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CZECHOSLOVAK ACADEMIC STUDY OF BUDDHISM IN THE 1950s AND 1960s: FIELD RESEARCH IN ASIA
There are probably two reasons: the first one is less important: Lumir Jisl was
not a field researcher of religions; he was an archaeologist. The other reason is more
substantial: it was a risky, or at least inappropriate, business to study a live Buddhist
ritual. There were a lot of curious people from among guides, interpreters, expedi¬
tion organizers, but also Buddhist monks and laymen, who might have asked: Why
is the foreigner interested? The main precept in the study of live religions from the
standpoint of scientific atheism at that time was: study your enemy, so that you can
use his weapons to suppress him. This was certainly not an action in which Lumir
Jisl wished to participate. It was absurd to imagine that scientific investigation could
be unbiased at the time, and Jis] was well aware of the fact. If a religion could be
studied in the Czechoslovak Republic (with the attribute of Socialist added in 1960),
including study abroad, for instance in Mongolia, it would have had to be based on
scientific atheism. Lumir Jis] was apparently reluctant to engage in any relationship
with this highly ideological affair, as he would have found himself on shaky ground.
Any intelligent person was at least aware of, if not having immediate experience with
antireligious reprisals in the Soviet block. Moreover, his study of Buddhism focused on
visual artifacts examined outside of ritualistic context, not on live forms. Finally, there
was another important circumstance: the Mongolians themselves did not study their
religion in this way; if he had suggested he wished to study religious life by a neutral
scientific method, he would have faced much more serious problems than described
in his private travelogues. The first to start work on similar issues was the Mongolian
member of the Academy of Sciences Byambiin Rinchen ten years later, when he col¬
lected information for his renowned atlas of Mongolian monasteries.** However, even
this was not study of live religion; it was a study of religion that was almost dead at
least according to the official view.
Jisl did not see the ceremony as a subject of scientific examination, but as something
that is worth documenting. In this task, he perfectly succeeded. Moreover, the study
of live religions was not among the research goals of the expedition. They perceived
the ritual as a social event, part of summer festivals, introduction to naadam etc. The
amount of material is remarkable and what is important: nowhere in his texts about the
ceremony” do we find a mention of a reactionist or obscure nature of religion, which
was almost a necessity at that time.
If we compare the Western and central European production of the academic Budd¬
hology in the period from 1945 to 1989, the level of results in Czechoslovakia was
48 Rinéen, Byambin — Maidar, Damdinjaw: Mongol ard ulsin ugsatni sudlal, xelni Sinjlelin atlas [Ethno¬
graphic and Linguistic Atlas of the Mongolian People’s Republic]. Ulanbatar 1979.
There are three texts altogether: the first is the documentary for the Czechoslovak Radio, which was
prepared together with Emanuel Vléek immediately after the ceremony, see Jisl, L.— Vléek, E.: Reportaz
z Ulanbataru [Report form Ulaanbaatar]; the second text is a brief mention in the expedition report Jisl,
L.: Zprava o éeskoslovensko-mongolské archeologické expedici [Report of the Czechoslovak-Mongolian
archaeological expedition]. 1958, and the third is the English text of his book, see Jisl, L.: Mongolian
Journey, pp. 8-9.
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