The Cult of Pure Crystal Mountain: Popular Pilgrimage and Visionary Landscape in Southeast Tibet

by Toni Huber

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780195120073
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	03/18/1999
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	6.34(w) x 9.36(h) x 0.99(d)
Lexile:	1620L (what's this?)

About the Author

Victoria University

Table of Contents

	Note on Tibetan Words	xv
I	Pilgrimage
1.	Introduction	3
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
	Epilogue	219
	Tibetan Word List	221
	Notes	231
	Bibliography	265
	Index	283

Editorial Reviews

"This is a work that will repay repeated readings....Huber's [book] is a groundbreaking work of great significance to both Tibetan and Asian Studies that will also be of interest to scholars and students of Religious Studies and anthropology in general. It is a well-written, balanced, and insightful account of a complex subject, one that we may hope will be the model for future case studies of Tibet's other néri mountains."—Journal of Buddhist Ethics

From the Publisher