- Markus Viehbeck works as a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Institute of South Asian, Tibetan, and Buddhist Studies, Un... moreMarkus Viehbeck works as a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Institute of South Asian, Tibetan, and Buddhist Studies, University of Vienna. In the past, he has held positions as researcher and lecturer at the same institute, as Assistant Professor at the Chair of Buddhist Studies, Cluster "Asia & Europe," University of Heidelberg (2010-2018), and as Interim Professor for Tibetan and Buddhist Studies at LMU-Munich (summer term 2022). His research interests address diverse topics within Tibetan manuscript culture, Buddhist philosophy, Tibetan intellectual history, and the interlinkage of religious and social history, with a focus on working with textual sources. His publications include Polemics in Indo-Tibetan Scholasticism (Vienna, 2014), Transcultural Encounters in the Himalayan Borderlands: Kalimpong as a “Contact Zone” (Heidelberg, 2017), Two Illuminated Text Collections of Namgyal Monastery: A Study of Early Buddhist Art and Literature in Mustang (Kathmandu, 2021), and The Manuscript Kanjur from Shey Palace, Ladakh: Introduction and Catalogue (Vienna, 2022). For the Tibetan Manuscript Project Vienna (TMPV), he documents and studies manuscripts of Tibetan Buddhist canonical literature and contributes to building up a comprehensive database at Resources for Kanjur & Tanjur Studies (rKTs):
TMPV: https://tmpv.univie.ac.at
rKTs: http://www.rkts.orgedit
m Januar 1951 veröffentlichte die Himalayan Times einen Gastartikel unter dem Titel „Kalimpong, Border Cosmopolis“. Dessen Autor Archibald Steele war Amerikaner und einer der wenigen westlichen Journalisten, die in der ersten Hälfte des... more
m Januar 1951 veröffentlichte die Himalayan Times einen Gastartikel unter dem Titel „Kalimpong, Border Cosmopolis“. Dessen Autor Archibald Steele war Amerikaner und einer der wenigen westlichen Journalisten, die in der ersten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts zur Recherche nach Tibet reisen durften. Seine Reise startete, so wie fast jede Reise nach Lhasa damals, in Kalimpong, dem Erscheinungsort der Himalayan Times. Kalimpong sei der „jumping-off place“ nach Tibet, so Steele, ein Ort, an dem Osten auf Westen treffe, Nord auf Süd, und die indischen Tiefebenen auf den emporragenden Himalaja. „Hollywood“, attestiert der Journalist, „has missed a bet in overlooking Kalimpong.” Eben jener Grenzort, gelegen im indischen Bundesstaat West-Bengal, nahe der Grenzen zu China, Bhutan und Nepal, steht im Zentrum eines neuen Forschungsprojekts am Exzellenzcluster „Asia & Europe in a Global Context“. Unter der Leitung von Prof. Dr. Birgit Kellner untersuchen Forscher Kalimpong als Schnittstelle für vers...
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Tibetan polemical literature is especially known and enjoyed for its harsh language and offensive comparisons, which stand in marked contrast to the philosophical and doctrinal matters that works of the genre commonly discuss. Drawing... more
Tibetan polemical literature is especially known and enjoyed for its harsh language and offensive comparisons, which stand in marked contrast to the philosophical and doctrinal matters that works of the genre commonly discuss. Drawing from a detailed literary analysis of a particular polemical exchange between Ju Mipam (1846–1912) and Pari Rapsel (1840–1912), this article calls for a distinction between what might be called “rhetorical polemics” and “formal argumentation,” and argues that the former is used to exercise framing functions towards the latter, in both structural and conceptual terms. With regard to conceptual considerations, polemical comparisons play an important role. Through frequent allusions to a stereotypical divide of Buddhist experts in practice-oriented yogis and logic-oriented scholars, these discourses connect to a larger narrative framework about the correct or incorrect transmission of Buddhism on the Tibetan plateau, which individual agents use to characterize their opponents. In so doing, they contribute to the further solidification and promotion of the master narrative that this framework entails.
