̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - Buddhism

World’s oldest, illustrated Sanskrit manuscript launches India Unboxed film series

sjr81 — Mon, 12 Jun 2017 16:03:08 +0000

̽��ֱ��answer is India – and Cambridge. Among the many millions of objects held across the ̽��ֱ��’s eight museums, Botanic Garden, Centre for South Asian Studies, and ̽��ֱ�� Library, are a huge number of wonders related to the world’s largest democracy.

̽��ֱ��stories behind some of these singular objects are being told in a series of short films as part of a year-long celebration across the ̽��ֱ�� and city of Cambridge to mark the UK–India Year of Culture 2017.

To celebrate the 70th anniversary of Indian independence in 2017, Cambridge has turned its gaze eastwards with India Unboxed – to highlight the astonishing artworks, artefacts, orchids and scientific instruments that have made their way to Cambridge over the past 800 years.

̽��ֱ��films will explore and explain why a tin of Fine Indian and Ceylon Tea was packed for an Antarctic expedition at the turn of the 20th century; how a brass transit instrument was used in the Great Trigonometrical Survey of India; and what a gharial actually is.

Malavika Anderson, Cultural Programmer for the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge Museums, said: “ ̽��ֱ��collections of the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge Museums include a fascinating variety of objects, specimens, art works, photographs and manuscripts from across South Asia.

“India Unboxed is a fantastic opportunity to celebrate these significant collections - to look closer at the fascinating and often complex stories of identity and connectivity between the UK and the Indian subcontinent. Throughout this year the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge Museums will host special exhibitions, events and experiences that invite you to explore India through our collections.

India Unboxed is rooted in the ̽��ֱ��’s museum collections, and involves academics, local diasporic communities and artists from India and the UK. ̽��ֱ��rich programme creatively unpicks the tangled relationships of the two countries, fusing historical context with contemporary perspectives.

̽��ֱ��India Unboxed film series begins with ̽��ֱ��Perfection of Wisdom – taking a close look at the world’s oldest dated and illustrated Sanskrit manuscript, held at Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library.

Over the course of six centuries Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library’s collection has grown from a few dozen volumes on a handful of subjects into an extraordinary accumulation of several million books, maps, manuscripts and journals.

̽��ֱ��library is also home to an extraordinary collection of Buddhist works, amongst which is one very important Sanskrit palm leaf manuscript.

This manuscript is about a thousand years old and has one of the most famous titles in world literature — the Aṣṭasāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā or ̽��ֱ��Perfection of Wisdom in 8,000 Lines. ̽��ֱ��Perfection of Wisdom offers a path to enlightenment and signifies the formal introduction to Buddhist thought.

Certain events from the Buddha’s life feature prominently: his birth, his first teaching, his death, the attack by an elephant, the monkey giving him honey, and his return to Sāmkāśya after teaching his mother in heaven.

Craig Jamieson, Keeper of Sanskrit Manuscripts at Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library, said: “ ̽��ֱ��many beautiful and well-preserved images are tiny but incredibly complex at the same time. Given that the nature of the medium, the palm leaf, places many restrictions on what an artist can do, the variety and detail in the illustrations of these manuscripts is astonishing.

“To this day,1,000 years on, the palm leaf manuscripts are still helping to further research on the intellectual traditions, religious cults, literature and political ideas of South Asia.”

Over the course of the series, Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library is one of just eleven collections showcased in film. Other collections include: the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, the Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Botanic Garden, the Museum of Classical Archaeology, the Fitzwilliam Museum, the Sedgwick Museum of Earth Sciences, the Whipple Museum of the History of Science, Polar Museum, and the archives of the Centre of South Asian Studies.

For more information about the India Unboxed exhibitions, events, digital interventions, discussions and installations, visit www.india.cam.ac.uk

What connects a head-hunter’s trophy, a meteorite, Hercules, a painting of a Hindu temple, an ornate desk, a brass instrument, a tin of tea (unopened), an exotic orchid, a gharial, stacks of home movies and 8,000 lines of Sanskrit manuscript?

To this day, 1,000 years on, the palm leaf manuscripts are still helping to further research.

Craig Jamieson

India Unboxed: ̽��ֱ��Perfection of Wisdom

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

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How yaks and humans have lived in partnership for centuries

amb206 — Wed, 18 Nov 2015 09:38:09 +0000

Scroll to the end of the article to listen to the podcast.

