The Holy Land Reborn: Pilgrimage and the Tibetan Reinvention of Buddhist India (Buddhism and Modernity series)

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Review “A fascinating work of scholarship on the Tibetan obsession with the ‘holy land’ of India, at once entertaining and edifying. Even that most stable-seeming of realities, physical location itself, is here shown to be a product of cultural creation. In this case what is more at issue than the Indian subcontinent itself is how the imagination of its Buddhist sacred sites shaped the landscape of Tibetan Buddhism, on the other side of the Himalayas.” (Janet Gyatso, Harvard Divinity School)“It has been repeated endlessly that for Tibetans, India is a ‘holy land,’ the place of origin of their Buddhist faith. Toni Huber has delved behind cliches and slogans and explored the cultural and historical realities of Tibet’s relations with India in the past as well as its present-day transformations. His book is a fascinating contribution to the study of Tibetan Buddhism, and to the history of religions and ideas in Asia in general. He cloaks his erudition in a lucid and eminently readable text, imparting new insights to the reader, counterbalancing prevalent facile and romantic ideas about Tibet.” (Per Kvaerne, University of Oslo, Norway)“The transformation of fluid space into bounded place, with knife-edged and therefore inevitably bloody borders, has been the work of modernity. In this engaging metageography of southern Asian Buddhism, Toni Huber rediscovers another world—India as a Tibetan place—demonstrating the deep, if sometimes confused and contested, connections that Tibetans have reinvented over ten centuries, whether through travel visions, pilgrimages, or exile. He thereby provides an exquisite demonstration of the fact that the certitudes by which people live their lives are as real and consequential as the hard truths of modern science.” (Sheldon Pollock, Columbia University)"This extremely well-researched book will have strong appeal for scholars of Tibet." (Choice)"Huber's sophisticated and nuanced 'study of India as a Tibetan place' is fascinating, beginning to end. . . . His compelling history of Tibetan perceptions of India and encounters with it highlights their national nostalgia, fascination, and disappointment, refreshingly casting Tibetans as subjects rather than the objects we so often take them to be." (Judith Simmer-Brown Buddhadharma)"This well-researched and skillfully-written volume will appeal to religion scholars, historians, anthropologists, and anyone interested in how people construct their present meaning out of the hints and memories from the past. . . . It is a brilliant exemplification of the creative imagination that underlies vital religious movements, thereby fortifying Ricoeur's observation that traditions only manage to remain alive by being reinterpreted." (Derek F. Maher Religious Studies Review) Read more About the Author Toni Huber is professor of Tibetan studies at the Institute for Asian and African Studies at Humboldt University, Berlin. He is the author or editor of five books, including most recently Nomads of Eastern Tibet. Read more