ABSTRACT
Buddhist book culture has been historically associated with traveling texts that spread Buddha’s teachings across Asia. Literary artifacts emerged over time as nodes in networks that connected many people, technologies, and materials as well as different forms of engagement with the written word. Paper, wood, inks, and pigments have connected different ecological niches, linking a ‘galaxy’ of communities with different histories and different perspectives on what constitutes center and margins and their mutual relationships. While the consolidation of nation-state borders has often challenged flows across these ‘borderlands,’ new technologies have opened up avenues of communication with ‘digital dharma’ becoming an iconic form of ‘vernacularized modernity.’ Scriptures in digital form have thus expanded in new directions the web of trails that crisscrosses Himalayan transnational landscapes.