“It was already looking at me when I saw it. As it started moving down the hill towards me, I was very aware that I was alone, with the others far ahead and out of sight. I started running down the trail, and could hear its bell jangling as it came after me. Ahead was a plank bridge spanning the rushing torrents and boulders below, and I thought: ‘If it overtakes me on this, if I go over, that’s it.’ By the time I made it across to the shelter of an overhanging rock, my heart was racing and I was shaking. Like many prominent features in this sacred landscape, the rock was inscribed with a mantra, and indeed the very one I’d been reciting as I flew across that bridge.”

Few people have found themselves chased by a yak in the course of their academic research – but that’s what happened to Dr Riamsara Kuyakanon Knapp while studying for her PhD in Cambridge’s Department of Geography. She recalls: “Looking at the photo I took at the time, I can see that it’s blurry because I was trembling and gasping to catch my breath. ̽��ֱ��yak pursuing me down the trail was a female, or dzomo in the local language, and looks quite amicable in retrospect, but I wasn’t taking any chances!”

Her encounter with this female yak took place four years ago high in the Bhutan Himalaya. Yaks are powerfully built and not easily intimidated, and females are known to be protective of their young. Kuyakanon Knapp explains: “I think she was certainly on the lookout – I don’t know why she came after me, perhaps her calf was nearby, somewhere among the herd that was grazing in the rhododendron understory of the ancient evergreen forest. Grazing land in Bhutan, as elsewhere in the Himalaya, isn’t just grassy pastures but also comprises forest understory.”

Bhutan is famous for being the last Buddhist Himalayan kingdom, and is also renowned as a conservation landscape, due to its abundant forests and wildlife. Kuyakanon Knapp’s research focuses on understanding this cultural landscape, how people and environment interact to create a specific sense of “place” and, in particular, on the relationship between environmental conservation and Buddhist beliefs at multiple sites and scales. On the day of her yak encounter, Kuyakanon Knapp was on a pilgrimage trail, which passes through a remote region where the only inhabitants are monastics and herders who pasture their yaks in the high Himalaya during the summer. During the harsh winters yaks are brought down to ‘lower’ altitudes, around 3,500 metres above sea-level.

Yak herding has been part of life in the Himalayas for centuries, and yaks are uniquely adapted to their extreme environments, able to travel through and find forage in thick snow. ̽��ֱ��domesticated yak (Bos grunniens or ‘grunting ox’) provides most of the resources needed for survival in a tough environment. Its meat is a precious source of protein. Milk from female yaks is drunk raw and churned to make butter and cheese. ̽��ֱ��animal’s wiry outer wool is used to make yarn for weaving into material for tents and blankets and its under-layer of softer fibre used to make clothing that keeps out the bitter winter cold.

Nothing produced by the yak is wasted. In Tibet, coracles for ferrying across the wide, rapid rivers were made from yak hide – a material that is both light and strong – stretched over a flexible willow frame. Dried yak dung fuels the portable stoves used for cooking. Last but not least, the sturdy yak is used for traction and transport over terrain far too rough for a vehicle.

Kuyakanon Knapp says: “ ̽��ֱ��yak is an integral part of high-altitude livelihoods, particularly in Bhutan, but also throughout the Himalayas, Tibet and Central Asia. They are a much prized and beloved livestock, and yak-rearing knowledge is something people are proud of. In addition to the animals’ practical place in community livelihoods, yaks have a place in legends, songs and festivals. Deities are supplicated and propitiated so that they will safeguard the welfare of herds.” ̽��ֱ��semi-nomadic Brokpa people of eastern Bhutan have a very special yak cham or ‘yak dance’, and the high-altitude village of Ura in central Bhutan has both the yak lha propitiation ceremony, and yak choe annual festival. Researcher Dr Karma Phuntsho (formerly at Cambridge’s Department of Social Anthropology) has written evocatively about how globalisation manifests in the changing practices of a village festival.

