Rolf Stein's Tibetica Antiqua

Rolf Stein's Tibetica Antiqua PDF Author: R. Rolf Alfred Stein
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004183388
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 415

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Book Description
This book is the first collection and translation in English of Rolf Stein's groundbreaking series of articles on Tibetan history, Tibetica antiqua. Drawing on the earliest available sources, Stein discusses the Tibetan transition to Buddhism, a transition influenced by both Indian and Chinese culture and cultural competition.

Rolf Stein's Tibetica Antiqua

Rolf Stein's Tibetica Antiqua PDF Author: R. Rolf Alfred Stein
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004183388
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 415

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Book Description
This book is the first collection and translation in English of Rolf Stein's groundbreaking series of articles on Tibetan history, Tibetica antiqua. Drawing on the earliest available sources, Stein discusses the Tibetan transition to Buddhism, a transition influenced by both Indian and Chinese culture and cultural competition.

Dunhuang Manuscript Culture

Dunhuang Manuscript Culture PDF Author: Imre Galambos
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110727102
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 334

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Book Description
“Dunhuang Manuscript Culture” explores the world of Chinese manuscripts from ninth-tenth century Dunhuang, an oasis city along the network of pre-modern routes known today collectively as the Silk Roads. The manuscripts have been discovered in 1900 in a sealed-off side-chamber of a Buddhist cave temple, where they had lain undisturbed for for almost nine hundred years. The discovery comprised tens of thousands of texts, written in over twenty different languages and scripts, including Chinese, Tibetan, Old Uighur, Khotanese, Sogdian and Sanskrit. This study centres around four groups of manuscripts from the mid-ninth to the late tenth centuries, a period when the region was an independent kingdom ruled by local families. The central argument is that the manuscripts attest to the unique cultural diversity of the region during this period, exhibiting—alongside obvious Chinese elements—the heavy influence of Central Asian cultures. As a result, it was much less ‘Chinese’ than commonly portrayed in modern scholarship. The book makes a contribution to the study of cultural and linguistic interaction along the Silk Roads.

The Archaeology of Tibetan Books

The Archaeology of Tibetan Books PDF Author: Agnieszka Helman-Ważny
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004275053
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 329

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Book Description
In Archaeology of Tibetan Books, Agnieszka Helman-Ważny explores the varieties of artistic expression, materials, and tools that have shaped Tibetan books over the millennia. Digging into the history of the bookmaking craft, the author approaches these ancient texts primarily through the lens of their artistry, while simultaneously showing them as physical objects embedded in pragmatic, economic, and social frameworks. She provides analyses of several significant Tibetan books—which usually carry Buddhist teachings—including a selection of manuscripts from Dunhuang from the 1st millennium C.E., examples of illuminated manuscripts from Western and Central Tibet dating from the 15th century, and fragments of printed Tibetan Kanjurs from as early as 1410. This detailed study of bookmaking sheds new light on the books' philosophical meanings.

Mandala Cosmogony

Mandala Cosmogony PDF Author: Dan Martin
Publisher: Otto Harrassowitz Verlag
ISBN: 9783447034104
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 184

