Art and culture of Nepal Selected Papers

by Mary Shepherd Slusser and Gautama V. Vajracharya

This volume brings together in one convenient format a selection of papers devoted to Nepalese culture published over several years in a variety of places. In one of them, for example, jointly authored and published in Artibus Asiae in 1973, the authors make one exciting discovery after another as they unravel various facets of Nepalese history. The so-called "Sleeping Vishnu" at Balaju turns out to be actually part Siva and to be a thousand years older than previously thought. In an astonishing reversal of the accepted relationship, it is shown to actually predate the image of which it was supposed to be a copy.

With few exceptions, the papers have appeared in western scholarly journals not readily available in Nepal. To make them easily accessible to Nepalese scholars and the interested public they have been brought together in this single volume. The chronological order of publication has been ignored in favor of grouping them under specific headings such as painting, sculpture and architecture. No changes have been made in the original texts but some articles are followed by a short commentary to include new information pertinent to that paper. One commentary, for example, takes into account the critical Jayadeva sculpture whose discovery postdated the planned 1997 publication of this volume. The present work is also fully illustrated with all the photographs included in the original publications."

Table of Contents:

• Preface
• Photograph credits
• I. Sculpture
  1. Some Nepalese stone sculptures: a reappraisal within their cultural and historical context
  2. Some Nepalese stone sculptures: further notes
  3. Nepali sculptures-new discoveries
  4. The wooden sculptures of Nepal-temple images and carved walls
  5. The Saugal-tol temple of Patan
  6. On the antiquity of Nepalese metalcraft
  7. The Purandi Hoard: metalwork from eleventh-century Nepal
• II. Painting
  1. Serpents, sages and sorcerers in Cleveland
  2. On a sixteenth-century Pictorial Pilgrim's Guide from Nepal
  3. An India-import Devi Mahisasura-Mardini scroll from Nepal
  4. A document on Himalayan painting
  5. The "spice Goddesses": notes on a Tibetan painting
• III. Architecture and Minor Arts
  1. Two medieval Nepalese buildings: an architectural and cultural study
  2. Indresvara Mahadeva: a thirteenth-century Nepalese shrine
  3. Nepalese Caityas as mirrors of mediaeval architecture
  4. Bodhgaya and Nepal
  5. Culture in microcosm: the Nepalese inkwell.