Lhasa Ni Temple Buddhist Chant: Research on Religious Ritual Offerings of Ani Cangkong

Author: Huang Yong
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-12-01
Features: This paper takes the renowned nunnery of A in the Wutang region as a case study, systematically discussing the history, management structure, economic management, personal lives of nuns, and various religious activities of the temple. The book provides a detailed record of the temple's overall structure, all statues, and murals, exploring existing and preserved artifacts such as the meditation cave of Songtsen Gampo, the skull mask of the Bodhisattva of the Bardo, and murals. It analyzes the temple's management structure from three aspects: management structure, temple economic conditions, and the personal religious and economic lives of the nuns. Based on this, it also proposes some policy recommendations. The key focus of the book is a comprehensive and systematic analysis of all the Dorma (mantra flags) and related offerings of the temple. Detailed summaries and comparisons are made regarding the colors, shapes, arrangement orders of the offerings, as well as the internal materials and methods of worship, which refute certain previous diagnoses with actual examples and propose new perspectives and analytical methods. Finally, it particularly explores all the rituals and their contents of the A, analyzing the religious doctrines and symbolic meanings they contain. Based on the investigation materials, it also analyzes and explains the forms of personal retreat rituals. The book is well-written, illustrated, and both academically rigorous and highly readable. We believe this richly documented, well-supported, and innovative monograph will certainly attract attention from the Tibetan studies community both at home and abroad.