Peter Aufschnaiter, the Making of a Topographer of Tibet ‘on the Way’, with Notes on a lam yig from Western Tibet, 1944

The volume Recent Research on Tibet testifies to the rich panorama of topics currently being explored in academic studies of Tibet and the Himalayas. It brings together a wide range of international scholarly contributions, covering subjects such as agentic evocative objects; circularity in material culture, illustrated by the example of yak dung; scapulimancy among pastoralist communities on the Tibetan Plateau; Tibetic kinship terminology; funerary rituals, practices, and objects; Bon studies; Buddhist warfare and Tantric statecraft; the scientific legacy of Austrian explorers (Peter Aufschnaiter, Herbert Tichy); interactions between Tibet and neighbouring countries; and analyses of rare (auto)biographical accounts of prominent historical religious figures. All papers in this volume are dedicated to Guntram Hazod, an eminent Austrian scholar whose work has left an indelible mark on contemporary Tibetan studies over many years.