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Book Description


Bodies in Balance

Bodies in Balance PDF Author: Theresia Hofer
Publisher: University of Washington Press
ISBN: 0295807083
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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Book Description
Bodies in Balance: The Art of Tibetan Medicine is the first comprehensive, interdisciplinary exploration of the triangular relationship among the Tibetan art and science of healing (Sowa Rigpa), Buddhism, and arts and crafts. Generously illustrated with more than 200 images, Bodies in Balance includes essays on contemporary practice, pharmacology and compounding medicines, astrology and divination, history and foundational treatises. The volume brings to life the theory and practice of this ancient healing art. 2015 Best Art Book Accolade, ICAS Book Prize in the Humanities Category Bodies in Balance: The Art of Tibetan Medicine is the first comprehensive, interdisciplinary exploration of the triangular relationship among the Tibetan art and science of healing (Sowa Rigpa), Buddhism, and arts and crafts. This book is dedicated to the history, theory, and practice of Tibetan medicine, a unique and complex system of understanding body and mind, treating illness, and fostering health and well-being. Sowa Rigpa has been influenced by Chinese, Indian, and Greco-Arab medical traditions but is distinct from them. Developed within the context of Buddhism, Tibetan medicine was adapted over centuries to different health needs and climates across the region encompassing the Tibetan Plateau, the Himalayas, and Mongolia. Its focus on a holistic approach to health has influenced Western medical thinking about the prevention, diagnoses, and treatment of illness. Generously illustrated with more than 200 images, Bodies in Balance includes essays on contemporary practice, pharmacology and compounding medicines, astrology and divination, history and foundational treatises. The volume brings to life the theory and practice of this ancient healing art.

ReOrienting Histories of Medicine

ReOrienting Histories of Medicine PDF Author: Ronit Yoeli-Tlalim
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1472512499
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
It is rarely appreciated how much of the history of Eurasian medicine in the premodern period hinges on cross-cultural interactions and knowledge transmissions. Using manuscripts found in key Eurasian nodes of the medieval world – Dunhuang, Kucha, the Cairo Genizah and Tabriz – the book analyses a number of case-studies of Eurasian medical encounters, giving a voice to places, languages, people and narratives which were once prominent but have gone silent. This is an important book for those interested in the history of medicine and the transmissions of knowledge that have taken place over the course of global history.

Eighteen Lectures on Dunhuang

Eighteen Lectures on Dunhuang PDF Author: Xinjiang Rong
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004252339
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 573

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Book Description
In Eighteen Lectures on Dunhuang, Rong Xinjiang provides an accessible overview of Dunhuang studies, an academic field that emerged following the discovery of a medieval monastic library at the Mogao caves near Dunhuang. The manuscripts were hidden in a cave at the beginning of the 11th century and remained unnoticed until 1900, when a Daoist monk accidentally found them and subsequently sold most of them to foreign explorers and scholars. The availability of this unprecedented amount of first-hand material from China’s middle period provided a stimulus for a number of scholarly fields both in China and the West. Rong Xinjiang’s book provides, for the first time in English, a convenient summary of the history of Dunhuang studies and its contribution to scholarship.

Jewels of the Middle Way

Jewels of the Middle Way PDF Author: James B. Apple
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1614295018
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 489

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Book Description
Jewels of the Middle Way documents an important tradition of Madhyamaka and provides insight into both the late Indian Buddhist blend of Madhyamaka and tantra and the Kadampa school founded by the Indian Buddhist master Atisa. This book presents a detailed contextualization of the Madhyamaka (Middle Way) school in India and Tibet, along with translations of several texts in the Bka’ gdams gsung ’bum (Collected Works of the Kadampas), recently recovered Tibetan manuscripts that are attributed to Atisa and Kadampa commentators. These translations cohere around Atisa’s Madhyamaka view of the two realities and his understanding of the practice and the nature of the awakening mind. The book is organized in three parts based on the chronology of Atisa’s teaching of Madhyamaka in India and Tibet: (1) Lineage Masters, the Mind of Awakening, and the Middle Way; (2) Articulating the Two Realities; and (3) How Madhyamikas Meditate. Each part focuses on a specific text, or set of texts, specifically related to Atisa’s Middle Way. The authorship and date of composition for each work is discussed along with an outline of the work’s textual sources followed by an analysis of the content.

