Comments on: Traditional Tibetan Folk Tales

By: http://tinyurl.com/ryaneyre34689

http://tinyurl.com/ryaneyre34689 — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 00:27:12 +0000

“Traditional Tibetan Folk Tales � Tibet Talk” was a good blog
post and therefore I really was very happy to
find the blog. Thank you,Irish

By: Carol Thomas Martinez

Carol Thomas Martinez — Wed, 14 Nov 2012 03:07:58 +0000

Hello,
I am the great granddaughter of Dr. Albert Shelton. My grandma was Dorothy Shelton Thomas. I remember her telling me some of the Tibetian folk tales as a child. One was called The Handra (can’t remember the spelling.) Anyway-it’s so neat to see so many people are interested in my family’s history. Would love to keep in touch. I did get the chance to visit the Newark Museum in 1989, seeing the Shelton collection first-hand.

By: Jigme Duntak

Jigme Duntak — Tue, 19 May 2009 21:24:20 +0000

Thanks, I’ll check it out.

By: Dan

Dan — Tue, 19 May 2009 18:39:15 +0000

The latest blog at N.N.’s Shadow Tibet also has some information on Shelton. He was in eastern Tibet in very difficult times,and what he says there about Chinese torture is part of the gruesome story.

Unfortunately, the Newark doesn’t generally display all their tangkas all at once like they did when H.H. the Dalai Lama visited some years ago (guess I was lucky).

By: Jigme Duntak

Jigme Duntak — Tue, 19 May 2009 04:56:27 +0000

Ah right, Thanks

By: Kathy

Kathy — Fri, 15 May 2009 22:20:09 +0000

I believe you have a typo, I am sure you mean, “How the rabbit killed the lion?”

By: Jigme Duntak

Jigme Duntak — Sun, 10 May 2009 02:07:37 +0000

Thanks for the interesting info. I did know that Shelton obtained a huge collection from Tibet. It’d be nice to go to the Newark Museum sometime and check it out.

By: Dan

Dan — Fri, 08 May 2009 08:53:28 +0000

Thanks for the bit on Shelton, one of the world’s few Hoosier Tibetanists (even if he was also a Christian missionary and a doctor). It ought to be known that very many of the magnificent Tibetan art works that may be seen in the Newark Museum in New Jersey were purchased from him. This was one of the ways he supported his missionary work. Most of the objects were obtained in the region around Batang, and some of them had belonged to monasteries destroyed in warfare. The first batch of 150 objects came to the museum in 1911, and the exhibit was considered a very big success. Still today they have one of the most wonderful collections of Tibetan paintings to be found outside Tibet.

Funny, I was just looking at the photo of the Jö Lama, a good friend of the Shelton family, and his wife on p. 55 of the Newark Tibetan Collection catalog, vol. 1, with a label saying “note Italian cigar box”). Actually, although there is Italian on the cigar-box lid, “La perla del oriente,” which makes sense even to non-Italian speakers, the cigars were made in the Phillipines. Look here for proof: http://tinyurl.com/qemrqd.

I doubt Shelton or his friend were smoking them. In those days people admired the fancy colorful boxes and used them for all kinds of things. I used to use one for a pencil box.

Shelton was shot by bandits on his way to see the Dalai Lama. He wanted to get H.H.’s permission to build a hospital in Lhasa. His missionary post was taken over by Marion Duncan, who also, like Mrs. Shelton especially, had a very keen interest in Tibetan popular literature and folklore. I think his books, too, are very much worth reading for this reason.