Thangka Coffee Table Book
A coffee table book on the Tibetan Buddhist scroll paintings and their line back to Bihar, produced with the Bihar Government and Jagran Media Group.
The Book
Thangka is a coffee table book produced in collaboration with the Bihar Government and Jagran Media Group, documenting the Thangka painting tradition — the scroll paintings of Tibetan Buddhism — and tracing its connection to Bihar, where Buddhism originated.
Thangka painting is known for its meditative detail and spiritual depth, and embodies centuries of devotion, discipline and cultural continuity.
How We Made It
Reproduction as the first constraint. Thangkas are dense, small-detail paintings in which the iconography carries the meaning, so everything about the format — trim size, paper, colour, print process — was decided in service of showing them properly.
The tradition, not just the objects. The book documents Thangka as a living practice — how the paintings are made, by whom, and what the iconography means — rather than presenting them purely as artefacts.
Bihar as origin, honestly framed. Thangka is a Tibetan Buddhist tradition, and Bihar's connection to it runs through the origins of Buddhism rather than through the painting practice. The book carries the thread that way rather than asserting a claim on the painting tradition itself.
Where It Landed
Thousands of copies were printed and distributed to state libraries and institutions across Bihar and India.
