Mapping fifteenth and sixteenth centuries Buddhist printed works in South-Western Tibet. A historical and literary reading

This paper presents a mapping of the 15th and 16th centuries Buddhist printed works from South-Western Tibet. Data were acquired thanks to a Marie Curie Project entitled "Tibetan Book Evolution and Technology" (TiBET), and an AHRC Project entitled "Transforming Technologies and Buddhist Book Culture: The Introduction of Printing and Digital Text Reproduction in Tibetan Societies". Both projects had several aims: 1) to assemble and study extant early Tibetan prints from South-Western Tibet, 2) to build an online database with information on many aspects of prints, 3) to build a map of printing houses of that area, 4) to study the production of Tibetan xylographs and their use, 5) to identify the characteristic stylistic features to locate the provenace of the xylographs. This paper provides a picture of the historical and literary situation in Tibet at that time when local rulers were fighting to gain power and religious schools were struggling to acquire authoritativeness.