Yak herders know their environment intimately, and this knowledge is culturally encoded, as seminal studies by Bhutanese scholars, such as Dasho Karma Ura of the Centre for Bhutan Studies in Thimphu, have shown. Building on this, conservation efforts by the Royal Government of Bhutan, the Bhutan Foundation and WWF have enlisted the help of herders to camera-trap the elusive snow leopard in order to better understand the ecology of this endangered species. ̽��ֱ��award-winning film ̽��ֱ��Yak Herder’s Son documents the friendship between a national park ranger and a young yak herder, asking the vital question of how all those who share the land – livestock, predator, herder, ranger – can live together in harmony.

For centuries, Bhutan, a Buddhist Himalayan kingdom, was effectively ‘closed’ to visitors and even today visas are hard to obtain. “As a researcher seeking permission to visit or work in Bhutan, you are likely to go through a rigorous application process. It’s very important to respect national and cultural sensibilities. Accountability and collaboration are essential, as they should be everywhere, but unfortunately this isn’t always the case. Especially in western or Euro-centric knowledge production, there is a real history of colonial extraction and appropriation that we need to be aware of and resist, as it still exists,” says Kuyakanon Knapp.

Westernised urbanites tend to romanticise life in stunningly beautiful and remote areas – and to lament the passing of traditional ways of life - but the reality of making ends meet for the average herder or farmer is far from idyllic. Like everyone else, Bhutanese farmers and villagers want to enjoy some of life’s comforts and for their children to attend school and have more choices. “Families want to have electricity in their homes, to cook rice and watch television, to have serviceable roads and cars for accessing markets and healthcare,” says Kuyakanon Knapp.

“Despite these shifts, the role of religion and religious devotion in daily life remain great, and this is what drew me to working in Bhutan, to understand a way of modernising without severing culture and tradition. It is deeply impressive to see that, on a fundamental level, most people in the countryside still value spiritual well-being above material well-being. ̽��ֱ��state is trying to ensure that this need not be a mutually exclusive choice through the Gross National Happiness (GNH) developmental framework.”

̽��ֱ��Himalayas have long been a magnet for western travellers, who have included mountaineers, naturalists and collectors. Cambridge’s Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (MAA) holds an exceptional collection of photographs taken by Frederick and Margaret Williamson, who took advantage of a colonial posting in Sikkim to travel extensively in the region during the 1930s. ̽��ֱ��adjacent Haddon Library for archaeology and anthropology has a collection of some 62,000 publications gathered over nearly 90 years, including rare books relating to the Himalayas.

“I’ll not forget the time I went into the Haddon and first picked up Nari Rustomji’s Bhutan Venture: A Guest at the Royal Court, documenting his trip to Bhutan in the 1955. He was, in his own words, ‘the first Indian after independence’ to visit Bhutan, which ‘was then regarded, like Tibet, as the forbidden land’. Written in ink on the fly leaf was that this book was a gift to the Haddon Library from the author, via the managers of the Frederick Williamson Memorial Fund. It was a direct connection to the past, to lived experience, and to the thinking and life history of a key historical actor. Rustomji’s admiration for the Bhutanese, and his travels in Bhutan took me straight back to my fieldwork year,” says Kuyakanon Knapp.

“Later I went and looked at some of the images in the Williamson Collection, and also read Margaret Williamson’s book Memoirs of a Political Officer's Wife in Tibet, Sikkim and Bhutan which includes a wonderful description of travelling on the back of a pony and then a yak in the 1930s.”

In recollections published in 1987, Williamson paints a vivid picture of the journey she undertook with her husband. “Having passed a moraine and the Tsogyu lake, we exchanged our ponies for sure-footed yaks, which were better-suited to high-altitude travelling. Mine was a nice, brown, silken-haired animal. We climbed higher and higher until we reached the foot of the glacier. On the way we passed more lakes and also saw some bharal (wild blue sheep). It was hard going even for yak over the ice, but in two and a half hours we reached the Mon-la Kar Chung pass … Gigantic crags … reared up on all sides, with the snow and ice on their knife-edged ridges glistening brilliantly in the crisp morning sunshine. Derrick [Frederick] and I stood there, utterly amazed at the sublime beauty and grandeur of the Himalayas.”

Next in the Cambridge Animal Alphabet: Z is for a transparent animal that provides a surprisingly good model for studying tuberculosis.

Have you missed the series so far? Catch up on Medium here.

