A Monastery in Time: The Making of Mongolian Buddhism - Softcover

Humphrey, Caroline; Ujeed, Hurelbaatar

Softcover

ISBN 10: 022603190X ISBN 13: 9780226031903

Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 2013

Synopsis

A Monastery in Time is the first book to describe the life of a Mongolian Buddhist monastery—the Mergen Monastery in Inner Mongolia—from inside its walls. From the Qing occupation of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries through the Cultural Revolution, Caroline Humphrey and Hürelbaatar Ujeed tell a story of religious formation, suppression, and survival over a history that spans three centuries.

Often overlooked in Buddhist studies, Mongolian Buddhism is an impressively self-sustaining tradition whose founding lama, the Third Mergen Gegen, transformed Tibetan Buddhism into an authentic counterpart using the Mongolian language. Drawing on fifteen years of fieldwork, Humphrey and Ujeed show how lamas have struggled to keep Mergen Gegen’s vision alive through tremendous political upheaval, and how such upheaval has inextricably fastened politics to religion for many of today’s practicing monks. Exploring the various ways Mongolian Buddhists have attempted to link the past, present, and future, Humphrey and Ujeed offer a compelling study of the interplay between the individual and the state, tradition and history.

About this title

About the Author:

Caroline Humphrey is professor emerita and director of the Mongolian and Inner Asia Studies Unit at Cambridge University. She is the author or coauthor of twenty previous books, most recently Urban Life in Post-Soviet Central Asia. Hürelbaatar Ujeed founded the Hürelbaatar Institute for Mongolian Studies at the Inner Mongolia Normal University and is a senior research associate in the Mongolian and Inner Asia Studies Unit at Cambridge University.  

Review:

“Humphrey and Ujeed’s captivating anthropological study of the Mergen Monastery and its tradition is a result of extensive and collaborative fieldwork located in the south-western region of Inner Mongolia, commonly known as Urad. It is an important contribution to Mongolian and Buddhist studies and is especially timely given the growing interest in Mongolian Buddhism. One of the merits of this book is the authors’ ability to integrate the anthropological method and perspective with historical and archaeological data and textual evidence. The project is multilayered and covers two temporal frameworks: a historical one that concerns the formation, renaissance, tribulations, demise, and revival of the Mergen tradition from the early eighteenth century to the present, and the one that covers nearly seventeen years of the authors’ field research. The book provides an excellent exploration of the socio-historical, economic, and religious underpinnings of the Mergen lineage of reincarnations, a nuanced discussion of the religious life of Mergen Monastery, its religious and political roles under the Qing, and the importance of the monastery in creating and maintaining Mongolian-language-based Buddhism.”
(Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies)

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 022603190X
• ISBN 13: 9780226031903
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 440