Research Catalog

Title

The Dalai Lama and the Nechung Oracle / Christopher Bell.

Author

Bell, Christopher (Religious studies scholar)

Publication

New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2021]

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

xii, 313 pages : illustrations; 25 cm

Summary

"This book is about two immortals whose friendship has spanned nearly five hundred years across the Tibetan plateau and beyond. The first immortal is the Dalai Lama, the emanation of a bodhisattva, an enlightened being who voluntarily takes rebirth in the world to benefit sentient beings. The second immortal is a wrathful god named Pehar, who has possessed the Nechung Oracle since the sixteenth century. This book is the first to examine the relationship between these two monolithic figures that began in the seventeenth century during the reign of the Fifth Dalai Lama (1617-1682). This study is also the first extensive examination of the famed Nechung Oracle and his institution. In the seventeenth century, the protector deity Pehar and his oracle at Nechung Monastery were state-sanctioned by the nascent Tibetan government, becoming the head of an expansive pantheon of worldly deities assigned to protect the newly unified country. While the Fifth Dalai Lama and his government endorsed Pehar as part of his larger unification project, the governments of later Dalai Lamas continued to expand the deity's influence, and by extension their own, by ritually establishing Pehar at monasteries and temples around Lhasa and across Tibet. Pehar's cult at Nechung Monastery came to embody the Dalai Lama's administrative control in a mutually beneficial relationship of protection and prestige, the effects of which continue to reverberate within Tibet and among the Tibetan exile community today"--

Subject

• Ngag-dbang-blo-bzang-rgya-mtsho, Dalai Lama V, 1617-1682 > Teachings
• Bstan-ʼdzin-rgya-mtsho, Dalai Lama XIV, 1935- > Teachings
• Bstan-ʼdzin-rgya-mtsho, Dalai Lama XIV, 1935-
• Ngag-dbang-blo-bzang-rgya-mtsho, Dalai Lama V, 1617-1682
• Nechung Monastery (Dharmsāla, India)
• Lamas > History
• Lamas > Lineage
• Nechung Oracle
• Pehar (Buddhist deity) > Cult
• Lamas
• Teachings

Genre/Form

History.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references and index.

Contents

Note on Tibetan Transcription -- Introduction -- 1. Pehar and the Five King Spirits -- 2. The Fifth Dalai Lama's God -- 3. The Central Rituals -- 4. The Liturgical Calendar -- 5. Nechung Monastery -- 6I. Institutional Networks -- 7. The Nechung Oracle -- Conclusion -- Bibliography -- Index.

Call Number

JFE 21-453

ISBN

• 9780197533352
• 0197533353

LCCN

2020041260

OCLC

1221015107

Author

Bell, Christopher (Religious studies scholar), author.

Title

The Dalai Lama and the Nechung Oracle / Christopher Bell.

Publisher

New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2021]

Type of Content

text

Type of Medium

unmediated

Type of Carrier

volume

Bibliography

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Other Form:

Online version: Bell, Christopher, The Dalai Lama and the Nechung Oracle New York : Oxford University Press, 2021. 9780197533376 (DLC) 2020041261

Research Call Number

JFE 21-453