Buddhist Stupas in Asia: The Shape of Perfection (Lonely Planet Pictorial)

by Joe Cummings

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Editorial Reviews

When the Buddha was dying, he instructed his followers to cremate his body and enclose his remains inside four separate monuments or "stupa-mounds." These manmade "axial mountains" became the prototype for the monuments that are so beautifully presented in Joe Cummings's Buddhist Stupas in Asia. Each spread features full-color illustrations or photographs, depicting the varying shapes, designs, and scale of this holy architecture. "People in all the different cultures that have discovered Buddhism seem to have gone crazy with joy, building stupas by the millions," writes Cummings, whose other Lonely Planet titles cover Thailand and Bangkok. "[They are] more than funeral reliquaries. They are memorials, rather, to the immanent possibility of freedom from suffering for all beings." Ten pages of transparent architectural overlays explain how the sacred meets function. This is entertaining learning at its best--a book that's loaded with knowledge, yet packaged with visual appeal. - -Gail Hudson

Customer Reviews

A Neat and Concise Work, 2002-10-06
by schiff (Tel-Aviv Israel)

Buddhist Stupas in Asia: The Shape of Perfection by Bill Wassman (Photographer), et al, offers a sweeping and broad overview of the epitome of Asian Buddhist architecture. The photographs are good and the succinct commentary is informative enough. This is not a book for hardcore history buffs though, as the very short accompanying analysis would not suffice; nevertheless, in most cases the photographs more than compensate by offering quality glimpses of a divine form of architecture. One drawback: some of the photographs are too small for the subject to be really appreciated (some are as small as approx. 3cm x 3cm!). All in all: an enjoyable mind-trip through the very essence of Buddhist architecture.

Joe Cummings and Great Photography, 2002-01-04
by Wyote (Seoul)

This book covers Buddhist architecture across its known history, from its origins in Northern India through Southeast Asia to Indonesia, to Nepal and Tibet, into China, Korea, Japan and Vietnam. The emphasis is clearly on architecture, but it covers the relevant backgrounds in Buddhist art and philosophy as well. If you want a book about Buddhist cultures or thought, this is not it. But if you want a book about Buddhist architecture, this is a great beginning. It is well-written, well-designed, and the photography is excellent. I wish it were much longer and went into much greater depth... but then it would be much more expensive!

I received this book as a surprise gift, and I think it makes a great gift: it's the kind of thing someone would want and enjoy, but would not buy for themselves.

The author, Joe Cummings, also writes the Lonely Planet guidebooks for Laos, Thailand and Myanmar (Burma), and they are excellent. I've been to all three places, and so I've seen many of the stupas covered in this book, and his guides have helped me more than most do.

a must for Asian art lovers, 2001-10-17
by Robert Bach (Tokyo)

When I opened this book in the bookstore, I was knocked out by the photos, which cover stupas all the way from Taxila, Pakistan, to Tokyo, Japan. The stupa photography is particularly strong in the chapters on India, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Nepal and Tibet. An entire chapter is devoted to Borobudur and satellite stupas in central Java.

Dipping into the text at home, I was pleasantly surprised by how authoritative and complete the coverage of this complex topic was. Not only does the author do an excellent job of explaining the symbolism of stupas in various Buddhist cultures, he also links it to the history of Buddhism throughout Asia, no small task. Although I'm a longtime amateur student of Buddhism and Asian art history myself, I found much new material to ponder.

I was most impressed by the way Mr Cummings has carried out original research as well as reporting on the research of other scholars who came before him. This is something I didn't expect from a hardcover pictorial such as this. Kudos to Lonely Planet for publishing a seriously good book.