Beyond Spatial and Temporal Contingencies: Tantric Rituals in Eastern Central Asia under Tangut Rule, 11th–13th C.
Tantric Buddhist ritual practice during the time of Tangut rule (ca. 1038-1227) in Eastern Central Asia can be studied on the basis of material, visual, and textual sources from various Buddhist sites. Here, I read a variety of sources that share a context to argue that a number of caves in the Nort...
| Published in: | Dynamics in the history of religions |
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| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Brill
2022
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| In: |
Dynamics in the history of religions
Year: 2022, Volume: 12, Pages: 313-365 |
| Further subjects: | B
Altaische & Ostasiatische Sprachen
B Asia B Sprache und Linguistik B Allgemein B Asien-Studien B Art history B Religionswissenschaften B Uralische B Ostasiatische Geschichte B History |
| Online Access: |
Presumably Free Access Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | Tantric Buddhist ritual practice during the time of Tangut rule (ca. 1038-1227) in Eastern Central Asia can be studied on the basis of material, visual, and textual sources from various Buddhist sites. Here, I read a variety of sources that share a context to argue that a number of caves in the Northern Section of the Mogao Cave complex in Dunhuang were likely used for meditation and ritual practice, including as burial-meditation caves. These caves include Mogao Cave 465—the sole cave with an explicit Tantric Buddhist iconographic programme. I analyse the sources with the help of an analytical tool established by Knut Martin Stünkel, the three-level model of ‘transcendence-immanence distinction’ (TID), in order to understand the underlying ‘transcending process’, based on the ‘object-language level’ rather than on a specific notion of transcendence. Stünkel’s analysis is an outcome of an interdisciplinary research consortium at my home institution, the Center for Religious Studies (CERES) at Ruhr-Universität Bochum; thus, my chapter is an attempt to test the usefulness of the TID model for a medieval Central Asian Buddhist context. The application of this model allows one to analyse the process of the transformation of space, of the physical space of a ritual cave as well as of bodily space, as the practitioner’s perception of it is said to shift from an ‘immanent’ to a ‘transcendent’ perception. This would necessarily have an impact on the perception of time as well. |
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| Contains: | Enthalten in: Dynamics in the history of religions
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1163/9789004508446_012 |