Digital Biography: Teaching the Life of the Buddha Using Literature and Art

FAIN: FEL-273882-21

Ariana Maki
University of Virginia (Charlottesville, VA 22903-4833)

Art historical research and writing on the extensive seventeenth-century murals at the Tibetan Buddhist monastery of Jonang Puntsokling for the Life of the Buddha project.

The Life of the Buddha project (LOTB; lifeofthebuddha.org) is the first full-scale study of the life of the Buddha in a Tibetan setting, based on a series of 17th century murals and their associated contemporaneous texts. Three of the mural program’s fifteen panels have been correlated with the extant literature—a biography, a painting manual, and painted inscriptions—and are online on a highly interactive platform. This proposal seeks support for an art historian to correlate the remaining twelve panels with its associated literary sources, and to create project-based learning activities for teaching the relationships between text and image in their wider historical, religious, social, and political contexts. This will significantly expand content, and accordingly, audience, providing easily navigable, fully translated English content for educators addressing world religions, global art history, biographic literature, textual studies and South Asia-focused courses, among others.

Associated Products

the Life of the Buddha (Web Resource)
Title: the Life of the Buddha
Author: Kurtis Schaeffer
Author: Andrew Quintman
Author: Ariana Maki
Abstract: The project website, programmed in Drupal, provides project history and context, team member details and contact information, and the portal to accessing the Mirador-powered platform that allows for close viewing of the murals and their collated textual sources--the narrative account of the Buddha's life (Sun of Faith), the artists' manual (bris yig), and inscriptions on the murals.
Year: 2017
Primary URL: http://lifeofthebuddha.org
Primary URL Description: Landing page for project website
Secondary URL: http://lotb.iath.virginia.edu
Secondary URL Description: Redirect from lifeofthebuddha.org

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