Inset images: Travelling by yak in the 1930s, Tibet (©MAA N.101191.WIL, photograph taken by Frederick Williamson); Ku-Dru (Yak skin boats) in Tibet (©MAA N.103814.WIL, photograph by Frederick Williamson); ̽��ֱ��yak choe festival in the village of Ura (Riamsara Kuyakanon Knapp).

̽��ֱ��Cambridge Animal Alphabet series celebrates Cambridge’s connections with animals through literature, art, science and society. Here, Y is for Yak: an animal that is an integral part of high-altitude livelihoods throughout the Himalayas, Tibet and Central Asia.

In addition to the animals’ practical place in community livelihoods, yaks have a place in legends, songs and festivals

Riamsara Kuyakanon Knapp

©MAA, N.101188.WIL, photograph by Frederick Williamson

Yaks crossing mountain pass, Tibet - Bhutan

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

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̽��ֱ��1,000-year-old manuscript and the stories it tells

amb206 — Sat, 09 May 2015 08:00:00 +0000

One thousand years ago, a scribe called Sujātabhadra put his name to a manuscript known as the Perfection of Wisdom in Eight-Thousand Stanzas (Skt. Aṣṭasahāsrikā Prajñāparamitā). Sujātabhadra was a skilled craftsman working in or around Kathmandu – a city that has been one of the hubs of the Buddhist world from around 500 CE right up until the present day.

̽��ֱ��Perfection of Wisdom in Eight-Thousand Stanzas is written in Sanskrit, one the of the world’s most ancient languages, using both sides of 222 oblong sheets made from palm leaf (the first missing sheet has been replaced with a paper sheet). Each leaf is punctured by a pair of neat holes, a reminder that the palm leaf pages were originally bound together with cords passing through these holes. ̽��ֱ��entire palm leaf manuscript is held between richly ornate wooden covers.

Today the fabulous manuscript that would have taken Sujātabhadra and fellow craftsman many months — perhaps even a year — to complete is held by the Manuscripts Room at Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library. Over the past 140 years, it has been studied by some of the foremost specialists of the medieval Buddhist world.

A digitisation project has now made the manuscript accessible online to scholars worldwide and has revealed fresh evidence about the origins of some of the earliest Buddhist texts.

̽��ֱ��presence of the Perfection of Wisdom, safe in the temperature-controlled environment of one of the world’s greatest libraries, many thousands of miles from its birthplace, is especially poignant at a time when the people of Nepal are struggling to survive in the aftermath of a devastating earthquake.

Buddhist texts are more than scriptures: they are sacred objects in themselves. Many manuscripts were used as protective amulets and installed in shrines and altars in the home of Buddhist followers. Examples include numerous manuscripts of the Five Protections (Skt. Pañcarakṣā), a corpus of scriptures that includes spells, enumerations of benefits and ritual instructions for use, particularly sacred in Nepal.

Manuscripts produced in Nepal, Tibet and Central Asia during the period from the 5^th until the 19^th century are evidence of the thriving ‘cult of the book’ that was the subject of a recent exhibition at Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.

̽��ֱ��Perfection of Wisdom is also an important historical document that provides valuable information about the dynastic history of medieval Nepal. Its textual content and illustrations, and the skills and materials that went into its production, reveal the ways in which Nepal was one of the most important hubs within a Buddhist world that spanned from Sri Lanka to China.

̽��ֱ��text is lavishly illustrated by a total of 85 miniature paintings: each one is an exquisite representation of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas (beings who resolve to achieve Buddhahood in order to help other sentient beings) – including the historical Buddha Śākyamuni and Maitreya, the Buddha of the Future. ̽��ֱ��figures represented in the miniatures include also the embodied Perfection of Wisdom goddess (Prajñāparamitā) herself on the Vulture Peak Mountain near Rājagṛha, the capital of the ancient kingdom of Māgadha, in today’s Bihar state.

̽��ֱ��settings in which these deities are depicted are drawn in meticulous detail. ̽��ֱ��Bodhisattva Lokanātha, surrounded by White and Green Tārās, is shown in front of the Svayambhu stupa in Kathmandu – a shrine sacred for Nepalese and Tibetan Buddhists, damaged in the recent earthquake. ̽��ֱ��places depicted in the miniatures represent a kind of map of Buddhist lands and sacred sites, from Sri Lanka to Indonesia and from South India to China.

