The Culture of the Book in Tibet

The history of the book in Tibet provides more than a map of literarytrends and trade routes. Functioning as material, intellectual, and symbolic object,the book is an instrumental tool in the construction of Tibetan power and authority,and its history opens a crucial window onto the cultural, intellectual, and economiclife of an immensely influential Buddhist society.Stretchingfrom the fourteenth through the eighteenth centuries, Kurtis R. Schaeffer'smeticulous study is the first book to trace this singular history. Bringing to lifethe scholars and hermits, madmen and ministers, kings and queens who producedTibet's massive canons, Schaeffer shows how Tibetan scholars edited and printedworks of religion, literature, art, and science and what this indicates about theinterrelation of material and cultural practices. The Tibetan book is at once theembodiment of the Buddha's voice, a principal means of education, a source oftradition and authority, an economic product, a finely crafted aesthetic object, amedium of Buddhist written culture, and a symbol of the religion itself. Books wereat the center of debates on the role of libraries in religious institutions, therelative merits of oral and written teachings, and the price of translatedliterature. Drawing on more than 150 understudied Tibetan sources, Schaeffer uses asingle object to access a greater understanding of the cultural and social historyof the Tibetan plateau.