Time, Causality and Prophecy in the Mongolian Cultural Region

Time, Causality and Prophecy in the Mongolian Cultural Region
Author:
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2021-10-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9004213546

How do prophets and prophecies influence decision-making processes, concepts of authority and ideas about causality and time? How can we talk about prophets and prophecy in the Mongolian cultural region when prophetic forms and people seem so varied? This book focuses on roles and distributed language of prophecy in relation to these questions.

Space and Time in Languages and Cultures

Space and Time in Languages and Cultures
Author: Luna Filipovi?
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
Total Pages: 379
Release: 2012-07-24
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 902727360X

This is an interdisciplinary volume that focuses on the central topic of the representation of events, namely cross-cultural differences in representing time and space, as well as various aspects of the conceptualisation of space and time. It brings together research on space and time from a variety of angles, both theoretical and methodological. Crossing boundaries between and among disciplines such as linguistics, psychology, philosophy, or anthropology forms a creative platform in a bold attempt to reveal the complex interaction of language, culture, and cognition in the context of human communication and interaction. The authors address the nature of spatial and temporal constructs from a number of perspectives, such as cultural specificity in determining time intervals in an Amazonian culture, distinct temporalities in a specific Mongolian hunter community, Russian-specific conceptualisation of temporal relations, Seri and Yucatec frames of spatial reference, memory of events in space and time, and metaphorical meaning stemming from perception and spatial artefacts, to name but a few themes. The topic of space and time in language and culture is also represented, from a different albeit related point of view, in the sister volume Space and Time in Languages and Cultures: Linguistic diversity (HCP 36) which focuses on the language-specific vis-à-vis universal aspects of linguistic representation of spatial and temporal reference.

A Monastery in Time

A Monastery in Time
Author: Caroline Humphrey
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 441
Release: 2013-07-05
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 022603187X

A Monastery in Time is the first book to describe the life of a Mongolian Buddhist monastery—the Mergen Monastery in Inner Mongolia—from inside its walls. From the Qing occupation of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries through the Cultural Revolution, Caroline Humphrey and Hürelbaatar Ujeed tell a story of religious formation, suppression, and survival over a history that spans three centuries. Often overlooked in Buddhist studies, Mongolian Buddhism is an impressively self-sustaining tradition whose founding lama, the Third Mergen Gegen, transformed Tibetan Buddhism into an authentic counterpart using the Mongolian language. Drawing on fifteen years of fieldwork, Humphrey and Ujeed show how lamas have struggled to keep Mergen Gegen’s vision alive through tremendous political upheaval, and how such upheaval has inextricably fastened politics to religion for many of today’s practicing monks. Exploring the various ways Mongolian Buddhists have attempted to link the past, present, and future, Humphrey and Ujeed offer a compelling study of the interplay between the individual and the state, tradition and history.

Sources of Mongolian Buddhism

Sources of Mongolian Buddhism
Author: Vesna A. Wallace
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 553
Release: 2020-01-21
Genre: Art
ISBN: 0190900695

"This volume consists of twenty-four chapters containing a collection of selected original sources of Mongolian Buddhism, composed either in Tibetan or Mongolian language. This collection brings new material that has not yet been available in any of European languages. Translated sources serve as a lens through which to examine Mongolian Buddhism in its variety of literary genres and styles and religious and cultural ideas and practices. Each chapter includes a translation of a shorter text or a selected section of a longer text, and each contributor also provides the introduction to a translated text or texts, which contextualizes text, references and endnotes. The volume contains twenty-four chapters classified into eight sections: The Early Seventeenth Century Texts; Autobiography and Biography; Buddhist Teachings; Buddhist Didactic Poetry; Buddhist Ritual Texts; Buddhist Oral Literature of the Eighteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries; Tradition in Transition: The Twentieth Century Writings; Contemporary Buddhist Writings. stone inscription, doctrinal concepts, ornament for the mind, trilogy, didactic poetry, Buddhist literature, smoke offering, ritual texts, legend, internal regulations"--

Subjective Lives and Economic Transformations in Mongolia

Subjective Lives and Economic Transformations in Mongolia
Author: Rebecca M. Empson
Publisher: UCL Press
Total Pages: 178
Release: 2020-06-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1787351467

Almost 10 years ago the mineral-rich country of Mongolia experienced very rapid economic growth, fuelled by China’s need for coal and copper. New subjects, buildings, and businesses flourished, and future dreams were imagined and hoped for. This period of growth is, however, now over. Mongolia is instead facing high levels of public and private debt, conflicts over land and sovereignty, and a changed political climate that threatens its fragile democratic institutions. Subjective Lives and Economic Transformations in Mongolia details this complex story through the intimate lives of five women. Building on long-term friendships, which span over 20 years, Rebecca documents their personal journeys in an ever-shifting landscape. She reveals how these women use experiences of living a ‘life in the gap’ to survive the hard reality between desired outcomes and their actual daily lives. In doing so, she offers a completely different picture from that presented by economists and statisticians of what it is like to live in this fluctuating extractive economy.

