Sources of Mongolian Buddhism

Despite Mongolia's centrality to East Asian history and culture, Mongols themselves have often been seen as passive subjects on the edge of the Qing formation or as obedient followers of so-called "Tibetan Buddhism," peripheral to major literary, religious, and political developments. But in fact Mongolian Buddhists produced multi-lingual and genre-bending scholastic and ritual works that profoundly shaped historical consciousness, community identification, religious knowledge, and practices in Mongolian lands and beyond. In Sources of Mongolian Buddhism, a team of leading Mongolian scholars and authors have compiled a collection of original Mongolian Buddhist works—including ritual texts, poetic prayers and eulogies, legends, inscriptions, and poems—for the first time in any European language.

Vesna A. Wallace is Professor of South Asian Religions and Inner Asian Buddhist Studies in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of California in Santa Barbara. She has authored and translated four books on Indian Buddhism. Her most recent book is an edited volume on Mongolian Buddhism titled Buddhism in Mongolian Culture, History, and Society.