Routledge (Nepal Editions)

Contextualising the seemingly esoteric and exotic aspects of Tibetan Buddhist culture within the everyday, embodied and sensual sphere of religious praxis, this book centres on the social and religious lives of deceased Tibetan Buddhist lamas. It explores how posterior forms – corpses, relics, reincarnations and hagiographical representations – extend a lama’s trajectory of lives and manipulate biological imperatives of birth and death.

The book looks closely at previously unexamined figures whose history is relevant to a better understanding of how…

In Buddhist thought and practice, death has always been a central concept. This book provides a careful and thorough analysis of the rituals and social customs surrounding death in the Theravada tradition of Sri Lanka.

Rita Langer describes the rituals of death and rebirth and investigates their ancient origins, analyzing social issues of the relationship between monks and lay people in this context. This aspect is of particular interest as death rituals are the only life cycle ritual in…

This important text analyzes the moral theory of the seventh century Indian Mahayana master, Santideva, author of the well-known religious poem, the Bodhicaryavatara (Entering the Path of Enlightenment) as well as the significant, but relatively overlooked, Siksasamuccaya (Compendium of Teachings).

With particular focus on the Siksasamuccaya, this book uses original translations and critical analysis in order to answer the question: How would Santideva’s ethics be understood in terms of Western moral theory? Santideva’s ethical presuppositions and moral reasoning are illuminated by analyzing his key moral terms…

This book describes and analyses the structure and performance of Tibetan Buddhist death rituals, and situates that performance within the wider context of Buddhist death practices generally. Drawing on a detailed and systematic comparative survey of existing records of Tibetan funerary practices, including historical travel accounts, anthropological and ethnographic literature, Tibetan texts and academic studies, it demonstrates that there is no standard form of funeral in Tibetan Buddhism, although certain elements are common.

The structure of the book follows…

In August 1904 Sir Francis Younghusband's invasion force reached the forbidden city of Lhasa. The British invasion of Tibet in 1903 acted as a catalyst for change in a world transformed by revolution, war and the rise of a new order. Using unofficial government sources, private papers and the diaries and memoirs of those involved, this book examines the impact of Younghusband's invasion and its aftermath inside Tibet.

The imperialist ambitions of China – which invaded Tibet in the late 1940s – have sparked the spectacular spread of Tibetan Buddhism worldwide, and especially in western countries. This work is a study on the malleability of a particular Buddhist tradition; on its adaptability in new contexts.

The book analyses the nature of the Tibetan Buddhism in the Diaspora. It examines how the re-signification of Tibetan Buddhist practices and organizational structures in the present refers back to the dismantlement of…

The Western image of Tibet as a sacred land is in many ways a mythical construction. But the Tibetans themselves have traditionally mapped out their land in terms of areas of sacred space, and pilgrimage, ensuring a high degree of mobility within all classes of Tibetan society. Pilgrims travelled to local, regional, and national centres throughout recorded Tibetan history. In recent years, pilgrimage has resumed in areas where it had been forbidden by the Chinese authorities, and has…

Buddhist Manuscript Cultures explores how religious and cultural practices in premodern Asia were shaped by literary and artistic traditions as well as by Buddhist material culture. This study of Buddhist texts focuses on the significance of their material forms rather than their doctrinal contents, and examines how and why they were made.

Collectively, the book offers cross-cultural and comparative insights into the transmission of Buddhist knowledge and the use of texts and images as ritual objects in the artistic and…

Providing an overall interpretation of the Buddhist monument Borobudur in Indonesia, this book looks at Mahayana Buddhist religious ideas and practices that could have informed Borobudur, including both the narrative reliefs and the Buddha images.

The author explores a version of the classical Mahayana that foregrounds the importance of the visual in relation to Buddhist philosophy, meditation, devotion, and ritual. The book goes on to show that the architects of Borobudur designed a visual world in which the Buddha appeared…

Using a commentary on the influential text, the Manjusri-namasamgitii, ‘The Chanting of the Names of Manjusri’, this book deals with Buddhist tantric meditation practice and its doctrinal context in early-medieval India. The commentary was written by the 8th-9th century Indian tantric scholar Vilasavajra, and the book contains a translation of the first five chapters. The translation is extensively annotated, and accompanied by introductions as well as a critical edition of the Sanskrit text based on eight Sanskrit manuscripts and two…