Oirat and Kalmyk Identity in the 20th and 21st Century

Oirat and Kalmyk Identity in the 20th and 21st Century
Author: Johannes Reckel
Publisher: Universitätsverlag Göttingen
Total Pages: 492
Release: 2020
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 3863954645

Oirat-Kalmyk are Western Mongols that since the late 14th century stand in opposition to the Eastern Mongols like Khalka, Tümed, Buryat etc. They dominated for hundreds of years the western Central Asian steppes often in a fighting competition with Khazaks, Nogai and other Turkic nomadic tribes. The Dzungar Khanat of the Oirat was destroyed by Manchu China in 1757, but the death throes for the Oirat and Kalmyk community came in the middle 20th century when the limitless steppes became divided between socialist states with closed or at least fixed borders. Different groups of the Oirat-Kalmyk today live in four different states in a diaspora that threatens their common ethnic identity. In recent years borders that had been closed for decades opened again for mutual contacts and the Oirat again are looking for a common identity across borders, an identity that focuses on a common language, script and religion. The Oirat-Kalmyk are embedded in multi-ethnic social structures in which they have developed a great deal of adaptability to the environment as much as a conception of the own identity. This book presents various topics discussed at the international conference on Oirat and Kalmyk Identity in the 20th and 21st century at the Göttingen State- and University Library. The authors investigate Oirat cultural and linguistic heritage from different perspectives such as youth culture, internet language, dances and songs, as well as history, literature, linguistics and religion. The book contributes to the latest research trends in Mongolian and Central Asian Studies and their related disciplines.

Buddhism, Modernity, and the State in Asia

Buddhism, Modernity, and the State in Asia
Author: P. Kitiarsa
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 381
Release: 2013-07-31
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1137326174

Leading scholars working on Buddhism and politics in South and Southeast Asia add to current discussions regarding 'Engaged Buddhism' and the recent work on protests. The writers have mostly established themselves in their fields, offering a diverse approach and country-by-country coverage.

Nomads on Pilgrimage

Nomads on Pilgrimage
Author: Isabelle Charleux
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 495
Release: 2015-06-29
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9004297782

Nomads on Pilgrimage: Mongols on Wutaishan (China), 1800-1940 is a social history of the Mongols’ pilgrimages to Wutaishan in late imperial and Republican times. In this period of economic crisis and rise of nationalism and anticlericalism in Mongolia and China, this great Buddhist mountain of China became a unique place of intercultural exchanges, mutual borrowings, and competition between different ethnic groups. Based on a variety of written and visual sources, including a rich corpus of more than 340 Mongolian stone inscriptions, it documents why and how Wutaishan became one of the holiest sites for Mongols, who eventually reshaped its physical and spiritual landscape by their rites and strategies of appropriation.

The Constitution and Contestation of Darhad Shamans' Power in Contemporary Mongolia

The Constitution and Contestation of Darhad Shamans' Power in Contemporary Mongolia
Author: Judith Hangartner
Publisher: Global Oriental
Total Pages: 374
Release: 2011-04-07
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9004212744

This book offers an in-depth insight into post-socialist rural shamans in Mongolia thereby making a rare but important contribution to the ethnography of both Inner Asia and Southern Siberia. It examines the social making of shamans, in particular those of the Shishget depression of the northernmost borders of Mongolia. By analysing practices, discourses and performances in local and national arenas, the author traces the social constitution of the shamans’ inspirational power, examines the shamans’ performance of power during the seance, discusses the economy of reputation of successful shamans and scrutinizes their legitimizing practices. The study will be welcomed by students of social/cultural anthropology and religious studies with a particular interest in shamanism or ritual studies.

Sinophobia

Sinophobia
Author: Franck Billé
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
Total Pages: 274
Release: 2014-10-31
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0824847830

Sinophobia is a timely and groundbreaking study of the anti-Chinese sentiments currently widespread in Mongolia. Graffiti calling for the removal of Chinese dot the urban landscape, songs about killing the Chinese are played in public spaces, and rumors concerning Chinese plans to take over the country and exterminate the Mongols are rife. Such violent anti-Chinese feelings are frequently explained as a consequence of China’s meteoric economic development, a cause of much anxiety for her immediate neighbors and particularly for Mongolia, a large but sparsely populated country that is rich in mineral resources. Other analysts point to deeply entrenched antagonisms and to centuries of hostility between the two groups, implying unbridgeable cultural differences. Franck Billé challenges these reductive explanations. Drawing on extended fieldwork, interviews, and a wide range of sources in Mongolian, Chinese, and Russian, he argues that anti-Chinese sentiments are not a new phenomenon but go back to the late socialist period (1960–1990) when Mongolia’s political and cultural life was deeply intertwined with Russia’s. Through an in-depth analysis of media discourses, Billé shows how stereotypes of the Chinese emerged through an internalization of Russian ideas of Asia, and how they can easily extend to other Asian groups such as Koreans or Vietnamese. He argues that the anti-Chinese attitudes of Mongols reflect an essential desire to distance themselves from Asia overall and to reject their own Asianness. The spectral presence of China, imagined to be everywhere and potentially in everyone, thus produces a pervasive climate of mistrust, suspicion, and paranoia. Through its detailed ethnography and innovative approach, Sinophobia makes a critical intervention in racial and ethnic studies by foregrounding Sinophobic narratives and by integrating psychoanalytical insights into its analysis. In addition to making a useful contribution to the study of Mongolia, it will be essential reading for anthropologists, sociologists, and historians interested in ethnicity, nationalism, and xenophobia.