Noise along the Network: A Set of Chinese Ming Embroidered Thangkas in the Indian Himalayas
The networks linking the Ming Chinese court with Tibetan Buddhist monasteries and lineages in Amdo, Kham and Central Tibet are well known and studied. Spectacular objects created at or by the Ming court were prized at the major Tibetan Buddhist monasteries supported directly by the Ming court, remin...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Brill
2018
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| In: |
Dynamics in the history of religions
Year: 2018, Volume: 10, Pages: 52-80 |
| Further subjects: | B
Religion in Asien
B Asia B Religion B Asien-Studien B Religionswissenschaften B History |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | The networks linking the Ming Chinese court with Tibetan Buddhist monasteries and lineages in Amdo, Kham and Central Tibet are well known and studied. Spectacular objects created at or by the Ming court were prized at the major Tibetan Buddhist monasteries supported directly by the Ming court, reminders of the monastery’s participation in wider networks of Buddhist teachings and support, helping to define their identities. This essay focuses on a partial set of eight Ming Dynasty textiles still in use at a shrine in the Western Himalaya that was never in contact with any Chinese state, and was in fact founded long after the Ming Dynasty ended. Yet the group of relatively well-preserved embroidered textiles, at least one of which has a Chinese inscription on the back, are hung during the monastery’s annual masked dance festival (Tib. ’cham), treasures displayed on an auspicious pair of days. How and when they were acquired by a monastery in southeastern Ladakh on the far Western border of Tibet is not known, though other objects in the same monastery can be shown to have been sent by the nineteenth-century 14th Karmapa. These objects are potent, physical reminders of the circulation and flow of people, ideas, practices, texts, and objects within Buddhist networks crossing linguistic, state, ethnic and cultural borders. |
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| Contains: | Enthalten in: Dynamics in the history of religions
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1163/9789004366152_004 |