̽��ֱ��Perfection of Wisdom is one of the world’s oldest illuminated Buddhist manuscripts and the second oldest illuminated manuscript in Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library. Its survival – and its passage through time and space – is little short of miraculous.

Without the efforts of a certain Karunavajra, quite probably a Buddhist lay believer, it would have been destroyed in 1138 — in that period the governors challenged the king in a struggle for power over the Kathmandu Valley.

“We know that Karunavajra saved the manuscript because he added a note in verse form,” said Dr Camillo Formigatti of the Sanskrit Manuscripts Project. “He states that he rescued the ‘Perfection of Wisdom, incomparable Mother of the Omniscient’ from falling into the hands of unbelievers who were most probably people of Brahmanical affiliation.”

Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library acquired the manuscript in 1876. It was purchased for the Library by Dr Daniel Wright, a civil servant working for the British government in Kathmandu.

“From the second half of the 19^th century, western institutions were hugely interested in the orient - and museums and libraries were busy building collections of everything eastern,” said Dr Hildegard Diemberger of the Mongolia and Inner Asia Studies Unit. “Colonial administrators were almost literally given ‘shopping lists’ of manuscripts to acquire in the course of their travels.”

Scholars are able to pinpoint with remarkable precision the date that Sujātabhadra recorded his name as scribe in the ‘colophon’ (details about the publication of a book).

“Using tables that convert the dates used by Nepalese scribes into the calendar we use today, we can see that Sujātabhadra added his name and the place where he completed the manuscript on 31 March, 1015. ̽��ֱ��study of mathematics, astrology and astronomy were central aspects of ancient and medieval South Asian culture, and time reckoning was very accurate — both the lunar and the solar calendar were employed,” said Formigatti.

A thousand years on from its production, the manuscript is still yielding secrets. In the course of digitising the manuscript in 2014, Formigatti identified 12 of the final verses to be the only surviving witness of the Sanskrit original of the Ripening of the Victory Banner (Skt. Vajradhvajapariṇāmanā), a short hymn hitherto considered to have survived only in its Tibetan translation. ̽��ֱ��popularity of this hymn is borne out by the fact that the Tibetan version of the text is also found in manuscript fragments found in Dunhuang, a city-state along the Silk Route in China.

̽��ֱ��production of this precious manuscript is evidence not only of the thriving communication channels that existed across the 11^th century Buddhist world but also of a well-established network of trade routes. ̽��ֱ��leaves used to make the writing surface came from palm trees. Palms do not flourish in the dry climate of Nepal: it’s thought that palm leaves would have come from North East India.

“ ̽��ֱ�� ̽��ֱ�� Library’s manuscript of Perfection of Wisdom shows us that ten centuries ago Nepal, which westerners often perceive as ‘remote’ and ‘isolated’, had flourishing connections stretching many thousands of miles,” said Formigatti.

“When Sujātabhadra picked up his reed pen and put his name to the manuscript, he was part of a rich network of scholarship, culture, belief and trade. Buddhist manuscripts and texts travelled huge distances. From the fertile plains of Northern India, they crossed the Himalayan range through Nepal and Tibet, reaching the barren landscapes of Central Asia and the city-states along the Silk Route in China, finally arriving in Japan.

“ ̽��ֱ��Perfection of Wisdom is perhaps the most representative textual witness of the Buddhist cult of the book, and this manuscript written, decorated and worshipped in 11^th century Nepal, is one of the finest specimens of Buddhist book culture still extant.”

Inset image top – Folio 123 verso, a representation of a famous caitya (Buddhist reliquary), called Sri Kanaka-caitya, in the city of Peshawar in today's Pakistan. Credit: Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.

Inset image bottom – Folio 14 recto, a representation of the Bodhisattva Lokanātha in front of Svayambhunath in Kathmandu. Credit: Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.

One of the greatest treasures of Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library is a Buddhist manuscript that was produced in Kathmandu exactly 1,000 years ago. ̽��ֱ��exquisitely-illustrated Perfection of Wisdom is still revealing fresh secrets.

