Long Lives and Untimely Deaths

Life-Span Concepts and Longevity Practices among Tibetans in the Darjeeling Hills, India

AvBarbara Gerke

Inbunden, Engelska, 2011

Del 27 i serien Brill's Tibetan Studies Library

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Beskrivning

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.’

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum:2011-12-23
Mått:160 x 240 x 27 mm
Vikt:810 g
Format:Inbunden
Språk:Engelska
Serie:Brill's Tibetan Studies Library
Antal sidor:364
Förlag:Brill
ISBN:9789004217034

Utforska kategorier

Sociologi och antropologi inom Samhälle och politik
Folkhälsa och hälsopedagogik inom Medicin
Buddhism inom Filosofi och religion

Mer om författaren

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.

Recensioner i media

'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)