Tibetan Buddhist Image Research

During the 20th century the study of Buddhist iconography has become an outstanding subject in the field of Tibetan studies. Buddhist art, one of the most precious achievements of Tibetan culture, can be seen as a lively historical source. A review of the scholarly research of the last century, together with a survey of both archaeological discoveries and catalogues of private and public collections, led me to discover that the most needed work in the study of Tibetan Buddhist art today is a systematic investigation of iconography. I dealt with this problem by first producing a chronological classification and an analysis of the images; then I continued with an systematic investigation of the literary sources which the images refer to, the origin of the names of the images, and the provenance of their style and stylistic variations.This thesis is composed of two parts: the first deals with iconography, the second with three specific case studies.The first part consists of an iconographical presentation of the material: it establishes a system of classification and defines the scriptural bases of the images, thus clarifying the correspondence between text and image. The following method has been used: the images are divided in groups and organized chronologically on the basis of typology and stylistic features; they are then confronted with corresponding scriptural sources, especially those of the same period. Among the literary sources which have been examined are texts in Sanskrit, Chinese, and Tibetan sutras and documents. Previous scholarly work as also been taken into account.The second part is an iconological investigation. On the basis of the iconography presented in the first part, three typical cases have been analyzed: Amida, and Padmapani. Sadaksari Lokesvara.From their analysis it is possible to detect some recurring patterns in the iconography of Tibetan Buddhism, namely the relation between prescriptions regulating the ritual making of images and their stylistic changes; the morphological differences between images connected with rituals of worshipping (gong yang fa 供养法) and those used in the visualization of the Siddas; and the variation between a scriptural quotation and its iconographical representations.The three case studies and the patterns observed provide a basis for the study of other Tibetan types and styles of Buddhist iconography. The correspondence between images and texts is a complex problem, and the material that remains to be explored is extremely vast; for example, the importance of the "apocryphal sutras" (sutras buried during the persecution and rediscovered in later times.fu zang.伏藏) for the diffusion and influence of different styles of images has not adequately taken into account in this study.