Dear colleagues,

On behalf of its editors, I am pleased to announce the publication of a new book:

Asian horizons: Giuseppe Tucci’s Buddhist, Indian, Himalayan and Central Asian Studies

Serie Orientale Roma CVI

Edited by Angelo Andrea Di Castro and David Templeman

Melbourne: Monash University Publishing

ISBN: 9781922235336 (paperback)

April 2015

AUD $99

Asian Horizons is published in honour of the great scholar of Asia, Professor Giuseppe Tucci (1894–1984). Through the work of present-day scholars, both senior and emerging, this volume represents their efforts to maintain the impetus of the profound legacy Tucci left. Renowned to this day as a founding scholar in an extraordinarily wide variety of disciplines, as well as being an explorer of hitherto largely unknown lands, such as Tibet, Tucci gained a deep knowledge of Asia through a familiarity with its people, places and literature. His contribution to modern scholarship is nothing less than remarkable. The volume reflects the broad variety of topics in which Tucci himself displayed deep interest and serves as an homage to his work.

The book may be purchased via the publisher’s website (http://www.publishing.monash.edu/books/ah-9781922235336.html).

Best regards,

Chris Clark

PhD candidate

University of Sydney

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Contents

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Preface

Introduction

1. Giuseppe Tucci, anti-Orientalist (Gustavo Benavides)

2. A glimpse of some archives on Giuseppe Tucci’s scientific expeditions to Tibet: 1929–1939 (Francesco D’Arelli)

3. The problem with folk: Giuseppe Tucci and the transformation of folksongs into scientific artefacts (Ruth Gamble)

4. “A very useful lie”: Giuseppe Tucci, Tibet, and scholarship under dictatorship (Alex McKay)

5. The “thought” of Giuseppe Tucci (Francesco Sferra)

6. Reaffirming the “origins” of Mahāmudrā (Giovanni Arca)

7. The implication of Giuseppe Tucci’s work for epic and Purāṇic studies (Greg Bailey)

8. Merchants, mercenaries and monarchs: Christians in Safavid Iran (James Barry)

9. A survey of Sassanian seals (Zohreh Baseri)

10. The Bodhisattva Vajrapāṇi’s Laghutantraṭīkā and the rotation of yoginīs: structure of the maṇḍala and dynamic motion (Claudio Cicuzza)

11. Nibbāna as the fruit of meritorious deeds in the Apadāna (Chris Clark)

12. Mapping the Buddhist sacred status of Triloknāth (Diana Cousens)

13. Goat heads and goddesses in Swāt, Gandhāra and Kashmir and connected problems (Angelo Andrea Di Castro)

14. The theory and practice of the Mandala: ritual and identity in the Kabīr Panth (Peter Friedlander)

15. Philosophical reasoning and spiritual practice: Giuseppe Tucci on Buddhist philosophical systems (Andrew McGarrity)

16. The story of Bon in the Naxi Dongba religion (Christine Mathieu)

17. Under the female gaze: Isabella Bird’s travels among the Tibetans (Isabella Ofner)

18. The creation of theism personified: a conceptual history of the god-maker Avalokiteśvara (Iain Sinclair)

19. Revising Tucci’s sixteenth—seventeenth century: new data on Tibet’s Civil War (1603–1621) (David Templeman)

20. Google Earth™ @ Ghazni (David Thomas)

21. Rediscovering rainbow colour in the textile aesthetic of Bhutan (Alathea Vavasour)

22. The classical Arabs’ thought, Bayazid al-Ansari (1525–1572) and his mystical work Maqsud al-Mu’minin: mysticism and Sunni orthodoxy in the Pakhtun zone (Dennis Walker)

23. Cultures of the body: medical pluralism, bacteria and Tibetan refugees (Tanya Zivkovic)

List of Illustrations

Contributors