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WESTERN TIBET AND THE WESTERN HIMALAYAS ESSAYS ON ARCHEOLOGY, ART, LITERATURE AND HISTORY (edited by Amy Heller and Giacomella Orofino) PREFACE The present volume is the result of a panel at the International... more

WESTERN TIBET AND THE WESTERN HIMALAYAS

ESSAYS ON ARCHEOLOGY, ART, LITERATURE AND HISTORY

(edited by Amy Heller and Giacomella Orofino)

PREFACE

The present volume is the result of a panel at the International Association for Tibetan Studies Oxford seminar, September 2003.
The raison d’être of this panel was to encourage an interdisciplinary approach to the study of Mnga' ris skor gsum and adjacent regions.
Although they were integrated into the zone of the Tibetan empire since the seventh century, the geography of these regions led over time to distinct patterns of trade and cross-influences with the polities of central Asia, Nepal and India.
By their diversity, the participant's research covers a very broad time range from the Zhang zhung period to the 20th century, in order to offer as complete an outline as possible of the state of research in this area and to illustrate the rich terrain of information which it provides. In addition to specific topics linked to the political history of the kingdoms of Gu ge and Pu hrang, the contributions focussed on religious and secular art, architecture, and literature produced in or for western Tibet and the western Himalayas.
This particular field of studies has begun to attract ever increasing interest on the part of scholars, mainly since it has proved to be of seminal importance for the definition of the historical and cultural processes of the entire Indo-Tibetan civilization, especially after the recent archaeological discoveries which have produced highly significant scientific results.
The panel was scheduled on the last morning of the Oxford seminar, which precluded a general discussion of all participants as several were obliged to depart before the conclusion of the entire session. In addition, two panellists were obliged to publish separately within the context of their university: Renate Ponweiser, University of Vienna, who presented a paper on narrative composition in the ambulatory of the cella in the ‘du khang of Ta bo, and Zhang Changhong, Sichuan University Institute for Tibetan Studies, who presented her findings on typology of stūpa in the vicinity of Mtho gling and Dung dkar. Geshe Wangyel, a Bonpo lama from Dolpo district, northwest Nepal, unfortunately died a few weeks before the Oxford Seminar. His presence was sorely missed. The abstract of his paper is included in the present volume as a testimony to his achievement and as a salient reminder of the scholars of western Himalaya, who increasingly are analysing their history, religions, and societies. Enrico dell’ Angelo, director of the Khor chags restoration project, had proposed a study of the history of Khor chags monastery, but was unable to attend. Giacomella Orofino, who participated in the same restoration project with dell’Angelo, presented the results of the ASIA restoration project and her research on a specific text recovered in Khor chags (see below). Huo Wei, director of the Sichuan University Institute for Tibetan Studies, was prevented from attending the Oxford seminar due to unforeseen visa problems, and his paper has been included in the present volume. His student Zhang Changhong represented their institute at the Oxford seminar.
In terms of content, the volume begins with archaeology, secular and religious. Aldenderfer and Huo Wei present here the first archeological reports in the history of the International Association for Tibetan Studies. Aldenderfer has done in-situ excavations at Dindun, a site located on a high terrace overlooking the river between the modern villages of Phyi yang and Dung dkar in Mnga’ ris. Testing in 1999 and more extensive excavation in 2001 revealed the presence of residential architecture dating to approximately ca. 85 BC. This excavation revealed several residences and differentiated living environments. Huo Wei, after initial archeological investigations of Tibetan tombs in central Tibet and the Lha rtse district, has recently concentrated his efforts on excavations and site-reports of Tibetan caves and mchod rten in the vicinity of Dung dkar, in Mnga’ ris. He discusses here the recently rediscovered wall paintings of the caves of Byang rtse Mkhar phug, north of Dung dkar, which may be dated to the flourishing of Buddhism in Mnga’ ris during the bstan pa phyi dar due to the content of the mural paintings and maṇḍala of the liturgical cycles of Vairocana.
The volume proceeds with two articles on architecture. Kozicz investigated with Prof. Heusgen of Graz and measured several sites, including Nyar ma in Ladakh, whose foundation is attributed to Rin chen bzang po, according to his biography written shortly after his death in 1055. As the results of their measurements illustrate some basic aspects of the architectural practices, Kozicz has studied the architecture of this former monastic enclave, working towards a comparison with A lci (Ladakh) and Ta bo (Spiti) and the analysis of the criteria for the architectural design of Nyar ma. Di Mattia does not study the entire architecture of monastic buildings, but instead concentrates on the development and differentiated usage of architectural frames in the facades and interior decoration of monasteries in western Himalaya and Tibet.
The analysis of religious literature, in the context of the historical development of these regions, is the focus of the studies of Orofino, Heller and De Rossi Filibeck.
Orofino presents here the background of the Khor chags restoration project with the finding of a collection of manuscript texts, hidden in three walled hollow rooms in the ‘dus khang. One of the buried manuscripts, the well known canonical text, Mañjuśrīnāmasaṃgiti has proved to be, on the base of critical textual analysis, very near to the Rin chen bzang po’s translation archetype, tracing back, with great probability, to the first phases of the foundation of the Khor chags settlement, before the 12th century. The critical analysis of the text proves, once again, the importance of the western Tibet literary collections in the study of the formation of the Tibetan canons.
Heller and De Rossi Filibeck both analyze the prefaces of manuscript copies of volumes of the Tibetan Buddhist canon. In the context of a restoration project in a village of Dolpo, Nepal, Heller discusses here the history of Gnas sar dgon pa and analyses the prefaces of several manuscripts from a corpus of more than 600 volumes conserved in this Dolpo temple. These prefaces range from mid-14th to late 15th century, corresponding respectively to periods of Khas Malla and Glo bo patronage of Buddhism in Dolpo. The Gnas gsar prefaces show literary and organizational similarities with those analysed by De Rossi Filibeck in her previous studies of several prefaces of 17th century manuscripts, collected by Giuseppe Tucci in his travels near Ta bo and Mtho gling and now preserved in the IsIAO library. Here De Rossi Filibeck presents a new study on the contents and the formal aspects of this very interesting literary material.
The history of the monastery is the topic of Lo Bue who here presents his study of Guru lha khang in Ladakh . Lo Bue reviews previous analysis of the chronology and content of this monastery’s mural paintings as a prelude to a new analyis and definitive dating for Guru lha khang to the 15th century. Geshe Wangyel’s abstract on Bsam gling, the principal Bonpo monastery in Dolpo, is a useful summary of the history of this monastic foundation. The history of a Bonpo pilgrimage in Dolpo and the synchronic development of its sacred geography is presented in the research by Kind. Jahoda also studies the history of a monastery, however his study of the Ta bo monastery is specific to the economic history of Ta bo village and monastery brought to light by documents pertaining to the economic relationships between the monastery and the lay population of Ta bo and other villages in Spiti valley during the third quarter of the 20th century, and examined through the 19th century antecedents of these relations.
Spanning secular, religious and economic history, literature, art and archaeology from pre-historical period to the 20th century, the articles presented here show the importance of research on west Tibet and western Himalaya and demonstrate the fruitful exchange of interdisciplinary research within this geographical context. The editors wish to thank all of the contributors for their patience and cooperative attitude. We are grateful to Dr Charles Ramble, as convenor of the conference, for his hospitality, congeniality and encouragement of this publication, and Mr Anthony Aris, of the Aris Trust, which facilitated the organization of the Oxford IATS seminar and publication of this volume. To honour the memory of our dear friend and colleague Dr Michael Aris, historian of Tibet and of the Himalayas, this volume is humbly dedicated.