Acknowledgments -- Notes on transliteration and translation -- Introduction: Buddhist Inner Asia -- Campaigns -- Manufacturing -- Assemblies -- Governance -- Epilogue: A balancing act -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index.
Summary:
"Historian Lan Wu explores the interdependency and entanglement of two expanding powers in the area known today as China. In the mid-seventeenth century, Qing-dynasty China (1644-1911) and the Dalai Lama-led Buddhist government of the Ganden Podrang (1642-1959) came into contact. Their interactions have shaped geopolitical history in China ever since. Their entwined histories launched long-standing struggles that modern Chinese states have had to face in terms of political legitimacy, equivocal nationalist rhetoric, and the astonishing power that religious institutions have amassed. Drawing on textual sources in four languages as well as on visual art, Common Ground considers the contours of China and Tibet's interaction beyond an exclusive focus on the driven state administration. The story of the Qing's imperial encounter is inseparable from its efforts to both promote and circumscribe Tibetan Buddhist knowledge assemblages. These efforts included people, ideas, objects, and practices. Buddhist knowledge production and circulation formed a cross-cultural knowledge network, which provided institutional, pragmatic, and intellectual common ground for both polities. Their entangled history produced a Qing empire full of vitality but fraught with predicaments, a situation with repercussions felt to this day"-- Provided by publisher.
Series:
Studies of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.