Contributed articles on the art of Nepal.

Kathmandu is the greatest city of the Himalayas—a unique survival of cultural practices that died out in India 1000 years ago. It is a carnival of sexual licence and hypocrisy, a jewel of world art, a hotbed of communist revolution, a paradigm of failed democracy, a case study in bungled Western intervention and an environmental catastrophe. Closed to the outside world until 1951 and trapped in a medieval time warp, Kathmandu’s rapid modernization is an extreme version of what is happening elsewhere in many traditional societies. The many layers of the city’s developments are reflected in the successive generations of its gods and goddesses, witches and ghosts, the comforts of caste, the ethos of aristocracy and kingship and, of late, the destabilizing spirits of consumer aspiration, individuality, egalitarianism, communism and democracy. Kathmandu follows the author’s story over a decade in the city and unravels the city’s history through successive reinventions of itself. Erudite, entertaining and accessible, this is the distinctive chronicle of a fascinating city.

Examining materials from early modern and contemporary North India and Pakistan, Tellings and Texts brings together seventeen first-rate papers on the relations between written and oral texts, their performance, and the musical traditions these performances have entailed. The contributions from some of the best scholars in the field cover a wide range of literary genres and social and cultural contexts across the region. The texts and practices are contextualized in relation to the broader social and political background in which they emerged, showing how religious affiliations, caste dynamics and political concerns played a role in shaping social identities as well as aesthetic sensibilities. By doing so this book sheds light into theoretical issues of more general significance, such as textual versus oral norms; the features of oral performance and improvisation; the role of the text in performance; the aesthetics and social dimension of performance; the significance of space in performance history and important considerations on repertoires of story-telling. The book also contains links to audio files of some of the works discussed in the text. Tellings and Texts is essential reading for anyone with an interest in South Asian culture and, more generally, in the theory and practice of oral literature, performance and story-telling.

In the Shade of the Golden Palace explores the work of the prolific Bengali poet Alaol (fl. 1651-71), who translated five narrative poems and one versified treatise from medieval Hindi and Persian into Bengali. The book maps the genres, structures, and themes of Alaol's works, paying special attention to his discourse on poetics and his literary genealogy, which included Sanskrit, Avadhi, Maithili, Persian, and Bengali authors. D'Hubert focuses on courtly speech in Alaol's poetry, his revisiting of classical categories in a vernacular context, and the prominent role of performing arts in his conceptualization of the poetics of the written word. The foregrounding of this audacious theory of meaning in Alaol's poetry is a crucial contribution of the book, both in terms of general conceptual analysis and for its significance in the history of Bengali poetry. This book shows how multilingual literacy fostered a variety of literary experiments in the remote kingdom of Arakan, which lay between present-day southeastern Bangladesh and Myanmar, in the mid-17th century. D'Hubert also presents a detailed analysis of Middle Bengali narrative poems, as well as translations of Old Maithili, Brajabuli, and Middle Bengali lyric poems that illustrate the major poetic styles in the regional courts of eastern South Asia. In the Shade of the Golden Palace therefore fulfills three functions: it is a unique guide for readers of Middle Bengali poetry, a detailed study of the cultural history of the frontier region of Arakan, and an original contribution to the poetics of South Asian literatures.

Explore new research on the religious and cultural traditions of the Himalayan Buddhist world. Over decades, hundreds of American undergraduates spending a semester abroad have been introduced to Tibetan culture in India, Nepal, and China by Hubert Decleer. A number went on to become prominent scholars in the field at institutions such as Yale, Berkeley, and Georgetown, and as a tribute to him they have put together this collection of cutting-edge research in Himalayan studies, bringing together contributions of this new generation with those of senior researchers in the field. This new research on the religion and culture of the Himalayan Buddhist world spans a broad range of subjects, periods, and approaches, and the diversity and strength of the contributions ensures Himalayan Passages be warmly welcomed by scholars, travelers, and Tibetan Buddhists alike. Highlights include: Donald S. Lopez, Jr. tells the story of Gendun Chopel's unusual visit to Sri Lanka in 1941. Leonard van der Kuijp examines the Bodhicittavivarana, an ancient work on the enlightened resolve to free all beings. Kabir Mansingh Heimsath compares Western and Chinese curatorial approaches to Tibetan modern art. Alexander von Rospatt illuminates the fascinating history and artistic details of the famous Svayambhu stupa in Kathmandu. Sarah H. Jacoby translates the short autobiography of Sera Khandro, the celebrated female Tibetan mystic of a century ago. Additional contributors include Franz-Karl Ehrhard, Ernst Steinkellner, Jacob P. Dalton, Iain Sinclair, Anne Vergati, Punya Prasad Parajuli, and Dominique Townsend.

