Subud Erike

Covering the social, cultural, and political development of Tibet from the seventh century to the modern period, this resource reproduces essential, hard-to-find essays from the past fifty years of Tibetan studies, along with several new contributions. Beginning with Tibet's emergence as a regional power and concluding with its profound contemporary transformations, the collection is both a general and specific history, connecting the actions of individuals, communities, and institutions to broader historical trends shaping Asia and the world. With contributions from American, French, German, Italian, Chinese, Japanese, and Tibetan scholars, the anthology reflects the international character of Tibetan studies and its multiple, interdisciplinary perspectives. By far the most concise scholarly anthology on Tibetan civilization in any Western language, this reader draws a clear portrait of Tibet's history, its relation to its neighbors, and its role in world affairs.

In this study Walther Heissig focuses on the existence in Mongolia of religious forms which have more ancient roots even than Buddhism. Professor Heissig is mainly concerned in the present book with those beliefs and concepts which belong to the non-Buddhist folk religion of the Mongols.

Restored and edited with the cooperation of the Institute of Central Asian Studies of the University of Bonn.

The vast majority of monasteries in Tibet and nearly all of the monasteries in Mongolia belong to the Geluk school of Tibetan Buddhism, best known through its symbolic head, the Dalai Lama. Historically, these monasteries were some of the largest in the world, and even today some Geluk monasteries house thousands of monks, both in Tibet and in exile in India. In Building a Religious Empire, Brenton Sullivan examines the school's expansion and consolidation of power along the frontier with China and Mongolia from the mid-seventeenth through the mid-eighteenth centuries to chart how its rise to dominance took shape. In contrast to the practice in other schools of Tibetan Buddhism, Geluk lamas devoted an extraordinary amount of effort to establishing the institutional frameworks within which everyday aspects of monastic life, such as philosophizing, meditating, or conducting rituals, took place. In doing so, the lamas drew on administrative techniques usually associated with state-making—standardization, record-keeping, the conscription of young males, and the concentration of manpower in central cores, among others—thereby earning the moniker "lama official," or "Buddhist bureaucrat." The deployment of these bureaucratic techniques to extend the Geluk "liberating umbrella" over increasing numbers of lands and peoples leads Sullivan to describe the result of this Geluk project as a "religious empire." The Geluk lamas' privileging of the monastic institution, Sullivan argues, fostered a common religious identity that insulated it from factionalism and provided legitimacy to the Geluk project of conversion, conquest, and expansion. Ultimately, this system succeeded in establishing a relatively uniform and resilient network of thousands of monasteries stretching from Nepal to Lake Baikal, from Beijing to the Caspian Sea.

The papers in this volume go back to a conference held September 14-15, 2002, at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, B.C., in honour of Prof. Daniel L. Overmyer on his retirement. The contributions pay tribute to this renowned scholar of Chinese religious traditions, whose work is a constant reminder to look beyond text to context, beyond idea to practice, to study religion as it was and is lived by real people rather than as an abstract system of ideas and doctrines. Contents PHILIP CLART: Introduction RANDALL L. NADEAU: A Critical Review of Daniel L. Overmyer’s Contribution to the Study of Chinese Religions. I. Popular Sects and Religious Movements HUBERT SEIWERT: The Transformation of Popular Religious Movements of the Ming and Qing Dynasties: A Rational Choice Interpretation SHIN-YI CHAO: The Precious Volume of Bodhisattva Zhenwu Attaining the Way. A Case Study of the Worship of Zhenwu (Perfected Warrior) in Ming-Qing Sectarian Groups CHRISTIAN JOCHIM: Popular Lay Sects and Confucianism: A Study Based on the Way of Unity in Postwar Taiwan SOO KHIN WAH: The Recent Development of the Yiguan Dao Fayi Chongde Sub-Branch in Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand PHILIP CLART: Merit beyond Measure. Notes on the Moral (and Real) Economy of Religious Publishing in Taiwan JEAN DEBERNARDI: "Ascend to Heaven and Stand on a Cloud." Daoist Teaching and Practice at Penang’s Taishang Laojun Temple. II. Historical and Ethnographic Studies of Chinese Popular Religion JOHN LAGERWEY: The History and Sociology of Religion in Changting County, Fujian KENNETH DEAN: The Growth of Local Control over Cultural and Environmental Resources in Ming and Qing Coastal Fujian PAUL R. KATZ: Religion, Recruiting and Resistance in Colonial Taiwan: A Case Study of the Xilai An Incident, 1915 WANG CHIEN-CH’UAN. Transl. PHILIP CLART: The White Dragon Hermitage and the Spread of the Eight Generals Procession Troupe in Taiwan TUEN WAI MARY YEUNG: Rituals and Beliefs of Female Performers in Cantonese Opera JORDAN PAPER: The Role of Possession Trance in Chinese Culture and Religion: A Comparative Overview from the Neolithic to the Present. III. The Religious Life of Clerics, Literati, and Emperors JUDITH BOLTZ: On the Legacy of Zigu and a Manual on Spirit-writing in Her Name STEPHEN ESKILDSEN: Death, Immortality, and Spirit Liberation in Northern Song Daoism. The Hagiographical Accounts of Zhao Daoyi ROBERTO K. ONG: Chen Shiyuan and Chinese Dream Theory BAREND J. TER HAAR: Yongzheng and His Buddhist Abbots. Glossary – Index

The northern Chinese mountain range of Mount Wutai has been a preeminent site of international pilgrimage for over a millennium. Home to more than one hundred temples, the entire range is considered a Buddhist paradise on earth, and has received visitors ranging from emperors to monastic and lay devotees. Mount Wutai explores how Qing Buddhist rulers and clerics from Inner Asia, including Manchus, Tibetans, and Mongols, reimagined the mountain as their own during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Wen-Shing Chou examines a wealth of original source materials in multiple languages and media--many never before published or translated—such as temple replicas, pilgrimage guides, hagiographic representations, and panoramic maps. She shows how literary, artistic, and architectural depictions of the mountain permanently transformed the site's religious landscape and redefined Inner Asia's relations with China. Chou addresses the pivotal but previously unacknowledged history of artistic and intellectual exchange between the varying religious, linguistic, and cultural traditions of the region. The reimagining of Mount Wutai was a fluid endeavor that proved central to the cosmopolitanism of the Qing Empire, and the mountain range became a unique site of shared diplomacy, trade, and religious devotion between different constituents, as well as a spiritual bridge between China and Tibet. A compelling exploration of the changing meaning and significance of one of the world's great religious sites, Mount Wutai offers an important new framework for understanding Buddhist sacred geography.