Rediscovering Western Tibet : Gonpa, Chorten and the continuity of practice with a Tibetan Buddhist community in the Indian Himalaya

Abstract

The thesis studies the continuity and revitalisation of Tibetan Buddhism of the Drukpa Kargyu tradition in the district of Karzha in Lahul, Himachal Pradesh (India). The study is centred on the religious community of Kardang Gonpa and on the associated village of Kardang. Chapter 1 presents Karzha and Lahul as seen by the Indian administratration. This 'external' description is further developed in Section I of the thesis, with the historical survey and presentation of the perspective of the outside observer. After this 'external' description, Section I introduces the 'internal' perspective, the sacred geography of Karzha Khandroling ('Karzha, Land of Dakinis'), and considers the relationship between the two perspectives. Section II presents descriptions of the village, the households which make it up, and the cycle of agricultural and calendrical rituals which are performed there. Attention then turns, in Chapter 5, to the gonpa and the links between its practitioners and the village households from which they come. The origins of the gonpa early this century, in a period of religious revitalisation stemming from the activity of the East Tibetan teacher, Shakya Shri (1853-1919), and his Karzhapa disciples, Kardangpa Norbu (1885-1947) and Kardangpa Kunga (18837-1967), are narrated. A more recent period of revitalisation, associated with the ritual and teaching activities of Shakya Shri's refugee grandson, and continued after the latter's death by his teaching assistant, Gegan Khyentse Gyatso, and his son, Se Rinpoche, is explored in Section III. Chapter 7, which focuses on the building of a chorten (stupa) in Kardang village during the period of fieldwork, is both indicatative of this revitalisation and demonstrates the relationships between village and gonpa. Section IV considers the stories told about the origins of Kardang Gonpa in the light both of stories about earlier religious teachers in Karzha, particularly the early Drukpa teacher Gotsangpa, and of the general Tibetan tradition of namthar or hagiography. Such narratives play a vital part in maintaining Karzhapa ways of thinking and behaving and so validate the continuity of the Drukpa Kargyu tradition of Buddhism, which allows the people of Kardang to respond in a positive and constructive way to processes of change, 'development' and incorporation into the modem state of India.