Research Interests:
This article revisits the assumed existence of a “Mustang group” of Kanjurs, as proposed in a seminal article by Helmut Tauscher and Bruno Lainé in 2015. Drawing from newly discovered manuscript material of canonical collections in... more
This article revisits the assumed existence of a “Mustang group” of Kanjurs, as proposed in a seminal article by Helmut Tauscher and Bruno Lainé in 2015. Drawing from newly discovered manuscript material of canonical collections in Mustang and Dolpo, it adds further evidence for the existence of a larger textual network in the Western and Central Himalayas. Considering this new material also enables a modification of some of the proposed assumptions. In particular, it allows for an investigation of the more distant past, thus providing important insights into the formative temporal context of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, when new Kanjurs were produced from earlier, independent canonical collections.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Guest Editorial EBHR 52
Research Interests:
This paper uses the life trajectory of a particularly well-connected, though not commonly known Tibetan scholar to investigate the complex entanglements of global interests in Tibetan culture and the Buddhist religion with their local... more
This paper uses the life trajectory of a particularly well-connected, though not commonly known Tibetan scholar to investigate the complex entanglements of global interests in Tibetan culture and the Buddhist religion with their local representatives in the Eastern Himalayas. Originally from Lhasa, Rindzin Wangpo (1920–1985) became a long-term resident of Kalimpong, where, in terms of knowledge production, he acted as a crucial link between Tibet and the world beyond it, working as a research assistant to many Western scholars, but also as an assistant to Dorje Tharchin (1890–1976) whose Tibetan-language newspaper Mélong provided Tibetans with access to global events. I will argue that this special position also helped shape his personal life, resulting in his reconsideration of his cultural background and a new orientation as a Buddhist that can be brought to light by examining his own writings on Buddhism and Tibetan culture.
Research Interests:
This introductory essay lays out the conceptual framework for approaching the complex cultural history of the Eastern Himalayan town of Kalimpong and its neighbours as a history of encounters. Taking Mary Louise Pratt's influential... more
This introductory essay lays out the conceptual framework for approaching the complex cultural history of the Eastern Himalayan town of Kalimpong and its neighbours as a history of encounters. Taking Mary Louise Pratt's influential concept of a " contact zone " as a departure point, it scrutinizes current trends in the field of Transcultural Studies to develop a nuanced analytical perspective that highlights and takes in the culturally productive forces of encounters of various sorts. In particular, this approach focuses on the circulatory nature of knowledge production, and acknowledges shifting and multilateral asymmetries of power as driving forces of a vast array of strategies such as the appropriation, translation, and transformation of knowledge, but also of acts of resistance or rejection. In so doing, it underlines the connected nature of the cultural history of the Eastern Himalayas and its relevance for global affairs in the first half of the twentieth century, and contributes to counterbalancing the region's relative neglect in the academic research of the past decades.
Research Interests:
The production of dictionaries has been a standard feature in Europeans' initial engagement with foreign cultures, an activity that aimed to enable intellectual understanding as well as political domination of " the other. " In the case... more
The production of dictionaries has been a standard feature in Europeans' initial engagement with foreign cultures, an activity that aimed to enable intellectual understanding as well as political domination of " the other. " In the case of Tibet, many early dictionaries were produced in a specific historical and political setting, in the contact zones between non-Tibetan and Tibetan agents, which the Himalayan region provided in the eighteenth, nineteenth, and early twentieth centuries. This article uses " modern " dictionaries—that is, dictionaries that organize their entries alphabetically and present these in adjoining columns—as a means of investigating the entanglements between Christian missionaries, British-Indian colonial officials, European academics, and Tibetan scholars as well as the knowledge that these people produced in this context.
Research Interests:
This paper highlights a particular episode in the entangled transmission history of the Bodhi(sattva)caryāvatāra (BCA). This prominent Indian Buddhist work outlines the path of a bodhisattva, the religious ideal of Mahāyāna Buddhism, and... more
This paper highlights a particular episode in the entangled transmission history of the Bodhi(sattva)caryāvatāra (BCA). This prominent Indian Buddhist work outlines the path of a bodhisattva, the religious ideal of Mahāyāna Buddhism, and is nowadays considered among the world classics of religious literature. While it occupied a special position within many traditional Buddhist contexts—and in Tibet in particular—, it is only in the nineteenth century that it gained importance in the Rnying ma tradition and hence permeated all of the Tibetan Buddhist schools. As will be shown, Rdza Dpal sprul (1808–1887), a charismatic yogin and scholar, can be placed at the centre of this development. His focus on a practice-oriented approach and a wide dissemination of the BCA's content not only fostered increasing interest within his own surroundings, but also opened up avenues for approaching this text that have come to be relevant in modern settings.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
This publication includes both a comprehensive catalogue as well as a first analysis of the Kanjur kept in the palace of Shey, Ladakh. This compilation of manually copied manuscripts not only offers unique insights into the local workings... more
This publication includes both a comprehensive catalogue as well as a first analysis of the Kanjur kept in the palace of Shey, Ladakh. This compilation of manually copied manuscripts not only offers unique insights into the local workings of Himalayan Buddhist manuscript production but also, as a collection of Buddhist canonical literature, figures as an important link in the translocal transmission of the Tibetan canon. Both of these aspects are addressed in the introduction, which discusses the features of the manuscripts, the information that can be gathered about their production, their textual contents, and the conclusions that can be drawn about the relationships to other Kanjurs. Considerations of the contents of the Shey Kanjur are informed by a detailed catalogue of the manuscripts, which forms the main part of this publication.
