The Modern and Traditional Diplomacy of the Thirteenth Dalai Lama During His Sojourn in Khalkha and Qinghai (1904–1907)

The Early 20th Century Resurgence of the Tibetan Buddhist World ◽

10.5117/9789463728645_ch02 ◽

2022 ◽

Author(s):

Wada Daichi

Keyword(s):

Tibetan Buddhist ◽

Dalai Lama ◽

Mount Wutai ◽

Dangerous Situation

Daichi Wada draws on Russian, Chinese, and Japanese sources to analyse the Thirteenth Dalai Lama’s diplomatic activities during his sojourn in Khalkha, Qinghai, and Mount Wutai (1904–1909). Daichi demonstrates how the Dalai Lama’s diplomatic efforts manifested both traditional and modern aspects that were deployed as appropriate, and how his worldview was enhanced by his travels. The author particularly focuses on the Thirteenth Dalai Lama’s relationship with the Buryat Buddhist community, which in some aspects represented Russian interests but also held traditional ties with the Tibetan Buddhist centre. The support he gained among the Buryats helped him survive in a dangerous situation as not only a ruler of Tibet but also as the highest authority over Tibetan Buddhists.

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Translating the Cult of the Book: Publishing and Performing the Fifth Dalai Lama’s The Wish-Fulfilling King from Lhasa to Beijing

East Asian Publishing and Society ◽

10.1163/22106286-12341349 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 11 (1) ◽

pp. 34-67

Author(s):

Benjamin J. Nourse

Keyword(s):

Book Publishing ◽

Tibetan Buddhist ◽

Dalai Lama ◽

History Of ◽

Rgya Mtsho ◽

Ritual Text ◽

Central Tibet

Abstract In 1673 the Fifth Dalai Lama, Ngawang Lobzang Gyatso (Ngag dbang blo bzang rgya mtsho, 1617–1682) composed The Wish-Fulfilling King (Yid bzhin dbang rgyal), a ritual manual for the worship of the seven buddhas of healing. In the first hundred years after its composition, the Fifth Dalai Lama’s ritual text was published in the original Tibetan in no less than five different woodblock editions. It had also been translated into Mongolian and Chinese and published in several woodblock editions in those languages. Most of these woodblock editions were produced by imperially sponsored Tibetan Buddhist temples in Beijing. The ritual described in the text was performed in monasteries and temples across central Tibet, Mongolia, and in Beijing. This article examines the history of this text, its transmission, and what those tells us about the culture of Tibetan Buddhist books in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, particularly as they relate to the Mayāyāna ‘cult of the book.’

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The Autobiography of the First Khalkha Zaya Paṇḍita Lobsang Trinley

Sources of Mongolian Buddhism ◽

10.1093/oso/9780190900694.003.0003 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 43-98

Author(s):

Sangseraima Ujeed

Keyword(s):

Seventeenth Century ◽

Life Story ◽

Tibetan Buddhist ◽

Dalai Lama ◽

Idealized Model ◽

The Way

The First Zaya Paṇḍita Lobsang Trinley (Tib. Blo bzang ’phrin las, Mong. Luvsanphrinle, 1642–1715) was and remains known as one of the most prolific Mongolian Buddhist masters in history. Despite his desire to stay in Tibet to continue his study of Buddhism, he was sent back to Mongolia to spread the Dharma among the Mongols by the Fifth Dalai Lama, which sets his experience aside from many of his peers. His autobiography translated and presented here is the first known Tibetan language biographical work authored by a Mongolian and went on to have a huge influence on Buddhist biographical writing in Mongolian lands. Although following what the author saw to be the idealized model of Tibetan Buddhist biographical writing, this work also weaves in stylistically Mongolian characteristics. The author’s own experience contained within, as well as the way in which this life story is presented, created a piece of writing that is able to personify the amalgamated Tibeto-Mongolian Buddhist world of the seventeenth century.

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The Early 20th Century Resurgence of the Tibetan Buddhist World

10.5117/9789463728645 ◽

2021 ◽

Keyword(s):

Central Asia ◽

20Th Century ◽

Early 20Th Century ◽

Religious Authority ◽

Tibetan Buddhist ◽

Political Consciousness ◽

Qing Empire ◽

Dalai Lama ◽

Central Asian ◽

Historical Processes

The Early 20th Century Resurgence of the Tibetan Buddhist World is a cohesive collection of studies by Japanese, Russian and Central Asian scholars deploying previously unexplored Russian, Mongolian, and Tibetan sources concerning events and processes in the Central Asian Buddhist world in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Set in the final days of the Qing empire when Russian and British empires were expanding into Central Asia, this work examines the interplay of religious, economic and political power among peoples who acknowledged the religious authority of Tibet's Dalai Lama. It focuses on diplomatic initiatives involving the 13th Dalai Lama and other Tibetan Buddhist hierarchs during and after his exile in Mongolia and China, as well as his relations with Mongols, and with Buriat, Kalmyk, and other Russian Buddhists. It demonstrates how these factors shaped historical processes in the region, not least the reformulations of both group identity and political consciousness.

