This beautiful Tibetan manuscript from the Fournier Collection at the Musee Guimet, Paris, recounts in words and images the visionary experiences of the Great Fifth Dalai Lama, Ngawang Lobzang Gyamtso (1617-1682). It is the sole illustrated secret autobiography of a Tibetan lama known to exist and was until recently concealed both from Tibetans and others alike. Although it never circulated outside his personal court, the Dalai Lama clearly states that it was composed and executed "in order to guide the uninitiated and-for all those who wish to do drawings and paintings of the heavens". The 67 illustrations, reproduced in full color, contain a total of around 886 individual subjects and consist of diptychs and triptychs which are grouped into five sections associated with the main participating deities. They represent the finest-known quality in miniature style Tibetan art and stand as the earliest manifestation of the 'black thangka' style of painting. The leaves are executed in gold, silver, subtle greens, blues and reds against a charcoal black background. Up to 48 different ritual objects can be depicted in an illustration and all have been full identified in the corresponding captions, with their ritual use explained in a comprehensive Glossary.

Secret Visions of the Fifth Dalai Lama: The Gold Manuscript in the Fournier Collection

Arts & Photography

Karmay, Samten Gyaltsen

History & Criticism

Serindia Pubns

Nearly every day there are reports from around the world of bitter struggles involving the rights of peoples to self-determination. Failure to resolve such disputes often ends in armed conflict. Tibetans are the exception because non-violence is their creed. It is therefore most necessary to find a path which will, within the framework of international law, examine their claims for self-determination and independence, and find a peaceful solution. In 1993 a conference of leading international lawyers from 14 countries was held in London to consider those claims. Two Committees on Evidence each under a Judge examined in detail the material evidence, including submissions by the Chinese government, and reached their conclusions. The legal issues were then introduced by experts in their various fields. The discussions were lively, frank and constructive, and conclusions were reached about the rights of the Tibetan people. These discussions between leading experts may also have advanced the state of international law. This report of the conference will assist governments, the international community, international lawyers and all concerend about human rights.

Tibet: The Position of International Law

Conference of International Lawyers on Issues Relating to Self-determi

Business & Money

Tight, clean copy, inside pristine, light cover wear, Qualifies for FREE SHIPPING!!

Of Gods, Kings, and Men: Bas-Reliefs of Angkor Wat and Bayon

Le Bonheur, Albert

This texts brings together some 65 contributions by Hugh Richardson to Tibetan Studies written over the course of nearly 60 years. Part 1 contains 27 articles on the crucial and formative phase of Tibet's history in the 7th to 9th centuries AD. In Part 2 nine articles focus on key historical sites and incriptions dating mostly from the early period. Part 3 reproduces fouteen articles on later history down to the 20th century, including a number of studies on Chinese and Western involvement with Tibet. Part 4 is a reprint of Richardson's Tibetan Precis (Calcutta, Govt. of India PRess, 1945), a secret publication containing classified information summarizing British relations with Tibet. The volume concludes in Part 5 with fourteen articles in which the author provides his own personal testimonies and recollections of life in traditional Tibet and his reactions to its subsequent fate. This work should be of interest to both specialists and non-specialists.

High Peaks, Pure Earth: Collected Writings on Tibetan History and Culture

History

Aris, Michael

RICHARDSON, Hugh

Asia

Memoirs of Yab Ugyen Dorji on his ancestors and decendants, a merchant family from Bhutan.

Of Rainbows and Clouds: The Life of Yab Ugyen Dorji As Told to His Daughter

Yab Ugyen Dorji

Ashi Dorji Wangmo Wangchuck, Queen of Bhutan

Based on several years of fieldwork since 1972, this study provides a wealth of hitherto unrecorded detail and insight on Thakali history, culture and society.

The Thakali

Politics & Social Sciences

Vinding, Michael

Social Sciences

Architectural paintings in watercolour from the Himalayan kingdom of Mustang in northern Nepal by Robert Powell are the subject of a major travelling exhibition. The landscape of Mustang is stripped of comfort, dry, windblown, dramatic and overwhelming in scale. Yet with the careful control of water, man-made islands of subsistence arose in remote corners. The structures man builds to maintain these islands, and to thrive, are the subjects of these paintings. Virtually every built object in Mustang bears the sings of ritual activity: from prehistoric hand-dug cave systems to ruined hilltop castles, from densely clustered villages to isolated temples, from propitiatory stacks of yak horns to the sophisticated cosmology of the chorten.

