[Buddha-l] [Fwd: Kyabjé Pema Norbu Rinpoche Enters Parinirvana]

[Dan Lusthaus]

> Sorry, I should have been more clear. I was referring to the
> overall social rituals, hierarchies, elaborate robes, courts, and
> so forth of Tibetan religious establishments in general, --not to
> the Rinpoche's demise.
> Joanna


In that case, take a look at Johan Elverskog's _Our Great Qing: The Mongols,
Buddhism and the State in Late Imperial China_ (U Hawaii, 2006). He does a
nice job of showing how, from the late Ming through the Qing (ca. 16th-20th
centuries), the Chines court, playing on affinities between Manchus and
Mongolians, on the one hand, and Tibet and Mongols on the other, forged
cakravartin myths, making Mongolia part of "our great Qing" via Tibetan
mediation. The Emperor of China gets viewed as the great Cakravartin
(Wheel-turning Ruler), to whom the Mongols, Tibetans, Manchurians, etc., are
followers and fellow exponents of the Buddhist way. It is cosmological
sovereignty united by a shared Buddhist myth (usurping Genghis and Kublai
Khan as well by making them prototypical Mongolian Buddhists, the original
Cakravartins who have passed their mantle to the Chinese (Manchurian)
Emperor, inventing increasingly elaborate and inaccurate "conversion"
stories of the Mongols to Buddhism, etc., placing them not only under
Tibetan aegis, but specifically Gelugpa, which also meant Chinese
sovereignty). The Mongolians themselves take over these myths and construct
identities from them, using Tibeto-Indic sources to "find" themselves as
Buddhists centuries earlier than they were, and constructing similar
identities out of Chinese materials. The social, political, ritual, etc.
hierarchies are all forged by these (Gelugpa arises during the Ming dynasty
and reaches full ascendancy with the advent of the Qing).

Dan