| |
Both spatially and temporally, the scope of this book is expansive. Spatially, the essays cover a vast swathe of Asia stretching from Mathura in India to Thailand in Southeast Asia, including the Himalayan region. Temporally, the period covered is over a millennium from the 1st century BCE to the 10th century CE. Conceptually, the essays cover issues of iconology and styles of Buddhist art, offer new insights and interpretations of both symbols and images, and explain the interrelationships of Buddhist art and literary traditions of the subcontinent, the Himalaya, and Southeast Asia.
The first essay is a radical interpretation of the peculiar manner of the shaven heads of monks, and of the ushnisha in the context of Vedic regal symbolism. Two related essays discuss the early Buddhist narrative art of Mathura when the devotion of the Buddhists was focused on physical emblems associated with the Buddha`s life rather than his human representations.
The next group of articles is devoted to the interaction of the Buddhist arts of the countries of South and Southeast Asia. Taking a rate stone image of the Naga-protected Buddha from Dvaravati period in Thailand as a point of departure, the first essay deals with the issue of transmission of iconographic ideas and motifs between India, Sri Lanka and Thailand. This is followed by another scholar`s insights on the same Naga-protected Buddha. A third essay brings to light evidence for the familiarity of the famous Buddhist text Karandavyuha Sutra in Thailand and its import for the cult of the Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara.
The final chapters are devoted to the Buddhist art of India and Tibet and their interrelationship. The first makes an important methodological contribution by discussing the manner in which ornaments are depicted in the Buddhist art of the Pala period in eastern India (8th - 111 century) and how thereafter portraits in Tibet interpreted these elements.
Another essay concentrates on a little-known school of painting that flourished in 16th century ladakh, now a part of the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir. The volume concludes with a photo essay that brilliantly portrays the spectacular landscape and Buddhist art of the western Himalaya.
Contents : Introduction by Pratapaditya Pal / Pipal Tree, Tonsured Monks, and Ushnisha by Gautam Vajracharya / The Representation of the Buddha`s Birth and Death in the Aniconic Period by J.E. Van Lohuizen-de Leeuw / Observations on "The Representation of the Buddha`s Birth and Death in the Aniconic Period by Sonya Rie Quintanilla / An Unusual Naga-Protected Buddha from Thailand by Pratapaditya Pal / The Karandavyuha Sutra and Buddhist Art in 10th Century Cambodia by Hiram Woodward / Do Jewelleries Provide Chronological Clues? A Preliminary Study of Wrathful Deities in Early Tibetan Thankas by Steven Kossak / A 16th Century Ladakhi School of Buddhist Painting by Erberto Lo Bue / A Pilgrim to the Buddhist Himmalayas by Jaroslav Poncar / Index.
ISBN : 9788185026787
|
| |
|