A mid-nineteenth-century ethnographic atlas of the Tibetan world: The British Library’s Wise Collection
-
Diana Lange
Abstract
In the late 1960s, the former British Indian diplomat and Tibetologist Hugh Richardson noticed a collection of maps and drawings in the India Office Library, cataloged as the “Wise Albums”. According to a typewritten note they appeared to be by a Tibetan artist, who had contact with Europeans, and had been commissioned by the writer of the accompanying explanatory texts. They were dated between 1844 and 1862. Using the Wise Collection as a case study, Diana Lange has examined how non-Tibetans gathered and circulated knowledge about Tibet and how this knowledge was interpreted, used and displayed during the nineteenth century. In this chapter, excerpts from her recent publication An Atlas of the Himalayas by a 19th Century Tibetan Lama. A Journey of Discovery are reproduced to provide a general overview of the material and the research results, focusing on the collection’s classification as an “ethnographic atlas” and its role in knowledge production on Tibet in the mid-nineteenth century.
Abstract
In the late 1960s, the former British Indian diplomat and Tibetologist Hugh Richardson noticed a collection of maps and drawings in the India Office Library, cataloged as the “Wise Albums”. According to a typewritten note they appeared to be by a Tibetan artist, who had contact with Europeans, and had been commissioned by the writer of the accompanying explanatory texts. They were dated between 1844 and 1862. Using the Wise Collection as a case study, Diana Lange has examined how non-Tibetans gathered and circulated knowledge about Tibet and how this knowledge was interpreted, used and displayed during the nineteenth century. In this chapter, excerpts from her recent publication An Atlas of the Himalayas by a 19th Century Tibetan Lama. A Journey of Discovery are reproduced to provide a general overview of the material and the research results, focusing on the collection’s classification as an “ethnographic atlas” and its role in knowledge production on Tibet in the mid-nineteenth century.
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Frontmatter I
- Preface and acknowledgements V
- Contents VII
- Introduction: Regionally specified knowledge compendia between encyclopedia and chorography 1
-
I Universal history, encyclopedia, and chorography: Early modern practices and forms of knowledge compilation
- The local, the regional, and the universal in knowledge compilations: Observations on the Codex Aldenburgensis 41
- Encyclopedia and dictionaries in premodern and early modern Japan: Chinese heritage and the local reordering of knowledge 95
- Imago et descriptio: Narrating Sicily in the modern period 147
-
II Creating and organizing New Spanish knowledge: Early colonial compendia and “cultural encyclopedias”
- Dreams and the sacred thresholds of P’urhépecha power in the Relación de Michoacán 175
- Constructing a native heritage in New Spain? Bernardino de Sahagún’s Florentine Codex (1577) as a “cultural encyclopedia” 209
- Order and organization of knowledge on the New World in José de Acosta’s Historia natural y moral de las Indias (1590) 323
- The problem solver: Colonial knowledge, authority, and the compilation of natural marvels in Juan de Cárdenas’s Problemas y secretos (1591) 339
-
III Writing history and depicting knowledge: Compendia and “cultural encyclopedias” from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries
- Mastering the chaos of cross-cultural encounter in Andrés Pérez de Ribas’s Historia de los triumphos de nuestra santa fee (1645) 363
- Jesuit historiography and the making of the Kingdom of Quito: Juan de Velasco’s Historia del Reino de Quito (1789) 399
- A mid-nineteenth-century ethnographic atlas of the Tibetan world: The British Library’s Wise Collection 423
- Notes on the contributors 445
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Frontmatter I
- Preface and acknowledgements V
- Contents VII
- Introduction: Regionally specified knowledge compendia between encyclopedia and chorography 1
-
I Universal history, encyclopedia, and chorography: Early modern practices and forms of knowledge compilation
- The local, the regional, and the universal in knowledge compilations: Observations on the Codex Aldenburgensis 41
- Encyclopedia and dictionaries in premodern and early modern Japan: Chinese heritage and the local reordering of knowledge 95
- Imago et descriptio: Narrating Sicily in the modern period 147
-
II Creating and organizing New Spanish knowledge: Early colonial compendia and “cultural encyclopedias”
- Dreams and the sacred thresholds of P’urhépecha power in the Relación de Michoacán 175
- Constructing a native heritage in New Spain? Bernardino de Sahagún’s Florentine Codex (1577) as a “cultural encyclopedia” 209
- Order and organization of knowledge on the New World in José de Acosta’s Historia natural y moral de las Indias (1590) 323
- The problem solver: Colonial knowledge, authority, and the compilation of natural marvels in Juan de Cárdenas’s Problemas y secretos (1591) 339
-
III Writing history and depicting knowledge: Compendia and “cultural encyclopedias” from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries
- Mastering the chaos of cross-cultural encounter in Andrés Pérez de Ribas’s Historia de los triumphos de nuestra santa fee (1645) 363
- Jesuit historiography and the making of the Kingdom of Quito: Juan de Velasco’s Historia del Reino de Quito (1789) 399
- A mid-nineteenth-century ethnographic atlas of the Tibetan world: The British Library’s Wise Collection 423
- Notes on the contributors 445
