Book Review

Under the Shadow of White Tara: Buriat Buddhists in Imperial Russia By Nikolay Tsyrempilov. Leiden: Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh, 2021. xvii, 220 pp. ISBN: 9783506760487 (cloth)

Montgomery, Robert W.

2022

Overview

According to Tsyrempilov in chapter 2, “Building the Church of the Lamas,” soon after Buddhism entered Buriatia in the seventeenth century, the Mongol Buddhist world's division between the Russian and Qing Empires sparked the first Russian attempts to regulate Buriat Buddhism. [...]a 1741 law recognized the Tsongol Datsan's abbot, Ngawang Puntsok, as the sangha's head, exempted lamas from taxation, limited their number to 150, and banned Buriat contacts with foreign lamas. [...]this work shows a much more nuanced approach than earlier Soviet works that, while informative, were shackled in the straitjacket of Marxist anticlericalism.1 The most wide-ranging study of Buriat Buddhism in English, Under the Shadow of White Tara complements John Snelling and Alexandre Andreyev's specialized studies of the prominent cleric Agvan Dorzhiev and Buriat involvement in Russo-Tibetan relations.2 By situating Russia's treatment of Buriat Buddhism in the context of its policies toward minority faiths and its geopolitical ambitions in Asia, the book expands upon Paul Werth and David Schimmelpenninck van der Oye's treatments.3 Under the Shadow of White Tara will be of great utility for students of native Siberian history, Mongolian studies, Buddhology, and imperial policy toward subaltern groups. [e-mail]

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press,Duke University Press, NC & IL
• Subject: 17th century / 19th century / Ancient languages / Asian studies / Book Reviews—China and Inner Asia / Buddhism / Buddhists / Clergy / Geopolitics / Governor General-Canada / Governors / Monks / Religion / Sanskrit / Taxation