ISBN:
9789004217485
Language:
English
Pages:
1 online resource (xxiii, 362 pages) :
,
illustrations (some color), maps.
Series Statement:
Brill's Tibetan studies library, v. 27
Series Statement:
Brill's Tibetan Studies Library
Series Statement:
Asian Studies E-Books Online, Collection 2012, ISBN: 9789004223219.
Parallel Title:
Print version: Gerke, Barbara, 1966- Long lives and untimely deaths.
DDC:
305.895/4105414
Keywords:
Tibetans Social conditions.
;
Tibetans Religion.
;
Longevity
;
Life span, Productive
;
Old age
;
Darjeeling (India : District) Religious life and customs.
;
Darjeeling (India : District) Social life and customs.
Abstract:
Longevity and long-life practices have been a pan-Tibetan concern for a very long time, but have hardly been studied by anthropologists. This book presents ethnographic accounts and textual material demonstrating how Tibetans in the Darjeeling Hills, India, view the life-span and map out certain life-forces in various areas of knowledge. These life-forces follow daily, monthly, and annual cycles. Divinations and astrological calculations are widely but varyingly used by Tibetans to assess the strength of life-forces and forecast difficult periods in their lives. Loss, exhaustion, or periodic weaknesses of life-forces are treated medically or through Tibetan Buddhist practices and rituals. In all these events, temporality and agency are deeply interlinked in the ways in which Tibetans enhance their vitality, prolong their life-spans, and avoid 'untimely deaths.'
Description / Table of Contents:
Preliminary Material -- 1 Introduction -- 2 Tibetans in the Darjeeling Hills: The Socio-Political and Historical Background -- 3 Contextualising Tibetan Longevity Practices -- 4 Temporal Dimensions of Life-forces -- 5 Detecting the Life-forces in the Body and the Life-span in the Pulse -- 6 Merit, Karma, Liberating Animals, and the Five Astrological Factors -- 7 Untimely Deaths, Remaining, and Maximum Life-spans -- 8 Divining the Life-span -- 9 Ritual Layers of Long-life Empowerments -- 10 The Sakya Tshe dbang: An Ethnographic Account of a Long-life Empowerment -- 11 Summary and Conclusions -- Appendices -- Glossary of Recurrent Tibetan and Sanskrit Terms -- List of Tibetan Proper Names -- Bibliography -- Index.
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