The history of the book in Tibet involves more than literary trends and trade routes. Functioning as material, intellectual, and symbolic object, the book has been an instrumental tool in the construction of Tibetan power and authority, and its history opens a crucial window onto the cultural, intellectual, and economic life of an immensely influential Buddhist society. Spanning the fourteenth to the eighteenth centuries, Kurtis R. Schaeffer envisions the scholars and hermits, madmen and ministers, kings and queens who produced Tibet's massive canons. He describes how Tibetan scholars edited and printed works of religion, literature, art, and science and what this indicates about the interrelation of material and cultural practices. The Tibetan book is at once the embodiment of the Buddha's voice, a principal means of education, a source of tradition and authority, an economic product, a finely crafted aesthetic object, a medium of Buddhist written culture, and a symbol of the religion itself. Books stood at the center of debates on the role of libraries in religious institutions, the relative merits of oral and written teachings, and the economy of religion in Tibet. A meticulous study that draws on more than 150 understudied Tibetan sources, The Culture of the Book in Tibet is the first volume to trace this singular history. Through a single object, Schaeffer accesses a greater understanding of the cultural and social history of the Tibetan plateau.

The series Religion and Society (RS) contributes to the exploration of religions as social systems- both in Western and non-Western societies; in particular, it examines religions in their differentiation from, and intersection with, other cultural systems, such as art, economy, law and politics. Due attention is given to paradigmatic case or comparative studies that exhibit a clear theoretical orientation with the empirical and historical data of religion and such aspects of religion as ritual, the religious imagination, constructions of tradition, iconography, or media. In addition, the formation of religious communities, their construction of identity, and their relation to society and the wider public are key issues of this series.

The real history of man is the history of religion. The truth of the famous dictum of Max Muller, the father of the History of Religions, is nowhere so obvious as in Tibet. Western students have observed that religion and magic pervade not only the forms of Tibetan art, politics, and society but also every detail of ordinary human existence. And what is the all-pervading religion of Tibet? Buddhism of that country has been described to us, of course, but that does not mean the question has been answered. The unique importance of Stephan BeyerÍs work is that it presents the vital material ignored or slighted by others: the living ritual of Tibetan Buddhists. The reader is made a witness to cultic proceedings through which the author guides him carefully. He does not force one to accept easy explanations nor does he direct one's attention only to aspects that can be counted on to please. He leads one step by step, without omitting anything, through entire rituals, and interprets whenever necessary without being unduly obtrusive. Oftentimes, as in the case of the many hymns to the goddess Tara, the superb translations speak directly to the reader, and it is indeed as if the reader himself were present at the ritual.

In the early years of the 20th century, control over Tibet was contested by three major empires: those of China, Russia and Britain. The imperial powers and those who came in their wake - missionaries, scholars, traders and soldiers - employed local staff to assist in their dealings with the Tibetans, and these employees were in the vanguard of Tibet's encounter with the outside world. Yet they have been largely forgotten by history and most of the knowledge and understandings that they gained have been lost. It was left to a Dutchman, Johan van Manen, and hence an outside observer of the British imperial system, to preserve the impressions of three who served on the periphery of the imperial system. The three autobiographies that make up this book, crowded with ethnographical, sociological and historico-religious data, offer a unique insight into the world of the intermediary class. In addition to being interesting and entertaining, they are an important contribution to our understanding of the history of Tibet and its opening up to cultures beyond its own.

In the course of millennia of dealing with problems of violence, South Asia has not only elaborated the ideal of total avoidance of violence in a unique manner, it also developed arguments justifying and rationalizing its employment under certain circumstances. Some of these arguments seemingly transform all sorts of ‘violence’ into ‘non-violence’. Historical and cultural aspects of the tensions between violence and its denial and rationalization in South Asia are taken up in the contributions of this volume which deal with topics ranging from the origins of the concept of ahiṃsā, to the iconography and interpretation of a self-beheading goddess, and violent heroines in Ajñeya’s Hindi short stories.

This volume, the outcome of a seminar organized at the International Institute for Asian Studies, Leiden, marks an important advancement in the study of South Indian Sanskrit manuscripts which are predominantly on palm leaf and rarely older than three to four centuries. Nevertheless, they continued a manuscript culture for around two millennia and had a profound impact on traditions of knowledge and culture. After an introductory essay (by J.E.M. Houben and S. Rath) addressing theoretical and historical issues of text transmission in manuscripts and in India’s remarkably strong oral memory culture, it contains twelve contributions dealing with South Indian manuscript collections in India and Europe (mainly of Vedic and Sanskrit texts) and with problems related to the scripts, the dating of manuscripts and India's literary and intellectual history. Contributors include: G. Colas, A.A. Esposito, M. Fujii, C. Galewicz, J.E.M. Houben, H. Moser, P. Perumal, K. Plofker, S. Rath, S.R. Sarma, D. Wujastyk, K.G. Zysk