Buddhist Himalaya
Travels and Studies in quest of the origins and nature of Tibetan Religion
D. L. Snellgrove
PREFACE
Most books that use the name “Himalaya” in their title are concerned with the adventures of mountaineers, and s it is but fair to warm the reader that there are here reckoned no exciting tale of risks rewarded or catastrophic and cruel defeat. We are shared but the incidental joys of mountaineering, the long approach-marches through the lower valleys with their rushing torrents and across the foot-hills clad in rhododendrons, red and white and pink. We have toiled through desolate place and camped contentedly far from the amenities and conventions of modern western life.
We have gazed enraptured upon great snow-peaks with their impregnable pinnacles of ice. The memory of those journeys through Sikkim and Nepal and on the wild and rugged confines of western Tibet have remained so vivid throughout the writing of this book, that one might easily swelled its pages with descriptions of this ideal life. But there are matters of more serious import, which were the object of these travels.
In an historical appreciation of Tibetan Buddhism it is impossible to ignore this enormous mountainous expanse of the Himalayas. It preserves, especially in the Nepal Valley, important traces of the later Indian Buddhism, which has provided the substance of much of Tibetan religion. It was through that country and the western passes that Buddhism was painstakingly transferred to Tibet from central India and Kashmir and there still exist important archaeological remains, dating from this period of transfer, especially in the west.
CONTENTS
I. ORIGINS IN INDIA
II. TANTRIC BUDDHISM
III. BUDDHISM IN NEPAL
IV. KINGS OF TIBET
V. RELIGIOUS TEACHERS OF TIBET
VI. TIBETAN CEREMONIES
VII. RELECTIONS
NOTE
MANDALAS
ON THE SPELLING OF TIBETAN AND SANSKRIT NAMES
CHRONOLOGY
BIBLIOGRAPHY
ABBREVIATIONS
GENERAL INDEX
TIBETAN INDEX