Imagining Tibet: Perceptions, Projections and Fantasies

Scarcely has a region captured popular imagination as has Tibet. In the past century, the Western view of Tibet evolved from backward shamanistic theocracy, to exotic Shangri-la promising immortality, to an enlightened society now ravaged by outside aggression. Where did such ideas come from and why did they change? Imagining Tibet represents the first comprehensive attempt to explore such portrayals of Tibet in their aesthetic. intellectual and spiritual dimensions. It traces the earliest roots of these images in the writings of explorers and missionaries, progressing through the depictions emploed by Theosophists and scholars, uo to contemporary vies of political activists and Buddhist practitioners. Ever since European power encroached on the foothills of the Himalays, Tibet has excited the Western imagination. This important book should be read by everyone interested in the origin and subtext of such fascination and imagery. - Tsering Shakya, author of The Dragon in the Land of the Snows: A History of Modern Tibet Since 1947.