High Religion: A Cultural and Political History of Sherpa Buddhism (Princeton Studies in Culture/Power/History)

By Sherry B. Ortner

Book Overview

An eminent anthropologist examines the foundings of the first celibate Buddhist monasteries among the Sherpas of Nepal in the early twentieth century--a religious development that was a major departure from "folk" or "popular" Buddhism. Sherry Ortner is the first to integrate social scientific and historical modes of analysis in a study of the Sherpa monasteries and one of the very few to attempt such an account for Buddhist monasteries anywhere. Combining ethnographic and oral-historical methods, she scrutinizes the interplay of political and cultural factors in the events culminating in the foundings. Her work constitutes a major advance both in our knowledge of Sherpa Buddhism and in the integration of anthropological and historical modes of analysis. At the theoretical level, the book contributes to an emerging theory of "practice," an explanation of the relationship between human intentions and actions on the one hand, and the structures of society and culture that emerge from and feed back upon those intentions and actions on the other. It will appeal not only to the increasing number of anthropologists working on similar problems but also to historians anxious to discover what anthropology has to offer to historical analysis. In addition, it will be essential reading for those interested in Nepal, Tibet, the Sherpa, or Buddhism in general.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 069109439X
• ISBN13: 9780691094397
• Release Date: October 1989
• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Length: 269 Pages
• Weight: 1.25 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.5" x 1.0" x 6.3"

Customer Reviews

Deep comprehensive Sherpa history book, best available

We at the Sherpa Friendship Association recommend HIGH RELIGION first and foremost as the best Sherpa history book in English. Sherpa language itself is rarely written, but Ortner went to great lengths to locate original Sherpa histories actually written by educated Sherpa lamas. Her translations of the Sherpa migration (from Kham, Tibet) stories into English are wonderfully detailed, and her study of Sherpa clan politics, Sherpa Buddhist beliefs, and finance in the old Sherpa Kingdoms is more thorough than any other study before or since. Most of the research for this voume was conducted in Zhung Gompa (Junbesi) in SharKhumbu, the Southern Kingdom of the Sherpas. Surely Lama Dorje, the magical Sherpa Lama who founded Zhung Gompa, smiles upon this work!