The Mardzong Manuscripts. Preservation, Interpretation and Dating of an Archaeological Find in Mustang, Nepal
Author | : Agnieszka Helman-Wazny |
Publisher | : |
Total Pages | : 230 |
Release | : 2019 |
ISBN-10 | : 8364869248 |
ISBN-13 | : 9788364869242 |
Rating | : 4/5 (48 Downloads) |
Book excerpt: This book tells the story of the Mardzong manuscripts, a collection found in 2008 in the caves of Upper Mustang near Lo Monthang in Nepal, re-visited four times between 2015 and 2018 by the project team. These manuscripts are an extraordinary archaeological find, akin to the more archaic caches of the Silk Road manuscripts from Central Asia, but far less is known of them. They constitute a repository teeming with artefacts, rich in history, and abounding with information about Tibetan book culture, the Bon and Buddhist religions and the local history of craftsmanship spanning half a millennium, carbon dated as they have been to between the thirteenth and the seventeenth centuries. Through a thorough multidisciplinary approach this study reveals new ways of treating these books as artefacts with an unprecedented potential to illuminate the history of their production, usage and provenance. It also vastly increases the interpretative integrity of the analyses of the materials, codicological records and textual interpretations. This is the first collection of books from Mustang to be subjected to systematic codicological research and material study beyond the translation and interpretation of the texts.