Is All of Tibet Buddhist, and to what extent?: On Local Cosmologies of Mountains and Ancestors

MTSP Postdoctoral Scholar Dr. Anna Sehnalova aims to draw attention to non-Buddhist religious systems still in some form existing on the Tibetan Plateau. It explores local cosmologies of territorial deities, mountains, and deified ancestors dwelling in landscape and the sky. This ethnographic and historical case study focuses on the sacred mountain of Nyenpo Yutse, the acclaimed ancestral mountain of the Golok clan in East Tibet. The Golok clan, a patrilineal group with a recognised apical ancestor, historically controlled the territory of the mountain and beyond. The cosmology tied to Nyenpo Yutse is very closely bound to the clan’s governance, socio-political and kinship system, perceived history, ethnogenesis, genealogy, and migration. People’s and land’s wellbeing, affluence, and fertility derive from forces of prosperity and vitality drawn from the natural environment and ancestry through the different horizontal layers of the world. What happens when Buddhism comes in?

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