A Monastery in Time ─ The Making of Mongolian Buddhism

A Monastery in Time is the first book to describe the life of a Mongolian Buddhist monastery—the Mergen Monastery in Inner Mongolia—from inside its walls. From the Qing occupation of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries through the Cultural Revolution, Caroline Humphrey and Hurelbaatar Ujeed tell a story of religious formation, suppression, and survival over a history that spans three centuries.

Often overlooked in Buddhist studies, Mongolian Buddhism is an impressively self-sustaining tradition whose founding lama, the Third Mergen Gegen, transformed Tibetan Buddhism into an authentic counterpart using the Mongolian language. Drawing on fifteen years of fieldwork, Humphrey and Ujeed show how lamas have struggled to keep Mergen Gegen’s vision alive through tremendous political upheaval, and how such upheaval has inextricably fastened politics to religion for many of today’s practicing monks. Exploring the various ways Mongolian Buddhists have attempted to link the past, present, and future, Humphrey and Ujeed offer a compelling study of the interplay between the individual and the state, tradition and history.

Caroline Humphrey is professor emerita and director of the Mongolian and Inner Asia Studies Unit at Cambridge University. She is the author or coauthor of twenty previous books, most recently Urban Life in Post-Soviet Central Asia. Hurelbaatar Ujeed founded the Hurelbaatar Institute for Mongolian Studies at the Inner Mongolia Normal University and is a senior research associate in the Mongolian and Inner Asia Studies Unit at Cambridge University.