ORAL COMMENTARIES
14,500 hours (more than one and a half years of continuous listening time) of detailed oral commentary to the classical texts of India, Tibet and the Himalayan region, given by the most accomplished Tibetan lamas, scholars, physicians and artists of the 20th century.
VIDEO DOCUMENTATION OF THE RITUAL ARTS
Six hundred hours of video material documenting the classical dance, music and ritual arts traditions.
MASTERWORKS OF TIBETAN ART & APPPRENTICE TRAINING RESOURCE
Documents the knowledge and skills of two of Tibet’s greatest 20th century classical painters and includes: high resolution images of iconographically accurate masterworks; detailed annotated line drawings of the sacred geometry which underlies each of the classical iconographic elements; commentarial material describing the symbolism of the key iconographic elements; and 200 hours of video documenting the painting of works by master artists from blank canvas through to completion.
TEXTS
A developing resource of classical texts digitised by the partner libraries in India and Nepal. Once online, the multimedia library’s work area will support the integrated study of digitised textual materials from any library source, together with related oral commentarial recordings, and video and still image documentation.
STILL IMAGES
18,000 photographs of ritual arts related objects (tsakali, butter sculptures, etc.) together with photographs of lineage holders and monasteries.
Currently the above collections are available for study by resident scholars and students at the Central University of Tibetan Studies at Sarnath. Sub-components of the collections are also available for study at the partner libraries in India and Nepal.
It is expected that the entire resource will be available online by April 2012.
In addition to its partnership with the major monasteries of India and Nepal, the Orient Foundation for Arts and Culture is also working in cooperation with the Institute of Tibetan Classics and the Asian Classics Input Project to integrate the extensive textual collections of these two leading Tibetan cultural conservancy organisations into the online library system. For a multimedia introduction to this initiative please visit: www.tibetanknowledge.org