The cult of Pure Crystal Mountain : popular pilgrimage and visionary landscape in southeast Tibet / Toni Huber.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Huber, Toni, 1956-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Tibet Autonomous Region (China)--Religious life and customs.

Tibet Autonomous Region (China).

Mountain worship--China--Tibet Autonomous Region.

Mountain worship.

China--Tibet Autonomous Region.

Buddhism--China--Tibet Autonomous Region--Customs and practices.

Buddhism.

Physical Description:

xv, 297 pages : illustrations, maps ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

New York : Oxford University Press, 1999.

Summary:

The Tibetan district of Tsari with its sacred snow-covered peak of Pure Crystal Mountain has long been a place of symbolic and ritual significance for Tibetan peoples. In this book, Toni Huber provides the first thorough study of a major Tibetan Buddhist pilgrimage center and cult mountain, and explores the esoteric and popular traditions of ritual there. The main focus is on the period of the 1940s and '50s, just prior to the 1959 Lhasa uprising and subsequent Tibetan diaspora into South Asia. Huber's work thus documents Tibetan life patterns and cultural traditions which have largely disappeared with the advent of Chinese colonial modernity in Tibet. In addition to the work's documentary content, Huber offers discussion and analysis of the construction and meaning of Tibetan cultural categories of space, place, and person, and the practice of ritual and organization of traditional society in relation to them.

Contents:

I Pilgrimage

2. Tibetan Pilgrimage: Concepts and Practice 10

3. The Cult of Pilgrimage Mountains in Tibet 21

II Representations

4. Cosmodrama and Architectonics of Landscape 39

5. History and Prayer as Map 58

III Ritual Institutions

6. A Tantric Environment 81

7. Popular Short Pilgrimages 104

8. Barbarian Tributes and Great Processions 128

9. Statecraft and Status in Contested Territory 153

IV Local Lives

10. Complex Identities and Local Rituals 177

11. Culture, Nature, and Economy around a Holy Mountain 196.

Notes:

Based on the author's thesis (doctoral)--University of Canterbury.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 265-282) and index.

ISBN:

0195120078

OCLC:

37418360