In Social Regulation: Case Studies from Tibetan History the editors Jeannine Bischoff and Saul Mullard present a collection of studies of the mechanisms that regulated Tibetan societies from the 17th to the 20th centuries. Social regulations controlled, shaped and perpetuated Tibetan societies, but close analyses of these historical processes are rarely to be seen in 'event history' writing. The contributions to this volume explore the theme of social regulation from the perspectives of religion, politics and administration, while addressing issues of morals and values. Covering a wide...

In Power Objects in Tibetan Buddhism: The Life, Writings, and Legacy of Sokdokpa Lodro Gyeltsen, James Duncan Gentry explores how objects of power figure in Tibetan religion, society, and polity through a study of the life of the Tibetan Buddhist ritual specialist Sokdokpa Lodro Gyeltsen (1552-1624) within the broader context of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Tibet. In presenting Sokdokpa's career and legacy, Gentry traces the theme of power objects across a wide spectrum of genres to show how Tibetan Buddhists themselves have theorized about objects of power and implemented them...

Tsybikov was the first scholar with a European education to visit Tibet and describe its monasteries and temples as an eyewitness traveler and an objective researcher. Tsybikov had two distinct advantages: an ethnic Buryat he could travel as a Buddhist pilgrim and thus have a chance of reaching its mysterious capital Lhasa, the religious and political center of Tibet, which was barred to outsiders, especially Europeans; as a scholar educated at a European university he had the historical and linguistic background to understand and describe what he saw. Tsybikov understood the secretive nature...

Knowledge and Context in Tibetan Medicine is a collection of ten essays in which a team of international scholars describe and interpret Tibetan medical knowledge. With subjects ranging from the relationship between Tibetan and Greco-Arab conceptions of the bodily humors, to the rebranding of Tibetan precious pills for cross-cultural consumption in the People’s Republic of China, each chapter explores representations and transformations of medical concepts across different historical, cultural, and/or intellectual contexts. Taken together this volume offers new perspectives on both...

Mahāmudrā in India and Tibet presents cutting-edge research by European and North American scholars on the Indian origins and Tibetan interpretations of one of the most popular and influential of all Tibetan meditation traditions, Mahāmudrā, or the great seal. The contributions shed fresh light on important areas of Mahāmudrā studies, exploring the Great Seal’s place in the Mahāyāna Samādhirājasūtra, the Indian tantric Seven Siddhi Texts, Dunhuang Yogatantra texts, Mar pa’s Rngog lineage, and the Dgongs gcig literature of the ’Bri gung, as well as in the works of Yu mo Mi...

In Divination in Exile, Alexander K. Smith offers the first comprehensive scholarly introduction to the performance of divination in Tibetan speaking communities, both past and present. While Smith surveys a variety of ritual practices, the volume focuses on divination and its associated rites in the contemporary Tibetan Bon tradition. Drawing from multi-site ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Himachal Pradesh and the translation of previously unpublished Tibetan language materials, Divination in Exile offers a valuable, social scientific contribution to our understanding of the perception...

In 2008, an international team of climbers discovered a large collection of Tibetan manuscripts in a cave complex called Mardzong, in Nepal’s remote Mustang district. The following year, the entire cache—over five thousand folios from some sixty different works of the Buddhist and Bön religions, some more than seven centuries old—were removed to the safe keeping of a monastery, where they were later examined by experts from different disciplines. This book is the result of their findings. The authors present what they have been able to discover about the content of these manuscripts,...

The volume brings together nine contributions presenting cutting-edge research on ris med. The relatively high degree of political autonomy in the A mdo and Khams regions paved the way for the Rnying ma, Sa skya, Bka’ brgyud, Jo nang, and Bon traditions to closely collaborate with each other in a spirit of mutual respect and non-partiality (ris med), while enjoying protection and support from local rulers. The contributors examine degrees of tolerance ranging from hierarchical inclusivism to genuine pluralism, inter-tradition relations and collaborations, religio-political entanglements,...