Treasury of Lives
Published by Jeff Wallman on 08 Jun 2010
The Shelley and Donald Rubin Foundation is pleased to announce the release of its new website, Treasury of Lives. The mission of the Treasury of Lives is to provide well-researched and clearly written biographies of all known masters of Tibetan religion, both Buddhist and Bon, each illustrated with portraits. Since its inception several years ago the site has been closely linked with TBRC. Its database of names comes from TBRC, and TBRC’s leadership, particularly Gene Smith and Jeff Wallman, have been instrumental in defining the vision of the site and in forging the plan for its development. Many of the same exceptional technical team that built the new TBRC site are also behind the Treasury of Lives: Theresa Reed as the the information architect, Sean ODwyer as the designer and usability expert, and Trevor Conn as the principal software developer.
TBRC users will find a link to the Treasury of Lives on each TBRC Person record page, in the “expand your search” menu on the upper left-hand side of the screen. Each biography on the Treasury of Lives site also links back to TBRC via a dedicated TBRC button.
The Treasury of Lives presents biographies of masters of all religious traditions of Tibet and the Himalaya. Users can access these via several avenues: Religious Tradition, Geography, Historical Period, and Alphabetical by either Wylie transcription or phonetics (using the RMA system, with alternate systems accounted for). One can also simply type in the name of the lama one is searching for using both Wyle or a phonetic spelling.
All images are linked to the Himalayan Art Resources site, whose director, Jeff Watt, has also been generous in his support for the site.
The Treasury of Lives is a growing site that depends on contributions of biographies from scholars and practitioners. The Our Community portion of the website, which will enable users to submit and discuss work, is currently under development. Short biographies of people involved in the project will also be available. If you would like to submit a biography, please email Alex Gardner, the general editor, at agardner@sdrubin.org.
Additional enhancements now in development include an option for searching via incarnation line and abbatial succession, and the ability to view lineage tangkas and access the biographies of depicted historical figures via clicking on their image.