Research Interests:
Namgyal Monastery lies at an altitude of 3,850 meters, on a hill west of Lo Möntang, the old capital of the Mustang kingdom, a very remote region in the Nepalese-Tibetan borderlands. While its foundation goes back to earlier times, its... more
Namgyal Monastery lies at an altitude of 3,850 meters, on a hill west of Lo Möntang, the old capital of the Mustang kingdom, a very remote region in the Nepalese-Tibetan borderlands. While its foundation goes back to earlier times, its fifteenth- century enlargement established it as a thriving Buddhist institution providing a home to a huge number of monks and a remarkable collection of Buddhist material culture including statues, thangkas, and manuscripts.
Among these various sacred objects, two collections of Buddhist canonical literature stand out for their age and complex illumination programmes.This book presents the visual and textual contents of these two sets of Buddhist manuscripts and analyses
them from the perspectives of manuscript studies, art history, and textual analysis.
Among these various sacred objects, two collections of Buddhist canonical literature stand out for their age and complex illumination programmes.This book presents the visual and textual contents of these two sets of Buddhist manuscripts and analyses
them from the perspectives of manuscript studies, art history, and textual analysis.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Religious Revival and Artistic Renaissance across the Himalayas
Guest Editors: Davide Torri and Markus Viehbeck
Guest Editors: Davide Torri and Markus Viehbeck
Research Interests:
This collaborative study investigates the hill station of Kalimpong and the larger Eastern Himalayan borderlands as a paradigmatic case of a " contact zone. " In the colonial and early post-colonial era, this space enabled a variety of... more
This collaborative study investigates the hill station of Kalimpong and the larger Eastern Himalayan borderlands as a paradigmatic case of a " contact zone. " In the colonial and early post-colonial era, this space enabled a variety of encounters: between (British) India, Tibet, and China, but also Nepal and Bhutan; between Christian mission and Himalayan religions; between global flows of money and information and local markets and practices. Using a plethora of local and global historical sources, the contributing essays follow the pathways of people from diverse cultural backgrounds and investigate the new forms of knowledge and practice that resulted from their encounters and their shifting power relations. The volume provides not only a nuanced historiography of Kalimpong and its adjacent areas, but also a conceptual model for studying transcultural processes in borderland spaces and their colonial and post-colonial dynamics.
Research Interests:
Darjeeling and Kalimpong, British imperial towns in the eastern Himalayan borderlands at the juncture of Bhutan, China, India, Nepal, Sikkim, and Tibet, played a vital yet under-studied role as transcultural hubs of a hybrid modernity.... more
Darjeeling and Kalimpong, British imperial towns in the eastern Himalayan borderlands at the juncture of Bhutan, China, India, Nepal, Sikkim, and Tibet, played a vital yet under-studied role as transcultural hubs of a hybrid modernity. This themed section explores “connected histories,” paying particular attention to these Himalayan towns as a modern crossroads for empires, ethnicities, religions, and cultural and economic mobilities. It offers alternative approaches that connect and intersect the history of local places and spaces with broader narratives of global history. Contributors draw upon a range of perspectives to frame their historical explorations of Darjeeling, Kalimpong and the eastern Himalayas in terms of local, regional, and global circulation, transnational connections, and transcultural encounters.
Research Interests:
Contains detailled description and abstracts of all conference presentations
Research Interests:
Contains all abstracts of the conference presentations; conference was held in Kalimpong, March 06-08, 2015