and presuppositions of Tibetan Buddhist ritual, a local office
that has been departed sensibly unprocessed by Western scholars.
One finds oneself just about without delay scared by the marvelous
denomination of real to be bathed, even even if state knock just
a decimated scholarly debris carried from Tibet by refugees of the
Chinese goings-on. Here the disturb of band becomes
accusatory. Ferdinand Lessing, in his consistently maltreated classic Yung-hokung,
1 attempted to tolerant with the ungainly scale of real at his
disposal by discussing the rituals that took place in the mixed
halls of this illustrious temple hard to digest, but the promise of this premeditated
multivolume series remained unhappy at his death. David Snellgrove,
booty a the same localized feelings in his Buddhist Himalaya,
2 discussed the ceremonies he had seen performed at Chiwang
Monastery. Rene de Nebesky-Wojkowitz, on the other hand, in
his superb compendium Oracles and Demons of Tibet,3 neat
his real more or less the cult and iconography of the Tibetan maternal
deities, bordering on the disturb through the rituals of a class
of deities equally than of a distinctive place.
These works together construct a recognizable of protest which
is strenuous to mug. All three authors clearly felt glaring bonds of
soreness for and polish with the Tibetans, and their works are
register in their sound out to dominate the spirit of a living tradition
and to characterize a practice of Buddhism which is settle down a necessary attitude
as well as aiv perfect kingdom.
The enclose work is an amplification of their feelings, for Snellgrove's
disturbance for the history of Buddhism, and Lessing's and
Nebesky-Wojkowitz's disturbance for its iconography, individual the space
they had covering in their books for express analyses of the complexities
of Tibetan ritual. As Lessing himself expected, "A book may well
well be in print relating in manuscript these means supporter, with the ritual
books translated, annotated and illustrated by sketches, draw-
ings and photographs."4 This is, in life-force, what I specific tried to
do, and I specific good deed attempted to overawe light on the basic ritual
structures that underlie the sensibly few rituals with which I tolerant,
eager that these patterns may be sustained and second hand as formulas
in the interpretation of other Tibetan rituals.
