In this paper I follow the social life of the Tibetan books belonging to the Younghusband-Waddell collection. I show how books as literary artefacts can transform from ritual objects into loot, into commodities and into academic treasures and how books can have agency over people, creating networks and shaping identities. Exploring connections between books and people, I look at colonial collecting, Orientalist scholarship and imperial visions from an unusual perspective in which the social life and cultural biography of people and things intertwine and mutually define each other. By following the trajectory of these literary artefacts, I show how their traces left in letters, minutes and acquisition documents give insight into the functioning of academic institutions and their relationship to imperial governing structures and individual aspirations. In particular, I outline the lives of a group of scholars who were involved with this collection in different capacities and whose deeds are unevenly known. This adds a new perspective to the study of this period, which has so far been largely focused on the deeds of key individuals and the political and military setting in which they operated. Finally, I show how the books of this collection have continued to exercise their attraction and moral pressure on twenty-first-century scholars, both Tibetan and international, linking them through digital technology and cyberspace.
目次
ABSTRACT 131 Keywords 131 TIBETAN BOOKS AMONG MEN OF THE PEN, THE SWORD AND THE TROWEL 132 THE ANTECEDENTS: THE ORIENTALISTS' INCREASING DESIRE FOR TIBETAN BOOKS 137 THE ORIENTALISTS' ‘SHOPPING LISTS' FOR THE YOUNGHUSBAND MISSION: BOOKS AS RESEARCH DEVICES AND PRESTIGE ITEMS 141 WADDELL'S ‘COLLECTING’ 143 A HUB FOR THE ARRIVING BOOKS: PRELIMINARY CATALOGUING AND THE ORIENTALISTS' NETWORK 147 Professor Cowell and his pupils 147 C.M. Ridding (1862-1942) 151 L.D. Barnett (1871-1960) 153 F.W. Thomas (1867-1956) 156 THE SUBDIVISION OF THE COLLECTION AND THE BOOKS' LONG SLUMBER 158 THE BOOKS' ENCOUNTERS WITH NEW GENERATIONS OF TIBETOLOGISTS: GENE SMITH IN 1962 AND OTHERS THAT FOLLOWED 163 THE NEW LIFE OF TIBETAN BOOKS IN THE DIGITAL ERA 165 NOTES 166 REFERENCES 169
