husband Bibhakar Shakya and two children.

(Added 2018/1/20:) ‘Remembering scholars of Nepalese Art Mary Slusser and Dina Bangdel’ (Rubin Museum of Art)

Aryatara — Tamang, ‘Green Tara’ (Bangdel 2016, fig.6)

2012-09-192012-09-22

Min Bahadur Shakya, 1951-2012

Exif_JPEG_PICTURE — मीन बहादुर शाक्य जु
हिरण्यवर्णमहाविहार (क्वा बाहा) अवस्थित, यल
जन्म मिति— ने. सं. १०७१ (वि. सं. माघ ४, २००७)
दिवंगत मिति— ने. सं. ११३२ (वि. सं. आश्विन २, २०६९)

2011-06-27

Robert Beer

‘Visionary Realms: An Interview with Robert Beer’. 2011. [PDF at Wisdom books or online (more pictures).]

Nice to see these informed musings on twentieth- and twenty-first-century Newar art by Robert Beer, its most accomplished Western exponent, ranging from the influence of Botticelli’s Nascita di Venere upon it to thoughts on some of its current leading lights.

There is also a plug for Robert Beer’s joint venture with Wisdom books, the commercial site tibetanart.com, offering stuff at the higher-quality end of the market.

2011-06-042011-06-04

Jonathan Silk

Jonathan Silk not only studies Mahāyāna Buddhism; he thinks about it as well. Is that unusual? Put it this way: I feel that I can recommend his work on that basis alone.

A number of Prof. Silk’s articles are available at the University of Leiden’s online repository.
For starters: timely thoughts on Buddhist studies in his Oratie, Lies, Slander and the Study of Buddhism, delivered April 1st, 2008 (but no laughing matter). Offering so much to discuss, I present just this excerpt:

I would be a happy man had I a nickel — that’s a small denomination American coin – for every time I have been told that Buddhism is not a religion, but rather a philosophy, a way of life. This is more than a rhetorical strategy by which an interested Westerner allows himself to explore Buddhism without feeling an apostate for doing so. For it derives its validity only by denying Buddhist traditions their intrinsic identity, and Buddhists — traditional, Asian Buddhists — their autonomy. Once one denies that Buddhism is a religion, it ceases to be an integral part of anyone’s life. Buddhism becomes something optional, adventitious, incidental even to the people whose lives it structures. For Westerners disaffected with religion, this may be a happy solution. But at least for the scholar, it is an impossibility, for it constitutes a refusal to acknowledge the tradition in its multiplicity and complexity, or even in its most intrinsic nature. [2008:12]
Official Site: http://www.leidenuniv.nl/professoren/show_en.php3-medewerker_id=950.htm