Description: The thirty-four essays in this volume follow the particular interests of Leonard van der Kuijp, whose groundbreaking research in Tibetan intellectual and cultural history imbued his students with an abiding sense of curiosity and discovery.
As part of Leonard van der Kuijp's research in Tibetan history, as he patiently and expertly revealed treasures of the Tibetan intellectual tradition in fourteenth-century Tsang, or seventeenth-century Lhasa, or eighteenth-century Amdo, he developed an international community of colleagues and students. The thirty-four essays in this volume follow the particular interests of the honoree and express the comprehensive research that his international cohort have engaged in alongside his generous tutelage over the course of forty years. He imbued his students with the abiding sense of curiosity and discovery that can be experienced through every one of his writings, and that can be found as well in these new essays in intellectual, cultural, and institutional history by Christopher Beckwith, the late Hubert Decleer, Franz-Karl Ehrhard, Jörg Heimbel and David Jackson, Isabelle Henrion-Dourcy, Nathan Hill, Matthew Kapstein, Kurtis Schaeffer, Michael Witzel, Allison Aitken, Yael Bentor, Pieter Verhagen, Todd Lewis, William McGrath, Peter Schwieger, Gray Tuttle, and others.Brief description: Leonard W. J. van der Kuijp is Professor of Tibetan and Himalayan Studies at Harvard University, where he chairs the Committee on Inner Asian and Altaic Studies. He is a former MacArthur Fellow and has written numerous works on Tibetan history and Buddhist epistemology, including Bcom ldan ral gri (1227-1305) on Buddhist Epistemology and Logic: His Commentary on Dignaga's Pramanasamuccaya (co-author Arthur P. McKeown), An Early Tibetan Survey of Buddhist Literature: The Bstan pa rgyas pa nyi 'od of Bcom ldan rig ral (co-author Kurtis R. Schaeffer), Contributions to the Development of Tibetan Buddhist Epistemology: From the Eleventh to the Thirteenth Century, and over ninety articles. His research focuses on Indo-Tibetan Buddhist thought, Tibetan Buddhist intellectual history, and premodern Tibetan relations with Mongolia and China.
Review Quotes: "The happy marriage of philology and humanity is evident in van der Kuijp's oeuvre, as well as in this impressive volume. This is essential reading for all who are interested in the cultural, intellectual, and institutional history of Tibet."-- "Dominique Townsend, author of A Buddhist Sensibility: Aesthetic Education at Tibet's Mindröling Monastery"