Ruling the Land of the Yellow Lama: Religion,Muli, and geopolitics in the 17th century Sino-Tibetan borderland

Abstract

The author scrutinizes the history of Muli (木里) as a semiautonomous political entity in the 17th century southern Sino-Tibetan borderland. By tracing Muli’s improvization in the face of multiple powerful regimes such as the Naxi kingdom, the Geluk Tibetans, the Khoshut Mongols, and the Chinese dynasties, the author explores how an indigenous notion of power took shape in the wake of geopolitical turbulence. Before 1580, Muli was a colony of the Naxi kingdom and dominated by the Kagyu school of Tibetan Buddhism. After 1640, it became a stronghold of the Tibetan Buddhist Geluk school and was deeply involved in the power struggles between the Geluk and Kakyu schools as well as the Tibetans and Mongols. Despite of acknowledging multiple sovereigns, Muli rulers utilized various tactics to hold on to power and prioritize local interest. The nuanced, yet creative, strategies Muli people adopted showcases the significant role border regimes played and their agency in shaping the power dynamics in pre-modern Eastern Asian borderlands.     

From the “Good Tradition” to Religion on Some Basic Aspects of Religious Conversion in Early Medieval Tibet and the Comparative Central Eurasian Context

What Western academic literature described as ethnic or cultural Tibet in fact implies something composite and processually constructed: Tibet then often appears as a typical example for explanations of collective identity (and ethnicity). Such approaches increasingly are applied in present-day anthropology and historical studies, highlighting the historical conditions and the politically, socially and ideationally constructed features of identity. In Tibet, identity-building was strongly related to the spread of Buddhism. The new religion was introduced in the time of the Tibetan Empire (seventh to ninth century), but it was only its later spread (from the eleventh century) that led to the effective, all-embracing establishment of Buddhism in the Highlands. It was interlinked with regionally different forms of political manifestations—the founding of Buddhist kingdoms at the periphery and the emergence of monastic hegemonies in the central regions. These developments correlated with processes of conversion, which in its narrative model is described as an act of conquest, taming and civilizing the physical universe and which in theory actually never ends. Apart from considering current anthropological discussions of the phenomenon of religious conversion, this paper will include a comparative view of the history of Christianization in early medieval Europe (especially in Western Europe—the Frankish kingdom and the barbarian zones North of the Rhine and the Danube, fifth to tenth century). Inter alia this also raises questions about the initial social forces and interests promoting the new religion's adoption, and to what extent formal similarities with the Tibetan case are ascertainable in Europe.     

Buddhism,Democracy and Power in the 1932 Thai Revolution

The People’s Party toppled the Siamese absolute monarchy and introduced constitutional democracy in Thailand in June 1932. Scholars have generally denied that the revolution had any popular resonance, but this article shows that in Buddhism, the country’s premier cultural form, democratic rhetoric in the 1930s resonated among young monks marginalised by the ecclesiastical hierarchy. A group of young monks within the Mahanikai, or Great Order, rebelled against the palace-established Thammayut order that exercised the most power in institutional Buddhism. A “thin” or formal democracy established in 1932 – one displaying the main trappings of a regime of popular sovereignty but purposefully limited in scope by the People’s Party – thus inspired an assertion of a “thick” democracy, or democracy as a much older social value that governed both the Sangha internally and its relations with local communities, which the Mahanikai activists claimed was the core of original Buddhism.

     

鲁迅与佛教文化

作为现代文化中最为决绝与激烈的反叛者的鲁迅,因为自小与佛教文化的因缘让他与佛教文化有着极为密切的联系。这种联系具体表现在他对佛陀人格的整合、对悲智双运情怀的认同、对虚无与死亡主题的表达以及对于佛教文化弊端的觉察等等方面。     

汉代徐州地区的宗教传播

徐州汉化不仅以汉墓、汉俑、汉画称于世,而且由于地处南北交汇的特殊区位,儒佛道多种化在此碰撞融通,使之成为道教和佛教的传播基地。汉高祖以道治国,张良晚年退隐,刘向编撰《列仙传》,张陵创建五斗米道,楚王刘英祭浮屠,笮融下邳弘法,他们既促成了道教的产生,又为佛教在东方的传播作出了重大的贡献。     

《后山逸诗笺》禅源举隅

《后山逸诗》几乎占后山诗的三分之一,由于历史原因．很少有人为其作注。而且宋人,特别足江西诗派作诗,喜欢“以学问为诗”,涉及面很广。全面注释其作品,目前以个人之力难以达其的旨。笔者选其巾与禅理密切者．将禅门故实检出,并稍加训释。     

试论元朝宗教状况与道释画之嬗变

在元代短短几十年中,道教经历了一个大盛大衰的过程,中土本有的佛教也为藏传佛教所压制,中国画在这一时期则体现出比以往更多的文人气质。本文叙述了元代的宗教状况与宗教政策的关系,以及道释画在这一背景下所呈现出的不同面貌。     

从墓志看佛教对唐代妇女生活的影响

从对唐墓志的分析考察可知,唐代妇女信佛者较多,在家修行的妇女占绝对多数,且相当地分奉佛者为孀居妇女。唐代妇女诵读或抄写的佛典主要集中在金刚般若、法华、涅槃、维摩等经上,尤以金融般若、法华两经为最。唐代妇女祟佛原因众多,其中不少孀居妇女、宫人、宦官夫人、无子和不育的妇女多从佛教中寻求精神和情感寄托。唐代妇女祟佛对社会风尚、生死观念和丧葬观念产生了很大的影响。     

《雪国》的复调倾向说

川端康成《雪国》表层故事的禅佛意识和虚无主义情调具有明显的消极颓废色彩,只有当表层故事之后潜故事投射到表层,大大改变了表层故事的形态,所谓虚无和死亡之美的审美形态才臻于完整。在驹子潜在视角与形式叙述者、岛村的视角对抗中,潜故事逐渐浮现;此时由于驹子潜在视角是价值独立的,故《雪国》叙事结构又有复调的特征。     

Beyond Ideological Conflict: Political Incorporation of Buddhist Youth in the Early PRC

This essay explores the impact of governance on the Chinese religious landscape during the early years of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) through a case study of the Young Buddhist Association (YBA) of Shanghai. Despite the official atheist ideology of the Chinese Communist Party, during this era of New Democracy the YBA experienced Communist governance in practice as a process of political incorporation rather than coercive eradication. As its Buddhist youth movement not only survived the Communist takeover in 1949 but gained momentum well into the 1950s, the YBA was propelled to the forefront of the Buddhist community in Shanghai and became the most active and influential grassroots Buddhist organization in the early PRC. The case of the YBA demonstrates that incorporation into the new political order of the 1950s had transformative effects on the spatial construction, identity formation, and social dynamics of religious communities that cannot be reduced to steps toward their eventual elimination during the Cultural Revolution.