Mountains and ancestors: Buddhism, environmental kinship, and cosmology in Golok, East Tibet

Thesis

This thesis explores traditional socio-political structures and cultural perceptions of the ecological environment in the region of Golok in East Tibet (present Qinghai Province of the People’s Republic of China), and how both relate to cosmological notions. It examines a local cosmology of the land, mountains, and ancestors that derives from the local clanic segmentary organisation, topography, and ecological environment, and, further, how Buddhism operates in and adapts to this situation.

The thesis argues that the local notions constitute an independent environmental cosmology based on environmental kin(g)ship, that explains the world and human matters, including life and death, and provides tools for generating wellbeing and prosperity through forces of life drawn from the environment and ancestors. Buddhism brings in a soteriological dimension and practices that are added to the local practices, often through reinterpretation and a salvific framing.

Buddhism and its institutions largely follow the clanic structures, socially, territorially, politically, and economically. Buddhism, moreover, actively expands on these kinship patterns and various notions and practices of the local cosmology. It is postulated that several characteristic features of Tibetan Buddhism largely build on this cosmology: namely the important revelatory so-called ‘treasure’ (ter(ma)) traditions, practical functioning of the system of recognised lineage reincarnations, and practices concerning landscape.

The thesis further argues that people, including Buddhist authorities, operate within dual cosmologies. Buddhism hierarchically stands above the local cosmology, but also aims to subsume it. Buddhism is accretive, parallel, and syncretic at the same time and to varying degrees depending on context.

The thesis makes comparisons across both time and space on the Tibetan Plateau and the Himalayas, such as with the situation of the Tibetan Empire (7^th-9^th century CE), and then cross-culturally, mainly with Central, South and Southeast Asia, Oceania, and Africa, but also with societies elsewhere. I maintain that Tibetan societies, and also Tibetan Buddhism, need to be interpreted within these complexities and transcultural parallels.

Authors: Sehnalova, A

• DOI: 10.5287/ora-m8pgow678
• Type of award: DPhil
• Level of award: Doctoral
• Awarding institution: University of Oxford
• Language: English
• Keywords: segmentary systems; Tibet; ritual; environmental cosmology; landscape; socio-politics; Buddhism; territoriality and land; kinship; dual cosmologies
• Subjects: Territoriality; Anthropology; Kinship, segmentary systems; Tibetan language--religious aspects--Buddhism; Ecological environment; Dual cosmologies