Diana Lange has solved the mysteries of six panoramic maps of 19th c. Tibet and the Himalayas, known as the British Library's Wise Collection. The result is both a spectacular illustrated ethnographic atlas and a unique compendium of knowledge concerning the mid-19th century Tibetan world, as well as a remarkable account of an academic journey of discovery.This large format book is lavishly illustrated in colour and includes four separate large foldout maps.

Diana Lange has solved the mysteries of six panoramic maps of 19th c. Tibet and the Himalayas, known as the British Library's Wise Collection. The result is both a spectacular illustrated ethnographic atlas and a unique compendium of knowledge concerning the mid-19th century Tibetan world, as well as a remarkable account of an academic journey of discovery.This large format book is lavishly illustrated in colour and includes four separate large foldout maps.

Diana Lange's patient investigations have, in this wonderful piece of detective work, solved the mysteries of six extraordinary maps of routes across Tibet, clearly hand-drawn in the late 1850s by a local artist, known as the British Library's Wise Collection. Diana Lange now reveals not only the previously unknown identity of the Scottish colonial official who commissioned the maps from a Tibetan Buddhist lama, but also the story of how the Wise Collection came to be in the British Library. The result is both a spectacular illustrated ethnographic atlas and a unique compendium of knowledge concerning the mid-19th century Tibetan world, as well as a remarkable account of an academic journey of discovery. It will entertain and inform anyone with an interest in this fascinating region. This large format book is lavishly illustrated in colour and includes four separate large foldout maps.

This pioneering work documents cultural and religious sites across the Tibetan Plateau and its bordering regions from the Paleolithic Era to today. Western fascination with Tibet has soared in recent decades, yet this historic and globally celebrated region has barely been mapped. With this groundbreaking atlas, Karl E. Ryavec sweeps aside the image of Tibet as Shangri-La, offering a comprehensive vision of the region as it really is. The product of twelve years of research and eight more of mapmaking, the results are absolutely stunning. A Historical Atlas of Tibet ranges through the five main periods in Tibetan history, offering introductory maps of each followed by details of western, central, and eastern regions. It beautifully visualizes the history of Tibetan Buddhism, tracing its spread throughout Asia, with thousands of temples mapped, both within Tibet and across North China and Mongolia, all the way to Beijing. There are maps of major polities and their territorial administrations, as well as of the kingdoms of Guge and Purang in western Tibet, and of Derge and Nangchen in Kham. There are town plans of Lhasa and maps that focus on history and language, on population, natural resources, and contemporary politics. Extraordinarily comprehensive and absolutely gorgeous, this volume makes a major contribution in the realms of cartography, Asian studies, and Buddhist studies.

The first reference to demonstrate how birds survive the high-altitude Central Asian Flyway and the threats to this unique migration.

This book explores Sino-Indian tensions from the angle of state-building, showing how they stem from their competition for the Himalayan people's allegiance.

For three decades, E. Gene Smith ran the Library of Congress's Tibetan Text Publication Project of the United States Public Law 480 (PL480) - an effort to salvage and reprint the Tibetan literature that had been collected by the exile community or by members of the Bhotia communities of Sikkim, Bhutan, India, and Nepal. Smith wrote prefaces to these reprinted books to help clarify and contextualize the particular Tibetan texts: the prefaces served as rough orientations to a poorly understood body of foreign literature. Originally produced in print quantities of twenty, these prefaces quickly became legendary, and soon photocopied collections were handed from scholar to scholar, achieving an almost cult status. These essays are collected here for the first time. The impact of Smith's research on the academic study of Tibetan literature has been tremendous, both for his remarkable ability to synthesize diverse materials into coherent accounts of Tibetan literature, history, and religious thought, and for the exemplary critical scholarship he brought to this field.

Nicholas Roerich's classic 1929 mystic travel book is back in print! He kept a diary of his travels by yak and camel through a remote region still largely unknown today. An intellectual as well as an adventurer, he chronicles his expedition through Sinkiang, Altai-Mongolia and Tibet from 1924 to 1928 in twelve exciting chapters detailing his encounters along the parched byways of Central Asia. With a special interest in geographical mysteries and arcane and mystical arts, he searches for the hidden cities of Shambala and Agartha. Roerich's original drawings, as well as reproductions of his inspiring paintings illustrate this unique travel book.

On a September day in 1863, Abdul Hamid entered the Central Asian city of Yarkand. Disguised as a merchant, Hamid was actually an employee of the Survey of India, carrying concealed instruments to enable him to map the geography of the area. Hamid did not live to provide a first-hand count of his travels. Nevertheless, he was the advance guard of an elite group of Indian trans-Himalayan explorers—recruited, trained, and directed by the officers of the Great Trigonometrical Survey of India—who were to traverse much of Tibet and Central Asia during the next thirty years. Derek Waller presents the history of these explorers, who came to be called "native explorers" or "pundits" in the public documents of the Survey of India. In the closed files of the government of British India, however, they were given their true designation as spies. As they moved northward within the Indian subcontinent, the British demanded precise frontiers and sought orderly political and economic relationships with their neighbors. They were also becoming increasingly aware of and concerned with their ignorance of the geographical, political, and military complexion of the territories beyond the mountain frontiers of the Indian empire. This was particularly true of Tibet. Though use of pundits was phased out in the 1890s in favor of purely British expeditions, they gathered an immense amount of information on the topography of the region, the customs of its inhabitants, and the nature of its government and military resources. They were able to travel to places where virtually no European count venture, and did so under conditions of extreme deprivation and great danger. They are responsible for documenting an area of over one million square miles, most of it completely unknown territory to the West. Now, thanks to Waller's efforts, their contributions to history will no longer remain forgotten.