The Tibetan Assimilation of Buddhism: Conversion, Contestation, and Memory

The book opens with a theoretical reflection on how societies appropriate foreign cultural systems and make them their own. Kapstein frames the Tibetan assimilation of Buddhism as a process of transformation in which Tibet was changed by Buddhism, while Buddhism itself was reconfigured through Tibetan forms of narrative, authority, memory, and religious imagination. The first chapter introduces death, literacy, and Tibet’s Buddhist elite as key issues in understanding Buddhism’s rise in Tibet. Part I, “Conversion and Narrative,” examines traditions concerning the eighth-century Tibetan adoption of Buddhism, including the Testament of Ba, the Chinese mother of Tibet’s Dharma-king, rebirth and resurrection narratives, and the royal conversion to Buddhism. Part II, “Sources of Contestation,” studies doctrinal transmission and dispute, including Korean-Tibetan links, Tibetan scholasticism, Sakya Paṇḍita, Karma Pakshi, Dolpopa, and debates over apocryphal texts. Part III, “Myth, Memory, Revelation,” turns to Nyingma traditions, Tibetan imperial memory, Avalokiteśvara, Padmasambhava, Samantabhadra, Rudra, and Great Perfection concepts of memory. The work concludes with an appendix, extensive notes, glossary, bibliography, and index.