Nomads on Pilgrimage

Isabelle Charleux, Ph.D., is senior researcher at the National Centre for Scientific Research, France. She authored books, scholarly articles and catalogues on Mongol material culture, including Temples et monastères de Mongolie-Intérieure (Paris, 2006) and is director of the publication “Nord-Asie.”

'Charleux’s book is an erudite and prodigiously detailed study of pilgrimages to Wutaishan—a Buddhist sacred mountain in China’s Shanxi province—made by Mongols during the later Qing and early Chinese republican periods (...) a wonderfully detailed and meticulously work of scholarship, likely to have a significant interdisciplinary appeal.'Joseph Bristley, University College London, Inner Asia, 18 (2016)‘The monograph is a real novelty. It is based on original textual sources and secondary literature in several languages as well as on results of Charleux’s fieldword (…) As a multidisciplinary work, it will be welcomed by researchers of different backgrounds who employ diverse methodologies: historians, ethnographers, cultural anthropologists, philologists and Buddhologists (…) it is necessary to stress the richness of data included in this book, as well as Charleux’s interesting and often provocative analysis and conclusions, which may instigate further discussion on the role of Mongolian pilgrims in Wutaishan, as well as on their impact on the Qing empire. The Tibetan and Mongolian nomads who created a ‘little Tibet’ in central China are disappearing from the world. The book is a must for Mongolists but it will supply an abundance of material too for world historians, cultural anthropologists and specialists of religions and arts as well as for Asia lovers.’Agata Bareja-Starzynska, University of Warsaw, forthcoming in Nomadic Peoples