Bowing with Words: Paper, Ink, and Bodies in Tibetan Buddhist Epistles
This article analyzes the ritual dimensions of Tibetan epistolary style. By examining the material aspects of handwritten Tibetan epistles-paper size and shape, script size and style, text spacing and margins-along with the formal instructions found in Tibetan epistolary manuals, I show how an epist...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Interlibrary Loan: | Interlibrary Loan for the Fachinformationsdienste (Specialized Information Services in Germany) |
| Published: |
[2019]
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| In: |
Journal of the American Academy of Religion
Year: 2019, Volume: 87, Issue: 1, Pages: 260-281 |
| Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains: | B
Lamaism
/ Religious literature
/ Literalness
/ Handwriting
/ Scribe
|
| IxTheo Classification: | AG Religious life; material religion BL Buddhism KBM Asia |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (Resolving-System) Volltext (doi) |
| Summary: | This article analyzes the ritual dimensions of Tibetan epistolary style. By examining the material aspects of handwritten Tibetan epistles-paper size and shape, script size and style, text spacing and margins-along with the formal instructions found in Tibetan epistolary manuals, I show how an epistle's physical constitution renders two bodies performing a symbolic display of hierarchy on the page. This display of hierarchy is most dramatic in the genre of the epistle offered to a superior, in which the body of the writer bows in homage before the body of the recipient. I use this study to contribute to a Tibetan hermeneutic that reads texts as devotional subjects with ritual agency. More broadly, I also argue that bibliographical analysis (focused on a text's physical production and material features) can radically shift an understanding of the genre in which that text participates. |
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| ISSN: | 1477-4585 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: American Academy of Religion, Journal of the American Academy of Religion
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1093/jaarel/lfy036 |