Description
Book SynopsisThe 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.
Trade Reviewan extremely valuable contribution both to the study of religion and ritual in general and to Tibetan studies in particular ... Specialists and nonspecialists alike will benefit from several readings of this work. Its rich accounts of tantric cosmology, ritual regimes, and local lifeways are accessibly written with relatively few technical terms, yet supplemented with long footnotes and a glossary of Wylie transliterations for all Tibetan words rendered phonetically in the text ... overall though, this work is a ground breaking and important that should be required reading for all students of Tibet, Asian Studies, pilgrimmage, and religion and ritual in general. * Charlene Makley, Journal of the American Academy of Religion *
