Tibetology
Tibetology () refers to the study of things related to Tibet, including its history, religion, language, culture, politics and the collection of Tibetan articles of historical, cultural and religious significance. The last may mean a collection of Tibetan statues, shrines, Buddhist icons and holy scripts, Thangka embroideries, paintings and tapestries, jewellery, masks and other objects of fine Tibetan art and craftsmanship. History The Jesuit Antonio de Andrade (1580–1634) and a few others established a small mission and church in Tsaparang (1626), in the kingdom of Guge (Western Tibet) in the 17th century. When the kingdom was overrun by the king of Ladakh (1631), the mission was destroyed. A century later another Jesuit, the Italian Ippolito Desideri (1684–1733) was sent to Tibet and received permission to stay in Lhasa where he spent 5 years (1716–1721) living in a Tibetan monastery, studying the language, the religion of the lamas and other Tibetan customs. He ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Richard Keith Sprigg
Richard Keith Sprigg (31 March 1922 – 8 September 2011) was a British linguist who specialised in the phonology of Asian languages. Sprigg was educated under J. R. Firth and was a member of the first generation of professional British linguists. Also as a consequence Sprigg was an advocate of the prosodic phonological method of Firth. Sprigg worked on several Tibeto-Burman languages including Lepcha, and various Tibetan dialects. He taught for many years at the School of Oriental and African Studies, and retired to Kalimpong, West Bengal, India with his wife Ray, granddaughter of David Macdonald the author of ''The Land of the Lama'' and ''20 Years in Tibet'', until her death. In 2000 he returned to UK and lived in retirement with his second wife Elisabeth in Crowborough Crowborough is a town and civil parish in East Sussex, England, in the Weald at the edge of Ashdown Forest and the highest town in the High Weald AONB, High Weald Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. It ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Tibet
Tibet (; ''Böd''; ), or Greater Tibet, is a region in the western part of East Asia, covering much of the Tibetan Plateau and spanning about . It is the homeland of the Tibetan people. Also resident on the plateau are other ethnic groups such as Mongols, Monpa people, Monpa, Tamang people, Tamang, Qiang people, Qiang, Sherpa people, Sherpa, Lhoba people, Lhoba, and since the 20th century Han Chinese and Hui people, Hui. Tibet is the highest region on Earth, with an average elevation of . Located in the Himalayas, the highest elevation in Tibet is Mount Everest, Earth's highest mountain, rising above sea level. The Tibetan Empire emerged in the 7th century. At its height in the 9th century, the Tibetan Empire extended far beyond the Tibetan Plateau, from the Tarim Basin and Pamirs in the west, to Yunnan and Bengal in the southeast. It then divided into a variety of territories. The bulk of western and central Tibet (Ü-Tsang) was often at least nominally unified under a ser ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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David Snellgrove
David Llewellyn Snellgrove, FBA (29 June 192025 March 2016) was a British Tibetologist noted for his pioneering work on Buddhism in Tibet as well as his many travelogues. Biography Snellgrove was born in Portsmouth, Hampshire, and educated at Christ's Hospital near Horsham in West Sussex. He went on to study German and French at Southampton University. In 1941 he was called up to do his military service as a member of the Royal Engineers. He attended the Officers Cadet Training Unit in the Scottish seaside town of Dunbar, and was commissioned as an infantry officer. Thereafter he attended various intelligence courses and further training at the War Office in London, from where he requested a posting to India. Snellgrove arrived in Bombay in June 1943, and travelled cross-country to Calcutta. He was stationed at Barrackpore, some way up the Hooghly River. A few months after beginning his posting he contracted malaria and was sent to the military hospital at Lebong, just nor ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Sándor Kőrösi Csoma
