Abstract: (of Volume I and II)
Excellent condition. The dark chapels and storerooms of Tibet's temples and monasteries with a vast number of ancient Buddhist sculptures in a diversity of styles. As demonstrated by the material that has come out of Tibet in the last fifty years, these institutions served as depositories not only of sculptures manufactured on the plateau, but encompass images from every region of the Himalayas, including Nepal, in addition to North-Western and North-Eastern India, and China. It was the Buddhist art from these areas which had such a strong impact on the development of the art of Tibet, and many of the sculptures published here add greatly to our understanding of this complex relationship. The more than 1100 images illustrated in these two volumes represent the long overdue publication of the most important sculptures remaining in Tibet. Given the enormous amount of material that had to be sifted through, not to mention the almost insurmountable difficulties in gaining access to them, it is not surprising that it took eighteen years and fourteen trips to Tibet to complete their preliminary documentation and photography. Highlights of the publication include a previously entirely unknown group of images dating to the first propagation of Buddhism in Tibet during the Imperial Period (c. 600-842 AD), in addition to metal sculptures that can be attributed to the semi-mythical kingdom of Zhang Zhung, which according to ancient sources once flourished in Western Tibet. Organised both chronologically and according to place of origin, the images are arranged in seventeen chapters. Each chapter is prefaced by an essay introducing the historical and cultural background from which the sculptures emerged, while each of the images in the subsequent catalogue is accompanied by a detailed textual entry which is the product of over a decade of research by the author and a team of consultant specialists in the iconography and epigraphy of Buddhist metal sculptures. Of great artistic and scholarly interest, the sculptures in these two volumes fill out much of the landscape of Tibet's artistic heritage already known to us, while charting a great deal of territory few even suspected existed. Buddhist Sculptures in Tibet is an indispensable reference work for any scholar, collector and dealer in the field of Asian art, not to mention those directly involved with the art of the Buddhist world. An unimagined but most important sculptures remaining in Tibet.