One of the most remarkable artistic achievements of the Mughal Empire was the emergence in the early seventeenth century of portraits of identifiable individuals, unprecedented in both South Asia and the Islamic world. Appearing at a time of increasing contact between Europe and Asia, portraits from the reigns of the great Mughal emperor-patrons Akbar, Jahangir and Shah Jahan are among the best-known paintings produced in South Asia. In the following centuries portraiture became more widespread in the visual culture of South Asia, especially in the rich and varied traditions of painting, but also in sculpture and later prints and photography. This collection seeks to understand the intended purpose of a range of portrait traditions in South Asia and how their style, setting and representation may have advanced a range of aesthetic, social and political functions. The chapters range across a wide historical period, exploring ideals of portraiture in Sanskrit and Persian literature, the emergence and political symbolism of Mughal portraiture, through to the paintings of the Rajput courts, sculpture in Tamil temples and the transformation of portraiture in colonial north India and post-independence Pakistan. This specially commissioned collection of studies from a strong list of established scholars and rising stars makes a significant contribution to South Asian history, art and visual culture.

"The volume thoroughly examines the origins and principal types of Buddhist architecture in Asia primarily between the third century BCE-twelfth century CE with an emphasis on India. It aims to construct shared architectural traits and patterns alongwith the derivative relationships between Indian and Asian Buddhist monuments. It also discusses the historical antecedents in the Indus Civilization and the religious and philosophical foundations of the three schools of Buddhism and its founder, Buddha. Previously obscure topics such as Aniconic and Vajrayana (Tantric) architecture and the four holiest sites of Buddhism will also be covered in this comprehensive volume. The author further investigates the influences of Buddhist architecture upon Islamic, Christian, and Hindu architecture that have been overlooked by past scholars."

Dāphā, or dāphā bhajan, is a genre of Hindu-Buddhist devotional singing, performed by male, non-professional musicians of the farmer and other castes belonging to the Newar ethnic group, in the towns and villages of the Kathmandu Valley, Nepal. The songs, their texts, and their characteristic responsorial performance-style represent an extension of pan-South Asian traditions of rāga- and tāla-based devotional song, but at the same time embody distinctive characteristics of Newar culture. This culture is of unique importance as an urban South Asian society in which many traditional models survive into the modern age. There are few book-length studies of non-classical vocal music in South Asia, and none of dāphā. Richard Widdess describes the music and musical practices of dāphā, accounts for their historical origins and later transformations, investigates links with other South Asian traditions, and describes a cultural world in which music is an integral part of everyday social and religious life. The book focusses particularly on the musical system and structures of dāphā, but aims to integrate their analysis with that of the cultural and historical context of the music, in order to address the question of what music means in a traditional South Asian society.

A study of a set of sixteenth-century wall paintings at the Gyapagpa Temple in Nako, a village in India’s Himachal Pradesh state. Sixteenth-century wall paintings in a Buddhist temple in the Tibetan cultural zone of northwest India are the focus of this innovative and richly illustrated study. Initially shaped by one set of religious beliefs, the paintings have since been reinterpreted and retraced by a later Buddhist community, subsumed within its religious framework and communal memory. Melissa Kerin traces the devotional, political, and artistic histories that have influenced the paintings’ production and reception over the centuries of their use. Her interdisciplinary approach combines art historical methods with inscriptional translation, ethnographic documentation, and theoretical inquiry to understand religious images in context. “A meticulous and discerning piece of scholarship, one that is skillful in employing multiple methods—visual, linguistic and ethnographic—to create a fuller picture of a region we knew little about. . . . [A] pleasure to read.” —Pika Ghosh, author of Making Kantha, Making Home: Women at Work in Colonial Bengal “Emphasizing the visual as primary evidence in the study of history, especially religious history, Kerin moves Buddhist art from the arena of museum displays, art markets, and aesthetics to the arena of dynamic interdisciplinary discourse, thus reaffirming the significance of in situ study. . . . Recommended.” —Choice “A forceful study on the specificity of Gyapagpa’s painting.” —South Asia Research/DESC> Indian art;south asian art;religious art;buddhist art;Indian history;south asian history;tibetan buddhism;buddhism;religion;indian buddhists;temple art;nako;gyapagpa;social history;political history;painting style;painting tradition ART019020 ART / Asian / Indian & South Asian ART035000 ART / Subjects & Themes / Religious HIS062000 HISTORY / Asia / South / India * REL007050 RELIGION / Buddhism / Tibetan 9780253010032 Patterns of War—World War II Larry H. Addington