A Monastery in Time

“Taking as its focus the Mergen Monastery of Inner Mongolia and its penumbra of tradition(s) that have developed over the course of 250 years, this anthropological study built on fifteen years of fieldwork is a theoretical tour-de-force excavating how religions develop, become institutionalized, and transform across both time and space.” 

“Humphrey and Ujeed’s captivating anthropological study of the Mergen Monastery and its tradition is a result of extensive and collaborative fieldwork located in the south-western region of Inner Mongolia, commonly known as Urad. It is an important contribution to Mongolian and Buddhist studies and is especially timely given the growing interest in Mongolian Buddhism. One of the merits of this book is the authors’ ability to integrate the anthropological method and perspective with historical and archaeological data and textual evidence. The project is multilayered and covers two temporal frameworks: a historical one that concerns the formation, renaissance, tribulations, demise, and revival of the Mergen tradition from the early eighteenth century to the present, and the one that covers nearly seventeen years of the authors’ field research. The book provides an excellent exploration of the socio-historical, economic, and religious underpinnings of the Mergen lineage of reincarnations, a nuanced discussion of the religious life of Mergen Monastery, its religious and political roles under the Qing, and the importance of the monastery in creating and maintaining Mongolian-language-based Buddhism.”

“This is a unique documentation of a unique sacred place, including its development, suppression by the Chinese, and subsequent revival in recent times. The authors provide an exemplary historical and ethnographic study of a sacred place, Buddhism, and Mongolia. . . . Highly recommended.” 

“A Monastery in Time is a tremendously original product of almost fifteen years of painstaking scholarship. Caroline Humphrey and Hürelbaatar Ujeed combine an ethnography of a particular site, the Mergen monastery in Inner Mongolia, with a theoretically informed description of what a tradition—the Mongolian Buddhist tradition or any tradition—actually is. The results are impressive both for the theory and for the ethnography of an important but little-known religious community.”

“This is a vital addition to our understanding of the rich interweaving of Tibetan and Mongolian Buddhism, taking place in a land where religion and politics have, for better or worse, undergone almost perpetual revolution. Caroline Humphrey and Hürelbaatar Ujeed’s ethnography of the Mergen monastery combines a deep sense of Inner Mongolia’s turbulent history—from the rise and fall of the Qing dynasty to the terrors of the Cultural Revolution to the labyrinthine regulations of the modern moment—with a nuanced portrait of the individual religious meanings, the personal struggles, and the everyday institutional strategies that make up that history.”

“During the past two decades, an impressive body of scholarship has emerged concerning the revival of religious life in China following the Cultural Revolution, a particular focus of which has been renewal among China’s minority peoples, including Tibetan Buddhists. Relatively little has appeared, however, in respect to the cognate Buddhist traditions of Inner Mongolia. This gap now begins to be filled, and masterfully so, in A Monastery in Time by Caroline Humphrey and Hürelbaatar Ujeed. The great strength of this work is found in its unusual blend of exacting observation of contemporary events with the depth born of thorough historical research, and further with the insights of recent work in the social sciences and Buddhist Studies. I recommend A Monastery in Time highly, both for its substantive contribution to our knowledge and for its theoretical savvy.”

“A lively product of extensive field research in Inner Mongolia, this book brings to light how the Mergen monastery propagated Mongol versions of Buddhist texts and rituals among lay populations in the mid-eighteenth century. Drawing on a variety of untapped local sources, Caroline Humphrey and Hürelbataar Ujeed offer a refreshing view on the Mongol reappropriation of Buddhism in everyday life—an indispensable anthropological reading that illuminates previous studies based on official sources.”