Der Buddhismus als Garant von »Frieden und Ruhe«: Zu religiösen Legitimationsstrategien von Gewalt am Beispiel der tibetisch-buddhistischen Missionierung der Mongolei im späten 16. Jahrhundert
The essay concentrates on the analysis of the Tibetan Buddhist strategies of converting the Mongols to Buddhism in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. In the wake of the meeting of the Altan Qagan of the Tumed-Mongols and the dGe-lugspa hierarch bSod-nams-rgya-mtsho in 1578 at Lake Kökenor, the...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | German |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Diagonal-Verlag
2012
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| In: |
Zeitschrift für Religionswissenschaft
Year: 2003, Volume: 11, Issue: 2, Pages: 185-207 |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (Verlag) |
| Parallel Edition: | Non-electronic
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| Summary: | The essay concentrates on the analysis of the Tibetan Buddhist strategies of converting the Mongols to Buddhism in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. In the wake of the meeting of the Altan Qagan of the Tumed-Mongols and the dGe-lugspa hierarch bSod-nams-rgya-mtsho in 1578 at Lake Kökenor, the Tibetan Buddhist clergy resorted to aggressive methods in order to get the Mongols converted. The Onggod, small figures made of felt or wood representing the ancestral spirits, were collected and burned. Female and male shamans were persecuted, and laws forbidding shamanist practices were issued by the local Mongolian political powers. On a theoretical level the violence accompanying the Mongolian conversion to Tibetan Buddhism was often justified by referring to the Buddhist political theory of the »two orders«, a concept that outlines an ideal Buddhist society in which the state provides the best possible means for its subjects to pursue the goal of enlightenment. The Tibetan concept of alterity which was (and is) partly determined by religious factors, however, considerably contributed to the physical and verbal aggression executed by the Tibetan clergy against their Mongolian counterparts. Although the use of violence in the course of the Mongols’ conversion to Buddhism was often legitimized by referring to »higher« soteriological issues at stake, it just as often was neither reflected nor questioned. The dispense of a theoretical reflection of the use of violence in certain circumstances lets one suspect that in times of a strong central political power the need to justify ethically questionable strategies decreases, even if the recourse to such strategies calls in question its very foundation. |
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| ISSN: | 2194-508X |
| Contains: | In: Zeitschrift für Religionswissenschaft
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1515/zfr.2003.11.2.185 |