Ian Alsop

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L'art sculptural tibetain s'est souvent exprime a travers un processus d'assimilation, d'adaptation et d'interpretation des styles des pays avoisinants tels que l'Inde ou le Nepal. Une grande variete de styles sculpturaux sont d'ailleurs des copies d'originaux plus anciens. L'A aborde ici ce theme des copies sacrees et tente de montrer que la motivation des artistes provient du desir d'un commanditaire sophistique d'imiter le style et la technique d'un original hautement admire et provenant souvent d'une culture proche. Ces imitations ont pour but d'accomplir le desir d'une interpretation fidele d'une image unique et sacree. L'A cite donc deux exemples de groupes de copies sacrees. le premier est celui de plusieurs copies de Phagpa Lokeśvara du Potala a Lhassa. Le second est, quant a lui, un groupe de copies dont l'origine de l'image orignale reste inconnue.

... in Khanal, Cd.gu Ndrayanaka Aitihisik Samagr , plates 32 and 33 (see note 3 above). ... 5). The image of Sadaksarl Lokesvara and his mantra 'Om Mani Padme Hum' in cast relief on the base of the caitya are unusual in the Nepalese context, and are a testimony to the cultural ...

Scholarship on the art history of Tibet, indeed on that of the Himalayas, began in earnest only in the 1960s. At this time some of the first really significant exhibitions of such material occurred. This attention to Himalayan art helped start new collectors; for instance, one of ...

Over the years since Petech edited the Capuchin documents, scholars in Nepal have managed to find several Christian texts in Newari left behind by the Capuchin fathers. One of these, the most original and the most interesting, is the "piccolo libro" composed by Padre Vito da Recanati and the other fathers of the Bhaktapur mission of 1740, the "book of apologetica" of Petech's list. Written with the help of the missionaries' enthusiastic language teacher, the Brahman Balagovinda, this tract was presented to Ranajita Malla in a lively audience one June evening in Bhaktapur some 250 years ago.

In 1984 this article was published in the Journal of the Centre for Nepal and Asian Studies (CNAS) of Tribhuvan University in Kathmandu (vol. 12, No. 1, December 1984, pp 23-49). In an article published in 2012, Gautam Vajracarya made an important correction to the dating of the first Visnu sculpture presented in this paper (Vajracharya, Gautam V, “Two Dated Nepali Bronzes and their Implications for the Art History of Nepal” in Indo-Asiatische Zeitschrift 16, Mitteilungen der Gesellschaft fur Indo-Asiatische Kunst, Berlin 2012 pp 4-18.)

In the original article I had-working with the help of the great epigraphist Dhanavajra Vajracarya, Gautam Vajracharya's uncle-interpreted the inscription on the LACMA repousse Visnu plaque (fig. 1) to indicate the date NS 103, equal to 983 CE. Gautam Vajracharya corrected the interpretation of the original inscription (we are in agreement on the reading) to arrive at a more reasonable date, NS 300/1180 CE. I have included his reinterpretation of the inscription in a footnote below.

This correction shows how over the years, those interested in the art history of Nepal have made consistent strides to better our understanding of this important tradition. I felt it was important to publish this paper once again with this important correction. Note that the article itself has been left as it was published, the notes in the text referring to the correction of the date are printed in red, and the added footnotes are printed in red-bordered box.

In this paper, it is merely my intention to present the works of art with some few comments; I will refrain from making extended comparisons with other undated and previously published works, as the reader can of course do this for himself and draw his or her own conclusions. But it will be clear to the reader familiar with the corpus of Nepalese works of art in metal presently known to us, that the dates engraved on several of these sculptures are surprisingly early, and contrary to the opinion expressed by some scholars that Nepalese works of art are too often assigned unreasonably early dates, they seem to present some evidence that the reverse is in fact the case.

This paper is also available on JSTOR http://www.jstor.com/stable/3249731