Customer Reviews

Deities of Tibetan Buddhism: The Zurich Paintings of the Icons Worthwhile to See

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This book is truly an amazing collection of both icons of Tibetan Buddhist deity-types, and information about the same.

While this book is undeniably expensive, if you're really interested in Tibetan Buddhist art and/or iconography, you'll be happy to have this book in your library.

Well, someone had to write the first review and give this book a 5-star rating!

Icons Worthwhile to See is of exceptional importance to the study of Tibetan Buddhist iconography because the text it illustrates are known and available. These texts are compilations of sadhamas, rites for the daily practice of each deity. They describe how to visualize the deity and what to do when the visualizations have been generated. The intended function of the pictures is as aids to assist the generation of the deity visualization, especially during the rite of conferring on disciples permission to practice the deity.

In the present work, the authors restore the pictures to their context by publishing not the pictures alone but translations from the texts as well. In this way they seek to serve scholars as well as practitioners alike.

The book falls into three principal sections, devoted respectively to the paintings, the source texts, and reference materials that cover both. A single system of numbering is employed throughout, so that one can refer immediately between the three sections.

The first section introduces the paintings and reproduces them along with transcriptions and translations of their captions. The second section presents the translations of the sadhamas, divided like the paintings into three parts corresponding to the three sadhamas compilations. These are first the Rinjung Gyasta (Icons 4-420), then the shorter and simpler Narthang Gyasta (421-456), then the Vajrdvali trilogy of Abhayakaragupta (457-507). The last is a collection of mandalas, but Icons Worthwhile to See illustrates only the principal deities. In addition, the painted version of Icons Worthwhile to See boasts an appendix of three pictures of Yamantaka, not found in the blockprint versions.

The extensive reference materials that follows the translations includes English, Tibetan, Sanskrit and Mongolian indexes and a morphological index, which will be found of great value in identifying deity images. The English index is particularly comprehensive, including not only names but entries for iconographic features, explanations of technical terms, and analytical articles. This is complimented by a pictorial index, featuring drawings and text by Robert Beer, to provide a visual key to the iconographic features and an artist's insight into their symbolism.