Sangseraima Ujeed

The “Thob yig gsal ba'i me long” is a 17th century thob yig (records of teachings received) compiled by one of the most distinguished Mongolian Buddhist scholars of his times who is still celebrated as such today: Za-ya Pandita Blo-bzang 'phrin-las (1642-1715). The work, written in Tibetan, represents one of the largest and most comprehensive surviving examples of its genre. This dissertation critically analyses carefully chosen sections of the text to demonstrate the value of this work as an encyclopaedic authority of the Dge-lugs-pa dominated Tibetan Buddhist world of Central Asia in regard to religious history, religious interface and exchanges between traditions, major teachings, practices, transmission lineages, influential figures and important deities.

In popular opinion, the Mongolians were merely receivers of Tibetan Buddhism. However, the process was by no means simply unilateral. The Tibetan Buddhist world during the Early Modern period spanned most of Central and Inner Asia and was highly cosmopolitan. Through travel and reincarnation, there was movement and exchange of ethnicity and identity between the Tibetans and Mongolians. Thus, the Tibetan-Mongolian reciprocal assimilation of Buddhism and identity needs to be elucidated. In light of the existing scholarship on Tibetan Buddhism based on works by ethnically Tibetan polymaths, this project will examine the Mongolian contribution to the tradition through a selection of as yet unstudied Buddhist works authored between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries by Mongolian scholars