HIMALAYAN VISUAL CULTURE

Dialogue  April-June 2009 , Volume 10 No. 4 Some Inscribed Bronze Masterpieces from Western Inner Himalayas: A Stylistic Appraisal A.K. Singh This paper is focussed on some selected artworks discovered from the western Trans-Himalayan region, formerly constituent states of Western Tibet (gNari-Khorsum). The paper attempts to present an aesthetic overview on the beginning and burgeoning of a unique artistic culture on Indian periphery which later resulted in to Indo-Tibetan aesthetic expression. Artworks on view and und er discussion were mainly discovered from Upper Sutlej valley (in Tibetan chronicles called Khunu), Ladakh and Zanskar by the author during his more than two decades field work in the region stretching between upper catchments of the rivers Indus and Sutlej. Aesthetically superb in manifestation, artworks under investigation present a very interesting case of diffusion of an art style that is Kashmiri, about which still not much is known. In medieval period fro

Tourism and Attitude of Host Community in Peripheral Region- A Case Study of Ladakh Priyanka Singh and A. K. Singh * Department of History of Art and Tourism Management, Faculty of Arts, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, India. Abstract Host community is an integral part of tourism system at the destination and thereby constitutes an important segment of overall tourist experience. Hence, it is important to understand the attitude of host community towards tourism and their willingness to establish and develop tourism industry. The research was conducted in Ladakh, which is located on the north-eastern periphery of Jammu & Kashmir state of India. Recently there has been a significant growth in tourism in Ladakh.  This paper is intended to explore how residents of Ladakh consider tourism as affecting their community, and in that way providing a framework for research to investigate attitude of residents toward tourism in Ladakh and the factors which are influencing it

Some Bronze Masterpieces of Indo Tibetan Art Inscribed in the Name of Ordained Prince N a gar a j: A Stylistic Appraisal Present paper focuses on some Buddhist bronzes bearing single line inscription on pedestal “Lha Na ga ra dza ” in old Tibetan script. The images under discussion were discovered by the author from the frontier district Kinnaur of Himachal Pradesh, India which has been referred as different territory of mNgaris skhor gsum under the name Khun nu in old Tibetan texts. Under a documentation project, conducted from 1992 to 1996, the author registered more than 800 bronze icons, mostly unpublished, This huge corpus of the cult images includes different stylistic provenance and their development, however all grouped under a common term Indo-Tibetan art style, many of them bear the names of the donors and patrons, even some records name of the artists (Singh 1994:110). In the history of Western Tibet (mNgaris), Nagaraj (988-1026 AD