In the mountain valleys of Nepal, Tibetan communities have long
been established through migrations from the North. Because of
these migrations over the last few centuries, Tibetan lamaism, as
one of the world's great ritual traditions, can be studied in the
Himalayas as a process that emerges through dialogue with the more
ancient shamanic tradition which it confronts and criticizes. Here
for the first time is a thorough anthropological study of Tibetan
lamaism combining textual analysis with richly contextualized
ethnographic data. The rites studied are of the Nyingma Tibetan
Buddhist tradition. In contrast to the textual analyses that have
viewed the culture as a finished entity, here we see an unbounded
ritual process with unfinished interpretations. Mumford's focus is
on the "dialogue" taking place between the lamaist and the shamanic
regimes, as a historic development occurring between different
cultural layers. The study powerfully demonstrates that
interrelationships between subsystems within a given cultural
matrix over time are critical to an understanding of religion as a
cultural process.
General
Imprint: |
University of Wisconsin Press
|
Country of origin: |
United States |
Series: |
New Directions in Anthropological Writing |
Release date: |
December 1989 |
First published: |
March 1999 |
Authors: |
Stan Royal Mumford
|
Dimensions: |
220 x 138 x 19mm (L x W x T) |
Format: |
Paperback
|
Pages: |
336 |
ISBN-13: |
978-0-299-11984-3 |
Categories: |
Books >
Social sciences >
Sociology, social studies >
Anthropology >
General
|
LSN: |
0-299-11984-X |
Barcode: |
9780299119843 |
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