1. Bowing with Words: Paper, Ink, and Bodies in Tibetan Buddhist Epistles.
- Author
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Kilby, Christina
- Subjects
- *
THEORY of knowledge (Buddhism) , *EPISTOLARY fiction , *HIERARCHY (Linguistics) , *RITUAL , *TIBETAN Buddhism - Abstract
This article analyzes the ritual dimensions of Tibetan epistolary style. By examining the material aspects of handwritten Tibetan epistles—paper size and shape, script size and style, text spacing and margins—along with the formal instructions found in Tibetan epistolary manuals, I show how an epistle's physical constitution renders two bodies performing a symbolic display of hierarchy on the page. This display of hierarchy is most dramatic in the genre of the epistle offered to a superior, in which the body of the writer bows in homage before the body of the recipient. I use this study to contribute to a Tibetan hermeneutic that reads texts as devotional subjects with ritual agency. More broadly, I also argue that bibliographical analysis (focused on a text's physical production and material features) can radically shift an understanding of the genre in which that text participates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2019
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