The Divinity School is pleased to announce that Matthew T. Kapstein, Numata Visiting Professor Emeritus of Buddhist Studies, has been awarded The 2024 Toshihide Numata Book Award for his recent book Tibetan Manuscripts and Early Printed Books, Vol. 1: Elements (Cornell University Press, 2024).

The Toshihide Numata Book Award in Buddhism is presented on an annual basis to an outstanding book in the area of Buddhist studies. The Award is administered by the Center for Buddhist Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. Members of this year’s selection committee had high praise for the volume, both for the quality, breadth, and depth of research by Kapstein and his team of collaborators, and for the lavish production of the volume, which includes copious high-quality illustrations. One evaluator called it “a stunning contribution…. Nothing even close has ever before been attempted, making the success of this volume all the more impressive.” Another said it was “an essential reference work for the next generation of scholars of Tibetan Studies. And a third concurred: “a must-read for anyone interested in ‘the history of the book’ whether in the Tibetan area or elsewhere.”

In the volume, Kapstein and an international team of specialists provide a comprehensive introduction to the material and aesthetic features of the wide range of Tibetan books, described in detail and illustrated with copious full-color photographs, and explore the major categories of traditional Tibetan books, introducing their specific features and the main approaches to their study.

Matthew T. Kapstein is Professor Emeritus in the division of Religious Studies of the École Pratique des Hautes Études in Paris and Numata Visiting Professor Emeritus of Buddhist Studies at the University of Chicago Divinity School. He was formerly director of the Tibetan Studies research team of the Center for the Study of East Asian Civilizations (Centre de recherche sur les civilisations de l’Asie orientale), Paris. His past publications include: The Tibetan Assimilation of Buddhism: Conversion, Contestation and Memory (2000), Reason’s Traces: Identity and Interpretation in Indian and Tibetan Buddhist Thought (2001), The Tibetans (2006), The Rise of Wisdom Moon (Clay Sanskrit Library 2009) and the edited volumes The Presence of Light: Divine Radiance and Religious Experience (2004), Buddhism Between Tibet and China (2009), and, with Kurtis Schaeffer and Gray Tuttle, Sources of Tibetan Tradition (2013).