Earth Door Sky Door: Paintings of Mustang

POWELL, ROBERT

Collections, Catalogs & Exhibitions

The Patan Museum, a former palace of the late Malla dynasty of the Kathmandu Valley, was restored and adapted over a period of 15 years and completed in 1997 with professional and financial assistance from the Austrian Government. Set in one of the world's most beautiful squares, it was conceived not only to display a collection of artifacts as a showcase for the cultural legacy of Nepal but also to celebrate the Malla-period palace itself.Gotz Hagmuller, who directed the palace's transformation into a state-of-the-art museum, presents this process in narrative essays of exploration and discovery. From the outset, his intention was to create a museum within the cultural context of its collection as an integrated aesthetic whole. This synthesis of art and setting, emphasized by the project's main curator and cultural advisor Mary Shepherd Slusser, has resulted in one of South Asia's most attractive museums.

Patan Museum: The Transformation of a Royal Palace in Nepal

Gotz, Hagmuller

Reference

The impressive manuscript collection of the Wellcome Library in London, UK, receives a tribute in this handsome volume of essays by specialists at the Library, the British Library, and universities in the UK, Germany, and Russia. Though the Wellcome Library and Trust are devoted to medicine, many other subjects are contained in the Library's Asian manuscripts, as seen here in essays that treat topics that include marriage ceremonies in Hebrew manuscripts, Islamic calligraphy, Armenian attitudes towards images, astrological images in two Persian manuscripts, and a series of Tibetan banners. Other topics include Japanese medical texts and illustrations, and Indian manuscript painting. Each essay is illustrated with high quality color reproductions. Annotation (c) Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Pearls of the Orient: Asian Treasures from the Wellcome Library

Attention to Himalayan Buddhist art has come to the forefront of art historical scholarship in recent years, especially in the areas of connoisseurship and attribution. Several major exhibitions have highlighted the artistic achievements of the Himalayan cultures, yet very few have focused primarily on the reasons for the creation of the art and its original intent. The Circle of Bliss: Buddhist Meditational Art attempts to fill this lacuna in the scholarship by showing that the function of Himalayan Buddhist art is to interpret and give physical form to specific Buddhist practices. 
The exhibition catalogue for The Circle of Bliss points the way to an entirely new direction for the study of the visual representations of the Chakrasamvara Tantra and other key Buddhist Tantras. The texts of the Chakrasamvara Tantra offer profound meditational techniques to practitioners to enable them to experience the increased awareness necessary for reaching the ultimate state of human perfection, or Enlightenment. Here, for the first time in Himalayan art historical scholarship, the works of art are presented in their socio-religious context, with details about how their symbolic visual language expresses the attainment of that path. The study focuses on the esoteric meditations related to Chakrasamvara and Vajravarahi, which are regarded as among the principal meditational practices throughout the Himalayan Buddhist world. Long believed to be taught only to initiated disciples, the details of these meditations have gradually come into the light of modern scholarship over the last sixty years. With this increased public awareness, the authors have been allowed a unique opportunity to explain these esoteric processes without breaking any of the still-secret traditions. The book’s thematic emphasis provides a clear, well-articulated overview of the Himalayan Buddhist meditational process from its inception through its completion stages. 
The study delineates the geo-cultural development across Asia of the diverse esoteric religious practices of Himalayan Buddhism, especially the seminal contribution of the Newar Buddhist community of Nepal in the transmission and reinterpretation of the esoteric Tantric Buddhist teachings. The practices of the Newar community, in particular the Chakrasamvara teachings, are revealed as a major force in the development of Buddhism. 
Featuring approximately 160 of the aesthetically finest and most powerful masterpieces of Indian, Nepalese, Tibetan, Chinese, and Mongolian art produced over the past thirteen centuries, the catalogue includes many works published for the first time. It highlights the extraordinary artistic accomplishments of esoteric Buddhism and at the same time leads the reader to understand the intrinsic function of these exquisite works. In this in-depth contextualization of the art works, the complex world of Himalayan Buddhist art has been explicated beyond aesthetic appreciation to a germane understanding of its innermost meaning and its service in the pursuit of Enlightenment.

The Circle of Bliss: Buddhist Meditational Art

Dina Bangdel

John C. Huntington

Religious

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