Systeme d'informations numeriques de l'emploi des textes dans l'ornementation des monuments bouddhiques : expérimentation sur la tombe de l'empereur Qianlong – SINETOMB

The particularity of the tomb of Emperor Qianlong (r.1736-1796) stands in its ornamental program : 30 000 characters in Tibetan and Lantsa (derived from Indian alphabets) scripts. Though the tomb has been opened since thirty years, these inscriptions had not yet been identified. Only the presence of Buddhist representations among them enabled to think that these inscriptions were Buddhist in nature. Since 2004, Françoise Wang (UMR 8155) has noted down these inscriptions and has identified most of them. It appears that the choice and the disposition of these inscriptions are very close to those used in the construction and consecration of a stupa, the widely known Buddhist funerary monument. The numerisation and 3D modelisation realized by MAP (UMR 694) in the project SINETOMB will make clear the use of texts to create a virtual stupa inside a monument which has originally no religious connotation. Besides serving as an important tool in the conservation of this site which is knowing very bad problems of water infiltrations, the numerisation and the 3D modelisation of the tomb will be used to create a basis of numerical datas on the use of religious texts in architectural buildings. This basis mainly focusing on Qianlong's Tomb and other monuments presenting similarities with this tomb, will be later extended to datas concerning other Buddhist sites. An international conference will be held in Beijing in the last year of the project in order to make the results known among the scientific community and to create new poles of research.