Sándor Csoma de Kőrös (; born Sándor Csoma; 27 March 1784/811 April 1842) was a Hungarian people, Hungarian philologist and Orientalist, author of the first Standard Tibetan, Tibetan–English language, English dictionary and grammar book. He was called Phyi-glin-gi-grwa-pa in Tibetan, meaning "''the foreign pupil''", and was declared a ''bosatsu'' or bodhisattva by the Japanese in 1933. He was born in Kőrös, Grand Principality of Transylvania (today part of Covasna County, Covasna, Romania). His birth date is often given as 4 April, although this is actually his baptism day and the year of his birth is debated by some authors who put it at 1787 or 1788 rather than 1784. The Magyars, Magyar ethnic group, the Székelys, to which he belonged believed that they were derived from a branch of Attila's Huns who had settled in Transylvania in the fifth century. Hoping to study the claim and to find the place of origin of the Székelys and the Magyars by studying language kinship, h ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Guge
Guge () was an ancient dynastic kingdom in Western Tibet. The kingdom was centered in present-day Zanda County, Ngari Prefecture, Tibet Autonomous Region. At various points in history after the 10th century AD, the kingdom held sway over a vast area including south-eastern Zanskar, Kinnaur district, and Spiti Valley, either by conquest or as tributaries. The ruins of the former capital of the Guge kingdom are located at Tsaparang in the Sutlej valley, not far from Mount Kailash and west from Lhasa. History Founding Guge was founded in the 10th century. Its capitals were located at Tholing and Tsaparang. Kyide Nyimagon, a great-grandson of Langdarma, the last monarch of the Tibetan Empire, fled to Ngari Prefecture, Ngari (West Tibet) from the insecure conditions in Ü-Tsang in 910. He established a kingdom around 912, annexing Burang County, Purang and Guge. He established his capital in Guge. Nyimagon later divided his lands into three parts. The king's eldest son Lhachen ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Philippe Édouard Foucaux
Philippe Édouard Foucaux (15 September 1811 – 20 May 1894) was a French tibetologist. He published the first Tibetan grammar in French and occupied the first chair of Tibetan Studies in Europe. He was born in the town of Angers on 15 September to merchant family. At the age of 27, he left for Paris to study Indology with Eugène Burnouf. After becoming aware of the work of Sándor Kőrösi Csoma, he studied Tibetan by himself for two years. After this he was appointed as a Tibetan teacher at the École des langues orientales where he gave his inaugural lecture on 31 January 1842. Funding for the position was canceled but Foucaux continued to instruct his students thereafter on a pro bono basis. Some of his most well-known students include , William Woodville Rockhill, and Alexandra David-Néel. Foucaux was a member of the Sociéte d'Ethnographie. After France became the Second Empire, Foucaux was elected as a member of the Collège de France. Foucaux was married to Mary S ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Ippolito Desideri
Ippolito Desideri, SJ (21 December 1684 Pistoia, Grand Duchy of Tuscany – 14 April 1733 Rome, Papal States) was an Italian Jesuit missionary and traveller and the most famous of the early European missionaries who founded Catholic Church in Tibet. He was also the first documented Tibetologist and the first European to have successfully studied both Classical and Standard Tibetan. Biography Desideri was born in 1684 to a fairly prosperous family at Pistoia, in the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, which was then under the rule of Grand Duke Cosimo III of the House of Medici. Desideri was educated from childhood in the Jesuit school in Pistoia, and in 1700 was selected to attend the Collegio Romano (Roman College) in Rome. From 1706 to 1710 he taught literature at the Jesuit colleges in Orvieto and Arezzo, and later at the Collegio Romano itself. Journey to Tibet His application for the East Indies mission was accepted by the Superior General of the Society of Jesus, Fr. Michelan ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Standard Tibetan
Lhasa Tibetan or Standard Tibetan is a standardized dialect of Tibetan spoken by the people of Lhasa, the capital of the Tibetan Autonomous Region. It is an official language of the Tibet Autonomous Region. In the traditional "three-branched" classification of the Tibetic languages, the Lhasa dialect belongs to the Central Tibetan branch (the other two being Khams Tibetan and Amdo Tibetan). In terms of mutual intelligibility, speakers of Khams Tibetan are able to communicate at a basic level with Lhasa Tibetan, while Amdo speakers cannot. Both Lhasa Tibetan and Khams Tibetan evolved to become tonal and do not preserve the word-initial consonant clusters, which makes them very far from Classical Tibetan, especially when compared to the more conservative Amdo Tibetan. Registers Like many languages, Lhasa Tibetan has a variety of language registers: * ( Wylie: , literally " demotic language"): the vernacular speech. * ( Wylie: , "honorifics or deference, courtesy"): the ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Tibetan Art
