A Study of Religious Revival in the Context of Modern Tibetan Pilgrimage : The Relation between Buddhism Tradition and Popular Ritual under the Open Policy in China <Article>

This article attempts to describe the modern pilgrimage movement that is considered as a major point to link the Buddhism tradition with the popular ritual in the main land of Tibet in People's Republic of China. So far, the main stream of Tibetan pilgrimage studies, which developed from Himalayan-boarder area (Indian side of Tibet), emphasis upon analyzing the structure of sacred cosmology that ruled by Buddhism theory. In recent years, some western scholars try to adopt this method to the case of main land of Tibet. However, nowadays, pilgrimage studies on the mainland of Tibet require wider perspectives for the sacred holy site and its surrounding society since rapid social change accompanied with Chinese open policy "Reform and Opening", which started from 1980s, has impacted upon both the scheme of religious community as the "Host" of pilgrimage site and the ritual practice of pilgrims as the "Guest" of same site. To start such a new subject of pilgrimage study, While the author of this study offers one interpretation of the pilgrimage guidebook, which was written by high priest in 17th century about one of the most famous pilgrimage sites in northeast part of Tibet, to recognize the formation of sacred visionary landscape on Buddhist pilgrimage site, and also offers the practiced ritual data which is observed on the same pilgrimage site to reveal how recent pilgrims have been influenced by the social change and its modernized environment including the secularization of pilgrimage guidebook itself. Through these text studies and participatory observation, the author examines the newly formed religious revival and discusses the relationship between the Buddhism tradition and the popular ritual under Chinese political and economical initiatives