Questioning the Buddha

Questioning the Buddha PDF Author: Peter Skilling
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1614294089
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 680

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Book Description
An important new book unlocking the words of the Buddha contained in the vast Tibetan canon, one of the main scriptural resources of Buddhism. In the forty-five years the Buddha spent traversing northern India, he shared his wisdom with everyone from beggar women to kings. Hundreds of his discourses, or sutras, were preserved by his followers, first orally and later in written form. Around thirteen hundred years after the Buddha’s enlightenment, the sutras were translated into the Tibetan language, where they have been preserved ever since. To date, only a fraction of these have been made available in English. Questioning the Buddha brings the reader directly into the literary treasure of the Tibetan canon with thoroughly annotated translations of twenty-five different sutras. Often these texts, many translated here in full for the first time, begin with an encounter in which someone poses a question to the Buddha. Peter Skilling, an authority on early Buddhist epigraphy, archaeology, and textual traditions, has been immersed in the Buddhist scriptures of diverse traditions for nearly half a century. In this volume, he draws on his deep and extensive research to render these ancient teachings in a fresh and precise language. His introduction is a fascinating history of the Buddhist sutras, including the transition from oral to written form, the rise of Mahayana literature, the transmission to Tibet, the development of canons, and a look at some of the pioneers of sutra study in the West. Sutras included in this volume are: Four Dharmas Not to Be Taken for Granted; The Benefits of Giving; The Exposition of Four Dharmas; The Merit of the Three Refuges; Four Dharmas Never to Be Abandoned; Advice for Bodhisatva Dharmaketu; Advice for Bodhisatva Jayamati; Sutra Comparing Bodhicitta to Gold; Bodhisatva Maitreya’s Question about the Gift of the Dharma; Four Summaries of the Dharma Spoken to the Naga King Sagara; The Stanza of Dependent Arising; The Heart Formula of Dependent Arising; Prediction of the Boy Brahmasri’s Future Buddhahood; Ksemavati’s Prediction to Future Buddhahood; The City Beggar Woman; An Old Woman’s Questions about Birth and Death; The Questions of Srimati the Brahman Woman; The Questions of the Laywoman Gangottara; Brahma Sahampati’s Question; Advice to King Prasenajit; Passage to the Next Life; Instructions for King Bimbisara; Instructions for King Udayana; Buddhas as Rare as a Grain of Golden Sand; and Predictions on the Eve of the Great Final Nirvana.

Esoteric Buddhism and Texts

Esoteric Buddhism and Texts PDF Author: Jinhua Chen
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1003853579
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
This book explores trans-cultural and cross-border transformation of Esoteric Buddhism in East Asia, focusing on the significance of Esoteric Buddhism in relation to some forms of material culture, including rituals, arts, and the construction of sacred space and narratives. In East Asia, Esoteric Buddhism’s influences can be seen across all levels of society: not only in that it achieved a recognizable sectarian identity, but also because elements of esoteric teachings were absorbed by other religious schools, influencing their philosophical tenets and everyday practices. The influence was not confined to the religious sphere: scholars have been paying more and more attention to the significance of Tang Esoteric Buddhism in relation to material culture and the dissemination of Esoteric Buddhist technologies in South, Central, and East Asia. No matter how one looks at a maṇḍala—an integral feature of esoteric practice—or the uncannily expressive statues of Buddhas, Bodhisattvas or Yidam that come in all shapes and sizes, or the murals that depict the variegated, mysterious themes of the esoteric tradition, one can always recognise the profound connection between art and Esoteric Buddhism. Esoteric Influences also abound in East Asian literature across different genres, displaying its unique characters both in poetry and prose. Likewise, in architecture, one can readily make out the enigmatic, colorful and distinctive elements characteristic of the esoteric tradition. Monks initiated into the esoteric lineages not only brought Buddhist classics and practices to China, but also advanced knowledge in astronomy, calendarial calculations and mathematical theories. The chapters in this volume investigate the profound and far-reaching impacts wrought by Esoteric Buddhism on rituals, arts, and the construction of sacred space and narratives in East Asia. This book will be beneficial to advanced students and researchers interested in Religious Studies, History and Buddhist studies. It was originally published as a special issue of Studies in Chinese Religions.