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MATTHEW WILLIAM KING
Materializing the Oing-Géluk Formation at Yeke-yin Küriy-e
In the remainder of this short article I explore a wildly metaphoric and poetic praise
to the geography surrounding the college of Tashi Tsépel Ling, a prominent scholastic
college in Yeke-yin Kiiriye, that illustrates the central role of material culture in Budd¬
hist histories of Khalkha. In Agwangkhaidub’s rendition, the mountains, forests, and
even inhabitants of the landscape become not just a symbol for, but also a material
instantiation of, a body mandala. Of particular interest — at least in light of my own
research into the mediation of Qing sovereignty in Mongolian and Tibetan Buddhist
literature — is the way this short, esoteric praise is twinned so tightly with the Qing
formation via the “unification of religion and politics” rubric already so familiar to
historians of Buddhist life in Inner Asia during the Qing.’
The work examined below, entitled simply A Praise to the Sacred Site of Drepung
Trashi Tsépel Ling (Tib. ‘bras spungs bkra shis tshe ‘phel gling gi gnas bstod), 1s just
one such text from his extant collected works. Other examples include, but are not limi¬
ted to, catalogues (Tib. dkar chag), praises (Tib. bstod pa), and “measures of circum¬
ambulatory routes” (Tib. /am skor) in and through his still settling urban environment.
In addition to the great interest this monk’s oeuvre holds for historians of visual and
material culture, here historians after the lived and performative side of Inner Asian
religions — not just catalogues of canonical texts or histories of doctrinal development —
will find unusual riches. This is no doubt explained by Agwangkhaidub’s prominent
position during what was meant to be the final settlement of the previously roaming
monastic city of Yeke-yin Ktiriy-e under the great Fifth Jebtsundamba Khutugtu."*
As just one example, Agwangkhaidub composed an entire cluster of texts that care¬
fully described the form and contents of Yeke Ktirey-e’s famous, large-scale copper
statue of Maitreya Buddha (which was consecrated in 1833 by the disciple of Agwang¬
khaidub, the Fifth Jebtsundamba). Our author dully recorded a careful description of
these momentous events for posterity. In addition, he wrote several tracts on the his¬
tory, visuality, and worship of Maitreya connected to both the statue and at least one
large-scale thangka painting of the deity completed 1821. Agwangkhaidub’s Maitreya
corpus also offers fascinating, and I think historically invaluable, directions for what
Michel de Certeau would call “users” of the newly settled Yeke-yin Ktiriy-e, guiding
For example: Schwieger, Peter: The Dalai Lama and the Emperor of China: A Political History of the
Tibetan Institution of Reincarnation. Columbia University Press, New York 2015; Ishihama Yumiko:
The Notion of ‘Buddhist Government’ (chos srid) Shared by Tibet, Mongol, and Manchu in the Early
17" Century. In: The relationship between religion and state (chos srid zung ‘brel) in traditional Tibet:
proceedings of a seminar held in Lumbini, Nepal, March 2000. Ed. Ciippers, Christoph. Lumbini Inter¬
national Research Institute, Lumbini 2004, pp. 15-31; Elverskog, Johan: Mongol Time Enters a Qing
World; Elverskog, Johan: Our Great Qing.
Lubsangchiiltimjigmiddambiijaltsan, Tib. blo bzang tshul khrims ‘Jigs med bstan pa’i rgyal mtshan.
Despite the centrality of the great Fifth Jebtsundamba in later Mongol Buddhist historiography, he only
lived for thirty five years, from 1815 to 1840.
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