Introduction : Text, Image, and the Book -- The Book. Buddhist Books and Their Cultic Use ; Innovations of the Medieval Buddhist Book Cult -- Text and Image. Representing the Perfection of Wisdom, Embodying the Holy Sites ; The Visual World of Buddhist Book Illustrations ; Esoteric Buddhism and the Illustrated Manuscripts -- The People. Social History of the Buddhist Book Cult -- Epilogue : Invoking a Goddess in a Book
Summary
In considering medieval illustrated Buddhist manuscripts as sacred objects of cultic innovation, this book explores how and why the South Asian Buddhist book-cult has survived for almost two millennia to the present. A book "manuscript" should be understood as a form of sacred space: a temple in microcosm, not only imbued with divine presence but also layered with the memories of many generations of users. The author argues that illustrating a manuscript with Buddhist imagery not only empowered it as a three-dimensional sacred object, but also made it a suitable tool for the spiritual transformation of practitioners
