The Cult of Pure Crystal Mountain : Popular Pilgrimage and Visionary Landscape in Southeast Tibet

The Tibetan district of Tsari with its sacred snow-covered peak of Pure Crystal Mountain has long been a place of symbolic and ritual significance for Tibetan peoples. In this book, Toni Huber provides the first thorough study of a major Tibetan Buddhist pilgrimage center and cult mountain, and explores the esoteric and popular traditions of ritual there. The main focus is on the period of the 1940s and '50s, just prior to the 1959 Lhasa uprising and subsequent Tibetan diaspora into South Asia. Huber's work thus documents Tibetan life patterns and cultural traditions which have largely disappeared with the advent of Chinese colonial modernity in Tibet. In addition to the work's documentary content, Huber offers discussion and analysis of the construction and meaning of Tibetan cultural categories of space, place, and person, and the practice of ritual and organization of traditional society in relation to them. Preface Acknowledgments Contents Note aon Tibetan Words I. Pilgrimage 1. Introduction 2. Tibetan Pilgrimage: Concepts and Practice 3. The Cult of Pilgrimage Mountains in Tibet II. Representations 4. Cosmodrama and Architectonics of Landscape 5. History and Prayer as Map III. Ritual Institution 6. A Tantric Environment. 7. Popular Short Pilgrimages. 8. Barbarian Tributes and Great Processions. 9. Statecraft and Status in Contested Territory IV. Local Lives 10. Complex Identities and Local Rituals 11. Culture Epilog Tibetan Word List Notes Bibliography Index Tsari has long been a place of symbolic and ritual significance for Tibetan peoples. This text explores the traditions of ritual there focusing on the 1940s and 1950s and documenting Tibetan life patterns and cultural traditions which have largely disappeared with the advent of Chinese colonialism.