Lokesh Chandra : A Dictionary of Buddhist Iconography (15 Volumes)

Since the Buddha was shown on a coin issued by the Kushan Emperor Kaniska, there have been a bewildering variety of Buddhist icons that have been the subject of a half-century-long effort to identify, classify, define, and delineate. It is an extension of the extensive iconic study and materials that the author’s father, Professor RaghuVira, had done since the 1930s. This Dictionary draws on tens of thousands of index cards, microfilms, pictures, painted scrolls, statues, woodcuts, line drawings, manuscript sketches, and xylographs to depict Buddhist deities. It describes the art that developed in Asia’s hot plains and snowy peaks and spread to neighboring nations including India, Nepal, Buryatia, Mongolia, Tibet, Central Asia, China, Korea, Japan, Sri Lanka, Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia. In addition to the constantly evolving visualizations of great masters who presented an astonishing diversity of divine forms in the dharanis and sadhanas, The Dictionary is a comparative study of hitherto unheard-of geographic differences.