A lot of these artefacts have never been seen on display before.
- Mark Elliott
Buddha’s Word: The Life of Books in Tibet and Beyond puts on display for the first time the museum's astonishing Buddhist artefacts and brings together collections and research from MAA, the Sedgwick Museum of Earth Sciences, and the Fitzwilliam Museum – as well as the University Library, the Department of Archaeology and Anthropology, the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, and Emmanuel and Pembroke Colleges.
Historians, anthropologists, linguists, art historians, chemists and material scientists have all contributed to this unique view into the complex world of the book in Buddhism. Exhibits of particular note include some of the oldest illuminated Buddhist manuscripts from the first decades of the eleventh century, specimens of skilfully illuminated wooden covers and a quartet of scroll paintings brought back from the controversial Younghusband Expedition.
Dr Hildegard Diemberger, Co-Curator, describes the exhibition as “telling the story of the incredible journeys that the words of the Buddha have taken – crossing mountains and oceans and taking different material forms in different places.”
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Image: Buddha's Word at MAA
Credit: Sir Cam
Reproduced courtesy of the University of Cambridge
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