Andrew Quintman

Life of the Buddha in Tibet: Literature and Art in Place

Andrew Quintman — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 17:55:07 +0000

A project to examine the life of the Buddha through the literary and visual sources of Jonang Monastery in western Tibet. Buddhism in Tibet is frequently characterized as having formed around the activities of charismatic teachers, great founding figures such as Padmasambhava (8th c.) and Milarepa (11th c.), or more historical luminaries. In its most extreme form, this led to the appellation Lamaism, suggesting that Tibet’s religious traditions were in some way divorced from the figure of the Buddha altogether. Such a characterization is, of course, at odds with Tibet’s religious traditions, where the life of Buddha Śākyamuni formed an important early theme in narrative texts, ritual practices, and the visual arts.

This project documents some of Tibet’s most significant literary, ritual, and visual materials depicting the life of Śākyamuni Buddha, and thereby re-foregrounds the central importance of the Buddha within the Tibetan cultural world. The project has two phases: (1) photographing, archiving, analyzing, and translating a rare collection of temple murals, inscriptions, and related literature produced at Jonang Monastery in Central Tibet; and (2) producing an interactive multimedia website to present these materials as a research tool and suitable for use in courses on Buddhism, Asian Religions, and South Asian history.

lifeofthebuddhaproject.commons.yale.edu

Co-administered with Kurtis Schaeffer.

Buddhism on the Border: Religious Culture on the Frontier of Tibet and Nepal

Andrew Quintman — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 15:00:39 +0000

An Investigation of the unique religious communities of southern Tibet through an analysis of printed and manuscript texts, their local production, and trans-national dissemination.

In particular, this project seeks to understand Kyirong, and Tibet’s southern border more broadly, as a site of significant religious innovation in the early modern period reflected through the life and literary oeuvre of Chokyi Wangchuk (Chos kyi dbang phyug, 1775-1837), a pivotal figure in the transmission of Buddhist culture in southern Tibet. Recognized as a scholar, historian, and reincarnate Buddhist master, Chokyi Wangchuk is also counted among the region’s most celebrated and prolific authors. At the project’s core is a set of autobiographical writings, letters, and local histories from his Collected Works that serve as one of the region’s principal historical records. A close examination of Chokyi Wangchuk’s life through the lens of these materials will thus illuminate several key factors that led to Kyirong’s ascendant position: the rise of new Buddhist institutions, expanded literary production, and trans-Himalayan networks of religious exchange during the critical moment just before Tibet’s first major encounters with the modern world. The project will not simply record the life and works of a pivotal Tibetan exegete, or document one of the Tibet’s most active religious centers, although these are two of its goals. It further aims to explore how a provincial region on the Himalayan margins could exercise widespread and enduring influence on the traditions of Tibetan Buddhism. In doing so, it hopes to address another set of underlying questions: to what degree can we describe the religious systems stemming from the region as a unique or local form of Buddhism—a borderland Buddhism? And to what degree might Chokyi Wangchuk’s remote monastic seat, far removed from the grand monasteries of Lhasa, be understood as its own powerful center, a “center on the periphery?”

Religious Murals of Bhutan in Context

Andrew Quintman — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 15:44:45 +0000

A project to document and analyze some of Bhutan’s best preserved temple murals in their historical, religious, and institutional contexts.

Biographical Inscriptions as Literary Relics

Andrew Quintman — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 14:36:57 +0000

Kossak & Singer, Secret Visions 1998. pl. 16 verso

Examining of the use of stūpa-shaped biographical inscriptions in the consecration of Tibetan painted portraits.What are the contours of Tibetan life writing? What are its limits, its trajectories? This project questions received notions about the forms and functions of Tibetan biographical literature by shifting from a strict analysis of narrative content toward an emphasis on the material forms of individual texts and the contexts in which they were created and understood.

In particular, this project examines a largely unstudied form of writing used in the consecration of Tibetan visual representations, especially portraiture. Such works were frequently inscribed on the back of hanging portrait scrolls, in many cases meticulously outlining the form of a stūpa, as part of the process for ritually vivifying the image. I argue such works embody their subject both literally and literarily, preserving traces of the individual in the form of an image-text relic. This form of biographical inscription calls into question some common assumptions about the functions of biographical narratives and highlights the fluid relationships between image and text, while frequently offering clues about the community that produced, appreciated, and maintained the painting and its inscription.

Religion and the Literary in Tibet

Andrew Quintman — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 17:50:32 +0000

A five-year seminar at the American Academy of Religion, 2010-2014. The contemporary academic study of Tibetan religions has typically approached religious literature as a source to be mined for data about religion. In so doing the field frequently uses the term “literature” to refer to something that contains information, but has no significance in its own terms. This seminar shifts focus from literature conceived of as an inert container to literature as an active process that is itself conceptually rich. We will collectively engage in new research on the forms, structures, and styles of Tibetan literature and their effects on religious discourse and practice. In so doing we will bring into high relief the very question of how the category of “literature” is heuristically productive for the future of the study of Tibetan religion. We plan to address this central question from two directions: from the perspective of contemporary discussions of what constitutes literature, and also from that of traditional Tibetan theoretical work, which itself has explored how some kinds of writing may be distinguished from others in terms of their style, level of self-consciousness, and intentional impact on the religious life of the reader.

The seminar will result in the publication of an edited volume of essays on the forms and functions of Tibetan religious writing. This, it is proposed, will reflect a more nuanced understanding of indigenous literary production and criticism, and the ways in which Tibetan authors have self-consciously developed forms and approaches to writing that have religious meaning, than has previously been possible. It will also set forth a broader and more comprehensive history of Tibetan religious writing – and what might count as “literature” within that history – than has yet been attempted.

Co-administered with Kurtis Schaeffer.

The Role of Karṇatantra (snyan brgyud) Literature in 11-13th Century Tibetan Buddhism

Andrew Quintman — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 14:35:31 +0000

The role that the karṇatantra, “aural tantra,” literature played in the transmission of Buddhist traditions from India and in the formation of new religious and institutional communities in Tibet.

Buddhist Cultures of the Book: Perspectives and Prospects

Andrew Quintman — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 14:37:44 +0000

A proposed international conference to explore the material forms of Buddhist manuscripts and printed books, their production, publication, collection, dissemination. It aims to expand our understanding of what Buddhist texts are, what they do, and how they work while highlighting the role textual materials play in the creation of meaning and memory within individual communities.