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[Paper] The Monastery of Tholing in 1933

2019, Perspectives on Tibetan Culture. A Small Garland of Forget-me-nots Offered to Elena De Rossi Filibeck, Edited by Michela Clemente, Oscar Nalesini and Federica Venturi. Special issue of Revue d'Etudes Tibétaines

Abstract

In 2014, I discovered at Tucci's last home in San Polo dei Cavalieri, a tiny, pencil written, booklet containing the field-notes taken by Tucci in 1933, while exploring the monastery of Tholing. The notes are extremely bare, but Tucci added to the descriptions of statues and paintings the frame number of the photographs taken by Ghersi at the same time, thus allowing an almost complete and certain identification of those photographs. The pages on Tholing are fully transcribed in the appendix. The notebook, as well as all other documents and items found at Tucci's home, belonges to the library of the former National Museum of Oriental Art, and is nowadays stored in the premises of the Museum of Civilizations in Rome.