Quantitative method on study of Mani heaps: the case study on color analysis of Mani heaps in Dingqing county, Tibet

Abstract A Mani heap, as an important religious art, is piled up by hundreds of stones or slates carved with a lot of information about religion, culture, history, art and lifestyle of Tibetans. Mani heaps are scattered almost everywhere in Tibet and also become a significant way to understand Tibet and Tibetans. However, the study on Mani heaps appears relatively limited in scope so far not only in Tibet or even in the Himalaya area. In most of the existing studies, qualitative research is the main method to describe or explain Mani heaps which leads to subjective tendencies in somewhere. In this paper, we propose a quantitative method by digital processing the colors of 70 images of Mani heaps in Dingqing county. Compared with the previous related studies, the results are more accurate to reflect the color features of Mani heaps in Dingqing county. More importantly, this quantitative, digital processing way may become an effective research method to apply, verify, underpin or challenge the study on Mani heaps in Tibet or other Himalaya areas.