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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

On one sunny afternoon on Berkeley campus more than eleven years ago, I sat down with my advisor and mentor Joanna Williams on a bench outside the Kroeber Hall, asking a question about the lecture she just gave. In her erudite lecture, Joanna showed the class a number of images of Indian Buddhist manuscript paintings, many of which I saw for the first time, and mentioned that some images are placed in reverse direction to the text. This perplexing, paradoxical phenomenon of unrelated nature of the text and images in Buddhist manuscripts was enough to hook me to delve further into the world of illustrated Buddhist manuscripts. It is hard to believe that I spent more than ten years working on illustrated manuscripts and the Buddhist book cult, but it is equally hard to believe that the book is done.

From this quotidian beginning, Joanna has been a great mentor and an enthusiastic supporter of my project. I thank her for her wisdom and warm support throughout my graduate years and beyond. I was fortunate to have another great mentor, Patricia Berger, and I thank Pat for her continuous encouragement and insights. I thank Alexander von Rospatt, also at Berkeley, who has provided much needed guidance and resources for this project in its initial stage. Perhaps due not to my own merit but to the merit of the project, I have met many scholars of great wisdom and erudition whose research and intellectual rigor have improved my understanding of the material at hand. I thank Gregory Schopen for always inspiring me to look and think beyond the obvious with wit and rigor. I also thank Rob Linrothe for his scholarship on Esoteric Buddhist iconography and for answering my endless questions and queries. I am grateful to Christian Luczanits, who has been extremely patient and generous with resources. My understanding of the Pāla manuscripts owes much to Janice Leoshko’s rigorous studies of the Pāla material. My initial introduction to the field of Indian Buddhist art owes much to Juhyung Rhi, who remains a great mentor. I am grateful for the generous help I got from Phyllis Granoff, Tamara Sears, and Andrew Quintman in solving various problems this book posed to me. Further away from home, Gerd Mevissen, Eva Allinger, and Jorrit Britschgi have been generous with their time and resources, and I thank them sincerely.

Much writing for this book was done at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, where I held a Mellon fellowship for assistant professors during 2009–2010. The Institute provided a perfect environment for writing this book, and I am most grateful for their generous support. I thank the staff members of the School of Historical Studies for their kind help with my book, in particular, Marian Zelazny, Terrie Bramley, and Maria Mercedes Tuya. I’ve benefited greatly from participating in various seminars and colloquia of the School of Historical Studies, in particular, Art History seminar run by Yve Alain-Bois, East Asian Studies seminar run by Nichola di Cosmo, and the Medieval Table run by Caroline Bynum. I thank all the participants of these seminars for their insightful feedbacks and critical comments. Lauren Minsky became a good friend and provided much moral and intellectual support throughout the writing of this book. While at the Institute, I was also fortunate to meet Sarah Fraser, whose continuous encouragement and wise advice have kept me focused on this book.

I continued to write this book while on full-time faculty duty at Vanderbilt University. The kind support of my former colleagues and friends in the History of Art department at Vanderbilt has been invaluable in finishing this manuscript. I thank James Bloom, Vivien Fryd, Leonard Folgarait, Christopher Jones, Tracy Miller, Betsey Robinson, Anne Hill, and all the members of that fine department for the cheers and encouragements that they have given me over the years. Tracy has been a great guide for many knotty corners that I had to navigate in writing this book, and talking with Betsey about our respective books over sushi dinners made the process more enjoyable. In Nashville, I was fortunate to make great friends whose emotional and moral support helped me write this book. I thank Lisa and Mickey Julien, Miss Ann Lee, Miss Shirley, Miss Betsy, and Katarina Tsai. I can still hear Lisa and Miss Ann, albeit not knowing each other, always asking me the same question, “Where is your book?” I am glad that I can finally tell them here it is. Also in Nashville, Shubhra Sharma became a close friend, and her cheers and moral support have been indispensable in working on this book.

The Vanderbilt Research Scholar Grants, American Institute of Indian Studies Junior Fellowship, and Asia Cultural Council Research Grant have funded research trips to many different locations where the Indian and Nepalese Buddhist manuscripts are currently kept. Many institutions in India and Nepal generously granted me access to their precious collections and allowed me to take photographs, many of which appear throughout this book. I thank the staff members of the following institutions for their help during my research: Asiatic Society Kolkata; Asiatic Society Mumbai; Indian Museum; National Museum New Delhi; Orissa State Museum; Baroda Picture Museum and Gallery; Bharat Kala Bhavan (Banaras Hindu University); Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) site museums at Nālandā, Antichak (Vikramaśīla), Ratnagiri, and Sarnath; National Archive Kathmandu; and Kaiser Library, Kathmandu. In India, I was fortunate to meet so many kind friends and colleagues who openheartedly welcomed me into their homes: Arundhati di, formerly of ASI; Anasua di of Indian Museum; Sarla di formerly of Bharat Kala Bhavan; and late Mr. Tagore and Mrs. Tagore, who have been great supporters of my project. My Bengali didi, Sharothi Roy, not only provided nutritious meals but also traveled to many sites with me as research assistant. I also thank Min Bahadur Shakya and ten Vajrācārya priests of the Kwā Bāhā guthi for their service and help with my field research. Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey kindly provided financial support for the images included in this book. At Rutgers, Joan Marter, Catherine Puglisi, and Carla Yanni have given much needed practical advice on securing resources for publication of images. Support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for the South Asia Across the Disciplines Series made the publication of this book possible. I thank Reed Malcolm of the University of California Press for believing in this project and for convincing me to make the book more streamlined and focused. Insightful comments from the readers and the faculty editorial committee of the UC Press proved much helpful in this last process.

My dear friends from graduate schools deserve a fair share of the merits accrued in completing this book. I thank Catherine Becker, Bokyung Kim, Sonal Khullar, Nancy Lin, and Wenshing Chou for freely lending their ears to listen to me. Catherine, in particular, has seen me through many phases of crisis that I faced working on this project from its inception, and deserves a bodhisattva medal, if there is one. In terms of my own karmic debt, I should have started this note with thanking my parents, Drs. Seongsoo Kim and Jeong-guk Kim, who not only raised me to be a functioning yet headstrong person but also provided generous emotional and financial support throughout this project. My mom has showered me with confidence and love often expressed through many express-mailed packages of organic, often homemade food and other goodies, and my dad, a disciplinarian in the family and an admirable master in his profession, has been a role model for a successful professional career. The Kim family fund coming out of my father’s pocket has funded a number of figures in this book. I am also fortunate to have amazing and loving siblings, my sister, Hyoyeon, and my brother, Jaebum, whose constant cheers and emotional support have kept me focused on working on this book.

The most credit in completing this book should go to my wonderful husband, Myungkoo Kang, who is truly my better half, and whose sense of humor, insight, and critical spirit always keep me balanced and grounded, and to our beloved son Aroon, whose wit and mischievousness have given me many blissful moments of break from writing this book, and who despite his tender age thoughtfully tries to understand that mommy needs to work. Without them, this book would not have seen completion. With much love, I thank them.

Jinah Kim

Princeton, January 2012