Journey to Mustang (Bibliotheca Himalayica)

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About the Book In this new edition of his travalogue of an exploratory trek through western Nepal in 1952, the legendary linguist and Tibetologist, Guiseppi Tucci, describes his experiences and discoveries as the first 20th century western scholor to travel through the region. His account preserves ani invaluable recor of the art, culture, social and religious practices of the inhabitants of Mustang, prior to the inevitable changes that have since occurred, with the intrusion of the modern world and regional politics into this ancient land.

Preface I had been to Nepal several times before, in the tracks of the Italian missionaries (almost all of them, as it happened, from Le Marche, my own province) who penetrated there in the 18th century. They spent fifty years preaching there, and built a little church which must have stood near the site of the present palace of the Prime Minister's spiritual adviser. The accounts they wrote of their travels, which throw light on Nepalese affairs for almost the whole of the eighteenth century, have been published in seven volumes by the Italian Institute for the Middle and Far East (MEO), in cooperation with the Italian National Library, under the editorship of Professor.

Petech So this was not my first visit to Nepal. The other times I had buried myself in the libraries, dragging ancient manuscripts out of their dusty sleep-manuscripts of great importance for the history of Indian thought, particularly Buddhism. I had not been far from the valley, for even those very few people the Maharaja permitted to enter his territory were forbidden to go into the interior.

These trips to Nepal had been almost incidental to the eight explorations of Tibet, but during those very explorations the importance of Nepal as the link between Tibet and India became more and more apparent. The profusion of art in Tibetan monasteries took its original impetus from the Nepalese schools. The nightmares and visions of Tibetan initiates' chapels took shape and form in the shuddering visions of Nepalese esoteric communities. Then, through the gaps and valleys, which eat into and actually overcome the barrier of the Himalayas, came the Buddhist diaspora, making the link between India and the Trans-himalayan region. Along with Buddhism, Indian thought flooded into Central Asia, spreading out towards China, and Nepal both channelled and transformed it. So there was a need to shed light on this region, to trace the trends and variations of its art, put its chronology in order, in fact to reconstruct the history not only of the capital and other important towns, as Lévi, the French orientalist, had done at the end of last century, but of the whole country, especially the western part, where dozens of governments had succeeded each other in a still unknown series of complicated events. What existed in those areas? Had culture been born there or come in from outside? It was to seek the to these questions that I made my most recent journey. Nowadays, more money is being spent than ever before, very often on things which I am unable to see the use of - perhaps I am not perceptive enough. And yet it has never been more difficult to find money for projects which strike me as being most deserving, not because they are pet projects of mine or because I am taking part in them, but because they maintain our cultural and spiritual presence and cooperation in countries which are being brought closer and closer to us by the course of history. When 1 realised that with all the money I had, with advances on my journal, newspaper articles and possible lectures in India or elsewhere, I would still not be able to put together even a fifth of the finance needed, and that my proposals were all collapsing one after the other, I did what I had done once before, for the expedition to Lhasa, and turned to the Hon.

**Contents and Sample Pages**