The vast majority of surviving Tibetan art created before the mid-20th century is religious, with the main forms being thangka, paintings on cloth, mostly in a technique described as gouache or distemper (paint), distemper, Tibetan Buddhist wall paintings, and small statues in bronze, or large ones in clay, stucco or wood. They were commissioned by Tibetan monasticism, religious establishments or by pious individuals for use within the practice of Tibetan Buddhism and were manufactured in large workshops by monks and lay artists, who are mostly unknown. Various types of religious objects, such as the ''phurbu, phurba'' or ritual dagger, are finely made and lavishly decorated. Secular objects, in particular jewellery and textiles, were also made, with Chinese influences strong in the latter. Himalayan art is an overall term for Tibetan art together with the art of Art of Bhutan, Bhutan, Nepal, Ladakh, Kashmir and neighbouring parts of Mongolia and China where Tibetan Buddhism is ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Order Of Friars Minor Capuchin
The Order of Friars Minor Capuchin (; postnominal abbr. OFMCap) is a religious order of Franciscan friars within the Catholic Church, one of three " First Orders" that reformed from the Franciscan Friars Minor Observant (OFMObs, now OFM), the other being the Conventuals (OFMConv). Franciscans reformed as Capuchins in 1525 with the purpose of regaining the original Habit (tunic) of St. Francis of Assisi and also for returning to a stricter observance of the rule established by Francis of Assisi in 1209. History Origins The Order arose in 1525 when Matteo da Bascio, an Observant Franciscan friar native to the Italian region of Marche, said he had been inspired by God with the idea that the manner of life led by the friars of his day was not the one which their founder, St. Francis of Assisi, had envisaged. He sought to return to the primitive way of life of solitude and penance, as practised by the founder of their Order. His religious superiors tried to suppress the ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Tibetan Buddhism
Tibetan Buddhism is a form of Buddhism practiced in Tibet, Bhutan and Mongolia. It also has a sizable number of adherents in the areas surrounding the Himalayas, including the Indian regions of Ladakh, Gorkhaland Territorial Administration, Darjeeling, Sikkim, and Arunachal Pradesh, as well as in Nepal. Smaller groups of practitioners can be found in Central Asia, some regions of China such as Northeast China, Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia and some regions of Russia, such as Tuva, Buryatia, and Kalmykia. Tibetan Buddhism evolved as a form of Mahayana, Mahāyāna Buddhism stemming from the latest stages of Indian Buddhism (which included many Vajrayana, Vajrayāna elements). It thus preserves many Indian Buddhist Tantra, tantric practices of the Gupta Empire, post-Gupta Medieval India, early medieval period (500–1200 CE), along with numerous native Tibetan developments. In the pre-modern era, Tibetan Buddhism spread outside of Tibet primarily due to the influence of the Mongol Emp ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Michael Aris
Michael Vaillancourt Aris (27 March 1946 – 27 March 1999) was a British historian who wrote and lectured on Bhutanese, Tibetan, and Himalayan culture and history. He was the husband of Aung San Suu Kyi, who would later become State Counsellor of Myanmar. Life Aris was born in Havana, Cuba, son of British Council officer John Arundel Aris and Josette, daughter of Emile Vaillancourt, Canadian Ambassador to Cuba.Gutchow, Kim. 'Michael Aris: In memoriam'. ''Ladakh Studies'' 12 (Autumn 1999), pp. 18–20. He was educated at Worth School in Sussex, and read modern history at Durham University, where he was a member of St Cuthbert's Society. After graduating in 1967, he spent six years as a private tutor to the children of the Bhutanese royal family. In 1976, Aris moved on to the University of Oxford and became a junior research fellow and a member of the university faculty at St John's College. In 1978, he obtained a Ph.D. in Tibetan literature from SOAS (School of Oriental and ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |