Andrew Quintman

The Life of the Buddha (LOTB) presents and analyses in a synthetic fashion the first complete photographic documentation of the monumental murals depicting the Buddha narrative at Jonang Monastery in Tibet, their related literature, and their architectural and historical contexts. LOTB will offer scholarly and learning communities the first collaborative means to research and engage image, text, architecture, and history as an integrated and meaning-rich whole by focusing on the most important pre-modern mural renderings of the Buddha’s life remaining in Tibet. The impact for the humanities will be twofold: the largest project to date on visual and textual Buddha narratives in Tibet, and a new digital tool for synthetic teaching and research of Buddhist images and texts in context.

Frontiers are often thought of as the margins of things. Buddhism on the Border reconsiders the Himalayan frontier as its own center, examining the development of a "borderland Buddhism" on the boundaries of Tibet and Nepal. It focuses on the hermitage known as White Rock Horse Tooth and interrogates the circumstances that allowed it to become a source of enduring influence on the traditions of Himalayan Buddhism. It demonstrates that a provincial region on the margins served as a site of significant religious preservation, innovation, and transmission. I argue that it did so not despite its location at the outer limits of Central Tibetan authority, but precisely due to its presence in a frontier zone. This study thus considers the impact of place on the formation of religious expression.