A Historical Atlas of Tibet. By Karl E. Ryavec. University Of Chicago Press, May 8, 2015. 216 pages. ISBN-10: 0226732444 ISBN-13: 978-0226732442
摘要
The Tibetan cultural sphere that historically sat atop the Himalayan plateau has long captivated scholars, missionaries, imperial powers, political activists, and spiritual devotees. However, outside the region, “Tibet” often signals less a place than a source, one supplying goods, refugees, spiritual transmission, natural resources, or potential converts. Ryavec's stunning book is a field–defining statement about Tibet as place. The product of twelve years of research and eight years of mapmaking, A Historical Atlas of Tibet maps religious and cultural sites across the Tibetan cultural sphere from the Paleolithic and Neolithic to the present day, arranged into five main stages that include Tibet's Yarlung Empire (c. 600–900 CE), the Mongol conquests that began in the thirteenth century, the reign of Dalai Lamas during the Qing (1644–1911), and the remapping associated with the arrival of the People's Republic of China in the mid‐twentieth century. Of great interest to scholars working on materials along the peripheries of Tibetan territory are maps that document and beautifully visualize the gradual spread of its Buddhist institutions across North China, Inner and Outer Mongolia, and Beijing. Ryavec's book not only provides geospatial coordinates for religious and cultural sites in Inner and East Asia; it also employs the full mapmaker's toolbox to spatialize and temporalize population, language, and natural resources. In the richly illustrated pages of this unique and overdue contribution, readers see Buddhist life as just one component part of an entire physical, cultural, political, and economic topography.
