Book review: Religious bodies politic: rituals of sovereignty in Buryat Buddhism
Citation
Hundley, Helen. 2014. Book review: Bernstein, Anya. Religious Bodies Politic: Rituals of Sovereignty in Buryat Buddhism. The Russian Review, vol. 73:no. 3:ppg. 465–507
Abstract
In the twenty-first century, Buddhism is one of the older established-by-law religions of the Russian
Republic. In the eighteenth century, Yellow Hat, Mahayana Buddhism was brought by Mongol
Lamas from Tibet through Mongolia and into the Transbaikal region of Siberia. The targets of that
missionary work, the Buriat-Mongols, had ethnic, linguistic, economic, and other cultural ties to the
Mongolian lamas or priests. By the early nineteenth century the majority of Buriats in the Transbaikal
were Buddhist. In the Cis-Baikal Buddhism became important, but not overwhelmingly so due to
Russian intervention. As would be expected, by the time of the Russian Revolution, Buddhism
played an important role in the Baikal region. Again, following the Russian Revolution, as with
other religions in the new Soviet Union, Buddhism was suppressed. Since 1991 the Buddhist
revival has included rehabilitation and renewal at the headquarters of Buddhism, the Ivolginsk
Datsan, the introduction of new forms of Buddhism, reconnections with Tibetan and Mongolian
Buddhist institutions, and a general reassessment of what it means to be Buddhist in modern times.
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