Customer Reviews

Ruthless Compassion: Wrathful Deities in Early Indo-Tibetan Esoteric Buddhist Art

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Rob Linrothe has written a superb book on the evolution of Wrathful Deities in India and Tibet. Photos taken by the author and excellent explanations show us in exquisite detail how this form of art developed over the centuries. A wonderful book for those looking to understand Esoteric Buddhism!

Rob Linrothe's book is a must-have for any interested student of Esoteric Buddhism. It combines the author's knowledge of the religious texts with art historical analysis and provides a wonderful survey on the development of wrathful Buddhist deities from secondary attendant figures to objects of worship in their own right.

Linrothe isolates the wrathful deities as an especially revealing ideological marker in the development of esoteric Buddhism. He identifies three distinct phases according to subsidiary, complementary, and central importance of wrathful deities in images made for and by practitioners. In a few cases South Asian images are cross-referenced with comparable examples from the western Himalaya, Tibet, and China, and Sanskrit and Tibetan texts are joined by select Chinese translations to stage a mutually informative dialogue between text and image.

Ruthless Compassion offers a visual history of esoteric Buddhism centered on the changing representations of the wrathful deity. Its examination of a resource too long neglected by historians of religion and art alike makes Ruthless Compassion a uniquely valuable contribution to the field of Buddhist studies.

. . . but this is an excellent read on the evolution of eastern Wrathful, great for serious students of eastern religions or for a larger esoteric library or as an artist!