When Sujātabhadra picked up his reed pen and put his name to the manuscript, he was part of a rich network of scholarship, culture, belief and trade

Camillo Formigatti

Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library

Folio 13 verso, a representation of the goddess Prajñāpāramitā

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

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Animal, vegetable, mineral: the making of Buddhist texts

amb206 — Sat, 12 Jul 2014 08:00:00 +0000

A yak will provide most of the things humans need to survive: meat and milk, fibre and fuel, traction and transport – and, last but not least, warmth and companionship. A traditional Tibetan recipe for making a luxurious blue-black paper goes a step further: it lists fresh yak brain, along with soot and a small amount of hide glue. Mixed into a glutinous paste, these ingredients create the glossy surface used to stunning effect in illuminated manuscripts.

Buddha’s Word: ̽��ֱ��Life of Books in Tibet and Beyond, an exhibition at Cambridge ̽��ֱ��’s Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (MAA), explores not just the cultural and religious significance of the texts used in Tibetan manuscripts but also the production of these manuscripts – from the making of paper using locally available plants through to the sourcing of pigments used for writing and painting – as well as their transmission across mountains and oceans.

̽��ֱ��interdisciplinary exhibition is the outcome of a number of AHRC-funded projects that made it possible to explore the vaults of Cambridge libraries and museum, connect literary artifacts to their place of origin, and the living traditions of book making, and in some cases discover the significance of objects that have long been kept hidden in boxes and never put on display before.

Suspended above the entrance to Buddha’s Word is an oblong book wrapped in bright orange cloth. This is a Buddhist text. “Its presence reminds us of the Tibetan pilgrims’ practice of walking underneath book shelves in the monasteries they visit to get the blessing from the sacred scriptures,” said Dr Hildegard Diemberger, curator of the exhibition with colleagues Dr Mark Elliott and Dr Michela Clemente.

“It also reminds us of a story narrated in many Tibetan texts telling of the miraculous arrival of the first Buddhist scriptures. At the dawn of the Buddhist civilisation, a text fell from heaven and was received by a king. Unable to read it, and unsure what to do, he placed it in a casket and worshipped it. ̽��ֱ��scripture dispensed its blessings and the king’s youth and vigour were restored.”

Diemberger went on: “Tibetan stories and ritual practices highlight the power of the written word and connect the Land of Snow to the wider context of Buddhist civilisations in which books containing the words of the Buddha and of Buddhist masters have travelled widely and shaped the spiritual and material world of many peoples.”

Buddha’s Word and the accompanying catalogue provide a window into the world-wide scholarship that explores the techniques and technologies developed by Tibetan craftsmen and scholars to illustrate and disseminate the teachings of Buddha. “In creating the displays we’re telling multiple interconnecting stories about the production and dissemination of texts right up to the present day when Buddhists have embraced the opportunities offered by digital media and the internet,” said Diemberger. “We’ve also made exciting connections across time and space as we’ve traced objects in Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� collections back through their trajectories to their sources.”

A wide range of beautiful exhibits that found their way to Cambridge from various parts of Asia over the 19th and early 20th century are on display, including some of the world most ancient extant Buddhist illuminated manuscripts. Together they provide an insight into the variety and beauty of Buddhist literary artifacts, setting Tibetan book culture in its wider context.

For the first time in the UK, the public are also able to see the tools and processes used to create sacred texts that are both spiritually significant and visually stunning. They include examples of the moulds, mallets and stirrers used to make paper, and the printing blocks and cutting tools needed to produce prayer flags as well as pens and pen cases.

“ ̽��ֱ��objects we have taken out of store for the first time include an iron pen case given, along with other items, to MAA by Alexander (Sandy) Wollaston, a doctor on the 1921 British Everest Exhibition, and we can imagine it being used by a local official in Kharta or one of the other valleys north of Mount Everest. Other objects come straight from the living context like the bamboo pen recently donated to the exhibition by a hermit living in the Sherpa area to the south of Mount Everest,” said Diemberger.

̽��ֱ��curators have invited experts from throughout the world to contribute their insights into the craftsmanship of manuscript production. Among them is James Canary of Indiana ̽��ֱ��, who has travelled extensively in the Himalayan region researching Tibetan book craft. In an article for the catalogue, he focuses on the production of mthing shog manuscripts – those in which a burnished blue-black surface provides the background to sacred writings.

“To prepare the black mixture, the craftsman kneaded by hand the brains of a freshly slaughtered yak, sheep or goat combined with the very fine powdered soot and a small amount of cooked glue hide,” explained Canary.

