Early Temples of Central Tibet
Roberto Vitali
Serinda Publications
Some 7000 Tibetan temples and monasteries were destroyed during the Cultural Revolution. However, by good fortune, a few early ones of special significance survived and this study provides their first visual and scholarly documentation. It is conceived as a series of monographs on extant temples of the eighth to fifteenth centuries in Central Tibet, which together, and on occasion uniquely, represent successive, yet fundamental phases of Tibetan culture.<br>Chapter One presents Kachu (founded 728-739 AD) which may now be revealed as the only temple known to have survived from the Yarlung dynasty up to the present time. Kachu provides evidence of the cosmopolitan milieu to which the Yarlung empire, which extended well into Central Asia, belonged. The stucco images within the temple are the most ancient statues known to exist in Tibet.<br>Chapter Two discusses a group of temples, including Yemar and Drathang, that have mostly survived in a dilapidated condition, but which still bear witness to the resurrection of Buddhism in the eleventh century from the ashes of the Yarlung dynasty, and which provided the foundation for Tibet’s culture until recent times.<br>Chapter Three is. dedicated to thejokhang of Lhasa and a little-known chapel found to exist within it. This chapel provides evidence for the early histoiy of this famous site up to the twelfth century when the various Tibetan religions schools were established.<br>Chapter Four is devoted to Shalu, a temple which mirrors in its artistic styles the relations between Tibet and China during the Yuan rule of the country in the fourteenth century and which played a seminal role in the development of Tibetan art in the centuries to come.<br>Chapter Five records, through the virtually unknown nine-storeyed stupa of Riwoche and its many painted chapels, a period of Tibetan culture— evidently provincial—which manifested itself during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.<br>The art-historical appreciation of these temples has been approached through authoritative Tibetan literary sources. With a profusion of colour plates, this book records both those monuments and styles hitherto unknown to exist, and those others which survive, albeit precariously, but which have not been subjected to a thorough investigation in the past.<br>The Author<br>After post graduate studies, Roberto Vitali spent 20 years researching into Tibetan civilization with the help of Tibetan teachers, and has frequently travelled to remote regions of that country to document the story of Tibet’s art. Tibetan studies in situ have become, for Vitali, rather more a way of life than a profession.<br>The Author<br>After post graduate studies, Roberto Vitali spent 20 years researching into Tibetan civilization with the help of Tibetan teachers, and has frequently travelled to remote regions of that country to document the story of Tibet’s art. Tibetan studies in situ have become, for Vitali, rather more a way of life than a profession.<br>