Yui Cheong Richards Chang

Situated along the Old Hindustan–Tibet trade routes, Kinnaur has long been a meeting ground of Buddhist and pre-Buddhist traditions. This project investigates the agents and means of Kinnaur’s tenth to eleventh century transition to Buddhism, mapping Buddhist translator networks and foregrounding their “taming” of klu, serpent spirits associated with wild water sources. Reading these accounts as ecological engagement, it argues that water management was central to Buddhist conversion in the Western Himalayas. Ethnographic inquiry into ongoing klu rituals and songs in Kinnauri Buddhist communities further highlights this continuity. Combining textual and anthropological methods, the project thus rethinks how Buddhist conversion operated on a practical and ecological level.