High Religion : : A Cultural and Political History of Sherpa Buddhism / / Sherry B. Ortner.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Princeton University Press eBook-Package Archive 1927-1999
• VerfasserIn: Ortner, Sherry B.,
• Place / Publishing House: Princeton, NJ : : Princeton University Press, , [2020]; ©1990
• Year of Publication: 2020
• Language: English
• Series: Princeton Studies in Culture/Power/History ; 9
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (269 p.)

An eminent anthropologist examines the foundings of the first celibate Buddhist monasteries among the Sherpas of Nepal in the early twentieth century--a religious development that was a major departure from "folk" or "popular" Buddhism. Sherry Ortner is the first to integrate social scientific and historical modes of analysis in a study of the Sherpa monasteries and one of the very few to attempt such an account for Buddhist monasteries anywhere. Combining ethnographic and oral-historical methods, she scrutinizes the interplay of political and cultural factors in the events culminating in the foundings. Her work constitutes a major advance both in our knowledge of Sherpa Buddhism and in the integration of anthropological and historical modes of analysis. At the theoretical level, the book contributes to an emerging theory of "practice," an explanation of the relationship between human intentions and actions on the one hand, and the structures of society and culture that emerge from and feed back upon those intentions and actions on the other. It will appeal not only to the increasing number of anthropologists working on similar problems but also to historians anxious to discover what anthropology has to offer to historical analysis. In addition, it will be essential reading for those interested in Nepal, Tibet, the Sherpa, or Buddhism in general.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Illustrations -- Acknowledgments -- Note on Orthography -- Dramatis Personae -- Chronology of Sherpa History -- CHAPTER I Introduction: The Project, the People, and the Problem -- CHAPTER II The Early History of the Sherpas: Fraternal Contradictions -- CHAPTER III The Founding of the First Sherpa Temple: Political Contradictions -- CHAPTER IV The Meaning of Temple Founding: Cultural Schemas -- CHAPTER V The Sherpas and the State -- CHAPTER VI The Political Economy of Monastery Foundings -- CHAPTER VII The Big People Found the Monasteries: Legitimation and Self-Worth -- CHAPTER VIII The Small People -- CHAPTER IX Monks and Nuns -- CHAPTER X Conclusions: Sherpa History and a Theory of Practice -- APPENDIX I Two Zombie Stories of Early Khumbu -- APPENDIX II Addendum to the Tengboche Chayik -- Notes -- Glossary -- References -- Index