June 29, 2022. Conferences.
Wednesday June 29 from 4 PM to 6.30 PM.
Grand salon de la Maison de l’Asie – EFEO
22 avenue du Président Wilson, 75116 Paris

The Cave of the Old Lady Spider: a high-altitude funerary cave in Ladakh

By Veena Mushrif-Tripathy (Deccan College Post-Graduate & Research Institute, Pune) and Quentin Devers (CNRS)
There once was a giant spider known as the Old Lady Spider living in a deep cave. She wandered the mountain in search for people to eat, spitting out their skeletons inside the cave. One day, the Tibetan hero Kesar came to know about the monster and went on a chase. When he found the beast, he killed her with his legendary bow, forever freeing the people from the wrath of the Old Lady Spider.
This presentation will introduce the excavation of this funerary cave located at 4000m in Ladakh, which took place in the summer of 2021. This project is a collaboration between Veena Mushrif-Tripathy (Deccan College Post-Graduate & Research Institute, Pune) and Quentin Devers (CNRS).

Surviving cataclysms and time: the 8th-9th centuries painted stupas of Ensa (Ladakh)

By Nils Martin (CRCAO), Abeer Gupta (Achi Association India), and Quentin Devers (CNRS)
This presentation will introduce two exceptional monuments from Ensa datable to the 8th-9th centuries, which shelter the oldest known Buddhist wall paintings of Ladakh and the Western Himalayas. The murals will be presented along with their overall archaeological context, which includes a series of discoveries made in Nubra and Ladakh in the context of the program Archaeological Exploration of Ladakh (CRCAO).