Oldal 356 [356]
SURUN-KHANDA D. SYRTYPOVA — SUSAN C. BYRNE
to get first-hand accounts of where the monasteries and temples were and their his¬
tory. It is accepted that descendants of the monastic communities may have had this
information on the datsan / khure / khurul handed down to them by their elders but
many will now themselves be very elderly.
In addition to the above source material, use will also be made of new opportuni¬
ties such as the exponential growth of internet posting, the availability of satellite
imagery — the increasing sophistication of and information provided by Google
maps™ — and other public data such as online local registration records. For exam¬
ple, increasingly datsan / khure / khurul that have restarted religious practice after
the late 1980s have their own websites and social media pages.'' In addition more
generic websites and social media pages covering Buddhism all over the world”
and particularly in Russia have been created where, * in some instances, a website
has been dedicated to a famous lama Itigelov Khambo Lama * The authors have
studied some of the these websites and social media sites and see they often include
historical information on a destroyed monastery, which has been provided either by
local people whose ancestors had either been monks in them or had attended them
themselves as youngsters. In some cases press articles are posted by local journalists
and these often combine historical records with interviews with local people includ¬
ing the monks in the revived datsan / khure / khurul who themselves have collected
information on the historical monasteries. This type of information can be treated as
Oral History and needs to be subject to rigorous scrutiny to separate historical fact
from unproven assertions or faulty memory.
Funding
The project manager and principal researchers have agreed to carry out their work
on a voluntary basis of patronage, without financial compensation, abiding by the
Buddhist practice of giving knowledge and the accumulation of merit.
It could be that field visits are needed to identify the exact location of a datsan /
khure / khurul or the researchers in a republic wish to do this. If this is deemed neces¬
sary, then the researchers will apply for grants in Russia to cover fieldwork, analysis
and database entry costs. Funds could also be required for analysis work in archives
either locally or in the major centres. Fundraising will have to be done at some stage
in the future for the development of and the hosting and maintenance of the website.
For example, Aginsky datsan (Rus. Aruncknä Jlaıan) in Buryatia has its own website (http://aginsky¬
datsan.ru/).
Buddhist Traditional Sangha of Russia (Rus. bymımlckas Tpamnımonnas Caurxa Poccun (https://
sangharussia.ru/).
15° Buddhist Door Global Articles on Europe/Russia (https://www.buddhistdoor.net/features/europe).
Hucrutyr Xam6o namsı Hruranoga (http://www.etegelov.ru).
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