“If there is too much brain material in the mix the paper will have an oiliness that will resist later writing and can also develop saponification problems, resulting in a white soapy bloom. ̽��ֱ��paste is painted on the surface of the paper which is then burnished with a piece of conch shell or a bead to make a lustrous surface for the calligraphy.”

On display in the exhibition is a modern mthing shog manuscript by the late Sonam Norgyal, one of the few artists to have maintained the tradition to the present day. Collected by Canary, its gold lettering on a rich background is a fine example of a technique known to scholars as chrysography.

Wood, birch-bark and palm leaf predated paper as a writing surface in Tibet: palm-leaves, which do not grow in Tibet, have had a long lasting impact on the physical characteristics of Tibetan books; the majority of them is in fact made of narrow long sheets of paper that remind of the ancient palm-leaf manuscripts with which Buddhist teachings travelled from India to Tibet and across Asia. It is thought that the craft of paper-making spread from neighbouring countries at a time when Tibet developed a powerful empire and record keeping became a critical undertaking. Research suggests that from at least the ninth century Tibetans began to collect plants growing locally to make paper.

A number of plants in the Thymelaeaceae family have stems and roots with conductive tissue that is strong and fibrous – ideal for making string and paper. Several early medical treatises listing plants used for medicinal purposes also mention their suitability for paper making. ̽��ֱ��widespread use of some of these plants, according to reports by British visitors to Tibet, continued right up until the 1920s - and even today a few printing houses and paper-making centres make use of plants gathered locally to make specialist products.

Research by paper specialist Agnieszka Helman-Wazny ( ̽��ֱ�� of Arizona) shows that the hand processes of making paper from plant material has changed little over the centuries with each sheet being made separately. Paper pulp is prepared by beating the plant material on a stone with a wooden mallet. ̽��ֱ��resulting fibrous mass is mixed with water and poured into a mould. This mould is ‘floated’ in water and tipped to and fro until its contents are evenly distributed. ̽��ֱ��mould is then removed from water and left to dry.

“Further processes were often used to make a smooth surface for writing and to produce particular types of paper. Tibetan paper makers often glued several sheets together using a paste of boiled wheat flour or animal-based glue,” said Helman-Wazny. “They were extremely resourceful in their exploitation of materials to make books and used ramie, hemp and mulberry bark as well as stone, metal and rock.”
Tibetan artists and painters used pigments and colourants obtained locally from minerals and plants.

One of the star items in the exhibition are two pages/folios of the 1521 Royal Edition of the Mani bka’ ‘bum (One hundred thousand proclamations of the Mantra), a treasure given to Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library by Lt-Col Laurence A Waddell in 1905 following the Younghusband Military Expedition to Tibet. A non-invasive analytical technique called reflectance spectroscopy, carried out by experts at the Fitzwilliam Museum, revealed that the colours seen in the figures it depicts were achieved using a red obtained from cinnabar, blue from azurite, indigo from woad, and yellow from arsenic, a chemical that had the added benefit of protecting manuscripts from insect damage.

Developments continue. Tibetans and the worldwide community of Tibetan scholars have enthusiastically embraced the opportunities offered by digital media and the internet to collate and open up access to manuscripts that lie scattered across the world. Just as past technologies – such as printing – provided a means for circulating Buddhist teaching so are digital technologies being increasingly explored and used today. In the words of the well known Tibetan lama Chokyi Nyima Rinpoche:

I’ll be doing prostrations every morning to this computer.
Thank you so much
You are giving all of us a huge gem,
a jewel and a gem.

Inset images: detail of Mani bka' 'bum (Tibetan 149) (Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library), example of mthing shog by late Sonam Norgyal (James Canary); manufacture of daphne-bark paper in Bhutan (Karma Phuntsho).

̽��ֱ��wide-ranging objects on display at Buddha’s Word, an exhibition at the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, show how Tibetan book makers used the resources around them to produce manuscripts conveying the messages of a faith in which texts themselves are sacred objects.

In creating the displays we’re telling multiple interconnecting stories about the production and dissemination of texts right up to the present day when Buddhists have embraced the opportunities offered by digital media and the internet.

Hildegard Diemberger

Maria-Antonia Sironi

Buddhist books are paraded through the valleys and invited to bless the environment

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