Rulers on the Celestial Plain: Ecclesiastic and Secular Hegemony in Medieval Tibet: A Study of Tshal Gung-thang.

• Author: Warner, Cameron David
• Position: Book review

Rulers on the Celestial Plain: Ecclesiastic and Secular Hegemony in Medieval Tibet: A Study of Tshal Gung-thang. By PER K. SORENSEN and GUNTRAM HAZOD, with Tsering Gyalbo. Denkschriften der philosophisch-historische Klasse, vol. 361. Veroffentlichungen zur Sozialanthropologie, vol. 10. Vienna: VERLAG DER OSTERRECHISCHE AKADEMIE DER WISSENSCHAFTEN, 2007. 2 vols., pp. i-ix, 1-1011, plates, maps. [euro]220.80

In rapid succession Per K. Sorensen and Guntram Hazod, often with the assistance of Tsering Gyalbo, have published a relative bevy of prodigious and essential micro-histories of key premodern monastic institutions in Central Tibet. Rulers on the Celestial Plain is only their latest major work in an expanding oeuvre, based on the philological foundation Sorensen established with his The Mirror Illuminating the Royal Genealogies: Tibetan Buddhist Historiography, an Annotated Translation of the XIVth Century Tibetan Chronicle: Rgyal rabs gsal ba'i me long (Otto Harrassowitz, 1994).

Each work of Sorensen et al. has centered on an annotated translation of a Tibetan history of a monastic institution, preceded by an introduction and followed by lengthy appendices. For Rulers on the Celestial Plain, that key text is the Gung thang dkar chag, the history of Tshal Gung thang 'Jog ri ba Ngag dbang bstan 'dzin 'phrin las rnam rgyal compiled at the end of 1782. The text in question begins with the outer, inner, and secret biographies of Bla ma Zhang (1123-1193), the enigmatic warlord and theocrat of the Lhasa valley, continues with the lineage histories of related complexes, descriptions of the Gung thang temple and its monastic complex, and ends with a list of the complex's sacred objects (brten) and how they were to be venerated. Written from an apologetic Dge lugs pa perspective after the monastery was converted to the Dge lugs pa lineage, the Gung thang dkar chag includes the causa scribendi. Following the model of the obligatory prayojana in Buddhist scholastic writings, the causa scribendi serves as documentation of the legitimacy of Dge lugs pa rule and an endorsement of Gung thang's new identity and function.

Appendix One contains an examination of two medieval thangka icons from the late thirteenth century of Bla ma Zhang and Gnyos Grags pa dpal--'"a glimpse into the modus operandi of political and ritual symbolism in Tibet" (p. 15). Appendix Two is a history of the Lhasa area from the twelfth to the seventeenth centuries, which draws on...