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History Writing and the Making of Mongolian Buddhism

Archiv für Religionsgeschichte ◽

10.1515/arege-2018-0009 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 20 (1) ◽

pp. 135-155

Author(s):

Karénina Kollmar-Paulenz

Keyword(s):

Sixteenth Century ◽

Religious History ◽

The Other ◽

Tibetan Buddhist ◽

History Writing ◽

Dalai Lama ◽

The Third

Abstract:When in the late sixteenth century the third Dalai Lama travelled to the Mongolian regions, he was accompanied by Buddhist monks of different Tibetan schools, Gelugpa, Sakyapa, Kagyüpa and others. Many of them built monasteries and temples in Mongolia, funded by Mongolian nobles. Although Gelugpa Buddhism quickly became dominant in Mongolia, the other schools remained present and active in the country until today. From the start, however, most Mongolian historians described the spread and development of Buddhism in the Mongolian lands as the endeavor of just one school, the ‘glorious Gelugpa’, ignoring the plurality of the Tibetan-Buddhist schools in the Mongolian religious field. This paper aims to analyze how and to what aims Mongolian historians created a uniform Gelugpa Buddhism, which taxonomies they used and which narratives they employed to present Gelugpa Buddhism as the religion of the Mongolian peoples. Moreover, the paper explores which impact Mongolian historiography had (and has) on modern scholarship and its narrative of Mongolian religious history. I argue that modern scholarship helps to perpetuate the ‘master narrativeʼ of Mongolian Buddhist historiography, presenting Mongolian Buddhism as a ‘pureʼ, exclusive Gelugpa Buddhism.

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Reimagining the Buddhist Universe: Pilgrimage and Cosmography in the Court of the Thirteenth Dalai Lama (1876–1933)

The Journal of Asian Studies ◽

10.1017/s0021911813002441 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 73 (2) ◽

pp. 419-445 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Wen-shing Chou

Keyword(s):

Twentieth Century ◽

Close Connection ◽

Tibetan Buddhist ◽

Dalai Lama ◽

Early Twentieth Century ◽

Modes Of Representation ◽

Boundary Making ◽

Holy Places ◽

Wutai Shan

During his exiles from Lhasa in the 1910s, the Thirteenth Dalai Lama visited the holy places of Wutai Shan in China and Bodh Gaya in India. After his return, he commissioned paintings of these two places in cosmological mural programs of his palaces. While conforming to earlier iconographic traditions, these paintings employed empirical modes of representation unprecedented in Tibetan Buddhist paintings, revealing a close connection to the Dalai Lama's prior travels. This essay traces how these “modernized” renditions were incorporated into an existing pictorial template, and examines the deft rearticulation of a Buddhist cosmology in light of the Dalai Lama's own encounter with the shifting geopolitical terrains of the early twentieth century. I show that painting served as a powerful medium through which the Dalai Lama asserted his spiritual sovereignty and temporal authority over modernity's work of boundary making. The study elucidates a sphere of agency and creativity in the court of the Thirteenth Dalai Lama that has evaded historical inquiries to date.

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The Impact of the Thirteenth Dalai Lama’s Sojourn in Mongolia

The Early 20th Century Resurgence of the Tibetan Buddhist World ◽

10.5117/9789463728645_ch01 ◽

2022 ◽

Author(s):

Ishihama Yumiko

Keyword(s):

Identity Formation ◽

National Consciousness ◽

Tibetan Buddhist ◽

Nationalist Movement ◽

Dalai Lama ◽

The Impact

In 1904, when British-Indian forces invaded Tibet, the Thirteenth Dalai Lama travelled to Mongolia and subsequently to Beijing. As Ishihama Yumiko’s paper demonstrates, his sojourn in Mongolia connected the politically divided Tibetan, Mongol, and Buryat Tibetan Buddhist communities, activated their intercommunication, and contributed to the evoking of a national consciousness among them. While this consciousness failed to amalgamate Tibetan Buddhist communities into one entity, it did establish a nationalist movement that sought to resist Russian and Chinese control. Ishihama gives particular attention to the Dalai Lama’s relationship with three Mongol hierarchs from the Khalka, Kokonor, and Buryat Buddhist communities. His impact on identity formation among these groups resulted in them devoting themselves to forging unity among their people.

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