The work proposed here is the product of adventurous expeditions that the great Marchigian explorer made in Tibet and throughout central Asia. Concerning Buddhist paintings on scrolls or thangka, the "Tibetan Painted Scrolls" (1949), with their 798 pages and 256 colour plates, still constitute an immense patrimony for anthropologists and scholars of Oriental art and culture.
Volume II contains detailed descriptions of the 195 thangkas. There is a tremendous wealth of information on their iconography and on the history of Tibetan and Indian Buddhism; as well as reference to Buddhist texts, and several translations of inscriptions on the illustrated thangkas. Tucci provides short, unprecedented monographs on the lives of Shakyamuni and the Tibetan hero saints Padmasambhava, Tsongkhapa and the Third Dalai Lama. He also writes almost a hundred pages on the Jataka Tales, the stories of Sakyamuni's adventures through his many incarnations on the path towards Supreme Enlightenment.
Bolstered by a large number of paintings and illustrations, Tucci's analysis moves skillfully across the disciplines of iconology, iconography, hagiography, history, sociology and linguistics. Reprint of the 1949 Istituto italiano per il Medio ed Estremo Oriente edition.
Unobtainable for so many years, Mimesis International now puts back into circulation this indispensable work for the study of Tibetan culture. It is a precious testimony of the religious iconography of Tibetan Buddhism, for the great part lost, dispersed or stolen.
Tibetan Painted Scrolls: Part 2, Giuseppe Tucci, Mimesis Edizioni, Paperback, 370 pages, 2015, $33.00
Giuseppe Tucci was not only the most complete scholar of Oriental disciplines Italy has ever had, but he was also legendary across Asia and internationally renowned as one of the finest Tibetanologists.
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