Tantric Revisionings
Subtitle: New Understandings of Tibetan Buddhism and Indian Religion
By: Geoffrey Samuel
Edition: First edition.
Publisher: Taylor and Francis
Published: 2016
Place of publication: London
Language: eng
Number of pages: 392
ISBN-13: 9781315241814
Subjects: Tantric Buddhism; History; Bouddhisme tantrique; Histoire
Description: "Tantric Revisionings presents stimulating new perspectives on Hindu and Buddhist religion, particularly their Tantric versions, in India, Tibet or in modern Western societies. Geoffrey Samuel adopts an historically and textually informed anthropological approach, seeking to locate and understand religion in its social and cultural context. The question of the relation between 'popular' (folk, domestic, village, 'shamanic') religion and elite (literary, textual, monastic) religion forms a recurring theme through these studies. Six chapters have not been previously published; the previously published studies included are in publications which are difficult to locate outside major specialist libraries."--Provided by publisher.
Table of contents: title: Chapter 1 Introduction; title: chapter 2 Tibet as a Stateless Society and Some Islamic Paralleis; title: chapter 3 The Dissenting Tradition of Indian Tantra and its Partial Hegemonisation in Tibet; title: chapter 4 Tibetan Tantra as a Form of Shamanism: Some Reflections on the Vajrayana and its Sharnanic Origins; title: chapter 5 Buddhism and the State in Eighth Century Tibet; title: chapter 6 Shamanism, Bon and Tibetan Religion; title: chapter 7 The Indus Valley Civilisation and Early Tibet; title: chapter 8 Ge-sar of gLing: The Origins and Meanings of the East Tibetan Epic; title: chapter 9 Tibet and the Southeast Asian Highlands: Rethinking the Intellectual Context of Tibetan Studies; title: chapter 10 The Vajrayana in the Context of Himalayan Folk Religion; title: chapter 11 The Effectiveness of Goddesses, or, How Ritual Works; title: chapter 12 Women, Goddesses and Auspiciousness in South Asia; title: chapter 13 Tibetan Buddhism as a World Religion: Global Networking and its Consequences; title: chapter 14 The Westernisation of Tibetan Buddhism; title: chapter 15 The Attractions of Tantra: Two Historical Moments.