From the Faith of Lamas to Global Buddhism: The Construction of Buddhist Tradition in Russian Trans-Baikal from the Eighteenth to the Early Twentieth Century

TY - JOUR

T1 - From the Faith of Lamas to Global Buddhism: The Construction of Buddhist Tradition in Russian Trans-Baikal from the Eighteenth to the Early Twentieth Century

AU - Tsyrempilov , Nikolay

PY - 2019

Y1 - 2019

N2 - The article invites readers to reconsider the history of Buddhism in Russian Trans-Baikal as a gradual process of negotiation and redefinition that involved different actors: lamas, Russian imperial officials of various levels, Orthodox missionaries, Buriat national activists, Saint Petersburg Orientologists, modern Buddhist reformers and conservatives. The process involved the construction of the centralized and subordinated confessional group out of scattered communities of lamas in the course of the nineteenth century, Irkutsk Orthodox Diocese’s attempts first to downgrade the faith of lamas to idol-worship and then to normalize ‘corrupted Buddhism’, “discovery” of the larger Buddhist world by some Buriat lamas and their attempts to bring it back to ‘authentic forms’. The article shows what exactly have brought Russian officials and then Buriat Buddhist themselves to the idea that their religious tradition which historically was labeled merely as Lamaistvo, is a part of the emerging conception of global Buddhism

AB - The article invites readers to reconsider the history of Buddhism in Russian Trans-Baikal as a gradual process of negotiation and redefinition that involved different actors: lamas, Russian imperial officials of various levels, Orthodox missionaries, Buriat national activists, Saint Petersburg Orientologists, modern Buddhist reformers and conservatives. The process involved the construction of the centralized and subordinated confessional group out of scattered communities of lamas in the course of the nineteenth century, Irkutsk Orthodox Diocese’s attempts first to downgrade the faith of lamas to idol-worship and then to normalize ‘corrupted Buddhism’, “discovery” of the larger Buddhist world by some Buriat lamas and their attempts to bring it back to ‘authentic forms’. The article shows what exactly have brought Russian officials and then Buriat Buddhist themselves to the idea that their religious tradition which historically was labeled merely as Lamaistvo, is a part of the emerging conception of global Buddhism

KW - Buddhism

KW - Buriats

KW - Russia

KW - Trans-Baikal

KW - tradition

KW - reinterpretation of tradition

M3 - Article

JO - Entangled Religions. Interdisciplinary Journal for the Study of Religious Contact and Transfer

JF - Entangled Religions. Interdisciplinary Journal for the Study of Religious Contact and Transfer

SN - 2363-6696

ER -