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Longevity and long-life practices have been a pan-Tibetan concern for a very long time, but have hardly been studied by anthropologists. This book presents ethnographic accounts and textual material demonstrating how Tibetans in the Darjeeling Hills, India, view the life-span and map out certain life-forces in various areas of knowledge. These life-forces follow daily, monthly, and annual cycles. Divinations and astrological calculations are widely but varyingly used by Tibetans to assess the strength of life-forces and forecast difficult periods in their lives. Loss, exhaustion, or periodic weaknesses of life-forces are treated medically or through Tibetan Buddhist practices and rituals. In all these events, temporality and agency are deeply interlinked in the ways in which Tibetans enhance their vitality, prolong their life-spans, and avoid ‘untimely deaths.’
Price: $177.00
Pages: 364
Publisher: Brill
Imprint: Brill
Series: Brill's Tibetan Studies Library
Publication Date:
23 December 2011
ISBN: 9789004217034
Format: Hardcover
'Gerke offers the first comprehensive account and analysis of Tibetans’ contemporary ideas and practices related to multiple ‘lifeforces’ and the ‘life-span’. In so doing she makes a noteworthy contribution to the study of Tibetans in Indian exile, outside of the well-documented Dharamsala-based communities. However, this work stands out for another reason: the author offers an innovative analytical approach, ‘practices of temporalisation,’ through which to consider the disparate, yet highly interconnected, ideas regarding long life that are held by medical, astrological, divinatory, and ritual experts and lay Tibetans. (...) This book will be a fascinating and inspiring reading for the specialized scholarly audiences in anthropology of the HImalayas, (Tibetan) Buddhism, and Asian medicines.'
Theresia Hofer, University of Oslo, Himalaya, XXXII (2012)
Theresia Hofer, University of Oslo, Himalaya, XXXII (2012)
Barbara Gerke, D.Phil. (2008) in Social Anthropology, University of Oxford, is the Principal Investigator of a three-year DFG funded research project at Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany. Her research focuses on the anthropology of Tibetan Medicine, longevity, toxicity, and methods of purification.