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

[jkirk]

Sounds like a book to read-------thanks for the cit.
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

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