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Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2009

George Murphy
George Murphy
Affiliation:
Stanford University
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Professor Miller adds more information to help build up a knowledge of how Lamaist monasteries have functioned in the recent past. Such monasteries performed (and in some cases still perform) not only religious and social functions but political and economic ones. As regards their internal financial systems, they seem to have had similar organizations all of which varied somewhat according to local environments. But Professor Miller comments on one common thread: the uisa system, and appraises its significance for the original spread of Inner Asian monasticism, for the fluctuations in fortunes of individual monasteries, and for the economy as a whole.

Type
Research Article
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 3 , Issue 4 , July 1961 , pp. 439 - 442
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1961

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References

1 See also Lt. Binsteed, G. C., “Life in a Khalkha Steppe Lamasery”, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 23 (1914);Google Scholar B. B. Baradin, “Buddhist Monasteries”, in Ocherki Istorii Buriat-Mongol'skogo Naroda, ed. M. N. Bogdanov (Verkne Udinsk, 1926); Hermann Consten, “Denominations of Monasteries in Outer and Inner Mongolia”, and “The Secular Administration of Mongolian Monasteries and their Shabinars”, Collectanea Commissionis Synodalis, 12 (1939). Miller, R. J., The Socio-Political and Economic Aspects of the Monastery in Inner Mongolia, unpublished doct. diss. (University of Washington, 1955),Google Scholar and Monasteries and Culture Change in Inner Mongolia (Wiesbaden, 1959); Pozdneev, A., Mongoliia i Mongoli, I (St. Petersburg, 1896), and II (St. Petersburg, 1898); G. Ts. Tsybikov, A Buddhist Pilgrim to the Holy Places of Tibet; Dairies kept from 1899–1902, Translated from the Russian by Roger Shaw, for the Human Relations Area Files (New Haven, 1952–53); H. H. Vreeland 3rd, Mongol Community and Kinship Structure, Human Relations Area Files (New Haven, 1954).Google Scholar

2 On this see Tsybikov, op. cit., p. 282 ff.

3 Historic cases of formation of communities (sangha) are intimately tied with formation of monasteries; in other words, the objective of the collectivity known as a sangha was to found monastic communities. Robert B. Ekvall has pointed out to me that in general while a chief lama (emanation body) had a special identification with a particular monastery, there were a number of other reincarnations in any large monastery, each with their own establishment and treasury.

4 These monks were known as Ban Log (priest rebels). See Robert B. Ekvall, Three Categories of inmates within Tibetan Monasteries—Status and Function (unpublished manuscript).

5 Vreeland, p. 100.

6 Vreeland, p. 97. This again may have been quite peculiar to the Narobanchim temple area although there seems no good a priori reason why this should be the case.

7 But see Miller, R. J., The Socio-Political and Economic Aspects of the Monastery in Inner Mongolia, p. 230.Google Scholar

8 Tsybikov, op. cit., p. 151.

9 Pozdneev, op. cit., I, p. 38, describes a case where the local church authorities ousted Chinese to promote agriculture among the Outer Mongols as a source of profit (the Mongols were shabinar or subjects of the monastic unit).