image of Moving out of the Tibetan Period: Stein Painting 3 from Dunhuang
BuddhistRoad Guest Lecture

Moving out of the Tibetan Period: Stein Painting 3 from Dunhuang


CERES Palais, room "Ruhrpott" (4.13)

Guest lecture by Imre Galambos (Cambridge)

The lecture is available live at Zoom. Please pre-register here until 25 February 2021, 12 pm.

Stein painting 3 (Ch.xxxviii.005) at the British Museum is a silk painting with a symmetrical composition of two Avalokiteśvara figures facing each other. With 147.3 × 105.3 cm in size, this is among the larger paintings from Dunhuang. At the top centre of the composition, between the two figures is a donor inscription inside a yellow cartouche. The inscription contains no date but has been dated to the mid-ninth century on the basis of a supposed reference to the Tibetan control of the region. Imre Galambos examines the inscription and argues that it does not refer to the Tibetan rule of Dunhuang but is simply about a woman who lives away from her original home. His presentation also shows that we can improve on the reading of the inscription, which in turn modifies our translation. In view of these considerations, the manuscript almost certainly dates to the tenth century.

Contact

Photograph of Prof. Dr. Carmen Meinert

Prof. Dr. Carmen Meinert

Universitätsstr. 90a
44789  Bochum
Office 1.05
+49 234 32-28783
carmen.meinert@rub.de