The British Library Online Gallery: The Diamond Sutra

Charles E Hardwidge

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Sep 22, 2005, 7:44:37 PM9/22/05

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The British Library has an online section which makes some of the books in
its collection available for viewing in a simulated book format, with text
and audio accompaniments.

The Diamond Sutra is the worlds earliest, dated, printed book (AD 868). A
central text of Indian Buddhism, the Diamond Sutra was first translated from
Sanskrit into Chinese in about AD 400.

http://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/ttp/ttpbooks.html
http://www.bl.uk/collections/treasures/sutra/sutra_broadband.htm?top

--
Charles E. Hardwidge

liaM

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Sep 23, 2005, 4:23:23 PM9/23/05

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Wonderful..

Julian

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Sep 23, 2005, 4:30:06 PM9/23/05

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Shhhhh..... someone might want it back!

Charles E Hardwidge

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Sep 23, 2005, 8:09:03 PM9/23/05

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> Shhhhh..... someone might want it back!

Now you've done it. I've just discovered a new toy.

The last time I dropped into London, I didn't take the time to visit the
Victoria and Albert Museum, and have been kicking myself ever since. I've
only ever seen a tiny fraction of their publicly available collection, and
a fraction of that is enough to keep an appreciative mind gaping in wonder.

Spoiled as the modern mind is, when you consider the difficulty of obtaining
materials, crafting them, and the generations of acquired knowledge and
genius it took to realise some of these visions, it can raise many
interesting and, sometimes, difficult questions about our attitudes.

Anyway, enough of that. I've just skimmed through a few items in the online
collection and added some abstracts and links to some of the images that
caught my eye. As someone who spent twenty minutes examining a Japanese
lacquered box, I think, this is going to hammer my spare time.

http://www.vam.ac.uk/collections/

This majestic image of the Buddha Sakyamuni, the historical Buddha, standing
with his hand raised affirming his role as a protector of devotees with the
gesture of benevolent reassurance (abhaya-mudra), is the achievement of an
anonymous master sculptor of seventh-century eastern India.

http://www.vam.ac.uk/collections/asia/radiant_buddha/index.html

This anonymous 18th-century woodblock printed book, Ehon Zen Taiheiki
('Chronicle of the Great Peace'), illustrates stories from the anonymous
'Gunki Monogatari' (war tales) describing the period of conflict in Japan
between 1318 and 1367.

http://images.vam.ac.uk/images/photo/pcd/88393091/high/1146-051.jpg

This wooden sculpture represents a Luohan, the name for a monk who acts as a
guardian of Buddhism and is believed to reach the state of enlightenment
through merit and virtue. The Luohan was a part of Buddhist ritual worship
in China, and the earliest representations can be traced to the 4th century
AD.

http://images.vam.ac.uk/images/photo/sch/19990916/high/js01-005.jpg

This oil painting is a special kind of illustration common in Victorian
times, showing a sympathetic view of how people in other nations lived. The
painting presents a very picturesque British image of the East, as objects
would not be displayed together like this in a real Japanese room.

http://images.vam.ac.uk/images/photo/sch/19991013/high/mb02-020.jpg

This velvet picture is of the Yomei-mon gate of the Tôshôgû shrine at Nikkô.
The shrine is dedicated to Tokugawa Ieyasu (1542-1616), the first Tokugawa
shôgun, and is one of the most popular tourist attractions in Japan.

http://images.vam.ac.uk/images/photo/sch/20000525/high/mb47-020.jpg

Kakiemon-type wares, as Japanese porcelain of this kind is known, take their
name from the family of Arita potters who are said to have learnt the
techniques of overglaze enamelling from the Chinese in Nagasaki in the early
17th century.

http://images.vam.ac.uk/images/photo/sch/20030305/high/1226-005.jpg

--
Charles E. Hardwidge

Julian

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Sep 23, 2005, 8:23:37 PM9/23/05

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I'm more likely to leave my stuff to the BM.