Papers by Katia Buffetrille ཚེ་རིང་དབང་མོ།
Revisiting Rituals in a Changing Tibetan World
This chapter highlights developments at Halesi-Māratika over the last fifteen years and presents ... more This chapter highlights developments at Halesi-Māratika over the last fifteen years and presents the protagonists as well as their various activities. It aims at putting the history of the caves into perspective according to new information obtained. The two following parts are devoted to two processes that are having a significant impact on the ritual life of this holy place: Buddhicisation, which is still ongoing and assertive despite the establishment of Maoism, and the wish for international recognition. The transfer of holy places from India to Nepal or Tibet is a phenomenon that is widely attested in the Tibetan tradition. Karma dbang phyug hopes to build a monastery in Lumbini as soon as he has raised the necessary money. Thub bstan chos gling, founded by 'Khrul zhig Rinpoche, is another example of the expansion a monastery can experience in two decades. Keywords:Halesi-Maratika caves; Karma dbang phyug; Thub bstan chos gling
Cahiers d’ethnomusicologie 36/ 2023, 2023
Nécrologie de Mireille Helffer
A Life in Tibetan Studies. Fesrschrift for Dieter Schuh at the Occasion of his 80th Birthday. LIRI, 2023
Das umfassende und außergewöhnliche weite Spektrum des Oeuvres von Dieter Schuh als Autor, Heraus... more Das umfassende und außergewöhnliche weite Spektrum des Oeuvres von Dieter Schuh als Autor, Herausgeber, Verleger und Initiator und Organisator von akademischen Schwerpunkten lässt sich leicht der Webseite des International Institute for Tibetan and Buddhist Studies GmbH (http://www.tibetinstitut.de/index.html) entnehmen. Hier sind die wichtigsten Arbeiten aufgeführt.
GIS Article of the month, 2022
The first Tibetan texts date back to the Empire (7th-9th century) and the Tibetans, since they wr... more The first Tibetan texts date back to the Empire (7th-9th century) and the Tibetans, since they wrote down their language using an original alphabet inspired by Indian scripts, have remained faithful to their script. The Tibetan language belongs to the Tibeto-Burman branch of the Sino-Tibetan macrofamily, but is very different from the Chinese language in its grammar, vocabulary and script. The gap between Chinese and Tibetan is as great as the distance separating French from Persian or Hindi, three languages that belong to the same macrofamily, that of Indo-European. For more than a thousand years, the Tibetan written language has been the tool for the transmission of knowledge and as such has often been described as the Latin of High Asia.
GIS L'article du mois, 2022
Les premiers textes tibétains datent de l'Empire (VIIe-IXe s.) et les Tibétains, depuis qu'ils on... more Les premiers textes tibétains datent de l'Empire (VIIe-IXe s.) et les Tibétains, depuis qu'ils ont noté leur langue à l'aide d'un alphabet original, inspiré par les écritures indiennes, sont restés fidèles à cette écriture. La langue tibétaine, quant à elle, fait partie de la branche tibéto-birmane de la macrofamille sino-tibétaine, mais elle est très éloignée de la langue chinoise par sa grammaire, son vocabulaire et son écriture. L'écart entre chinois et tibétain est aussi grand que la distance séparant le français du persan ou du hindi, trois langues appartenant pourtant à la même macrofamille, celle de l'indo-européen. Depuis plus d'un millénaire la langue écrite tibétaine a été l'outil de transmission du savoir et à ce titre a souvent été qualifiée de latin de la Haute Asie.
Asia Focus, 2021
or decades, no one in the West had heard of the Uighurs and few knew who they really were. Tibeta... more or decades, no one in the West had heard of the Uighurs and few knew who they really were. Tibetans, on the other hand, benefited from the aura of the Dalai Lama who travelled widely and met with heads of state and government. Tibet and its people continued to be the stuff of dreams, and the old clichés attached to the country continued to live on. Then, just after the 2008 Tibetan uprisings, the inter-ethnic clashes in Urumqi occurred in 2009. They were followed by the Tiananmen Square incident in 2013 and the knife attack at Kunming railway station in Yunnan in 2014, all of which were attributed to Uighurs and brought them out of the shadows into the international spotlight. The rise of China, the increasingly authoritarian rule of Xi Jinping, the hyper-sensitivity of the Chinese authorities with regard to the Dalai Lama, and the timidity, not to say weakness, of Western countries faced with a now economically powerful China, have led numerous governments to stop receiving the Tibetan hierarch. On top of all this, complicated, difficult, and often worrisome, national and international political situation have contributed to the media losing interest in Tibet and Tibetans little by little. On the Uighur side, it took a long time for the West to wake up, but finally, thanks to the hard work of researchers, human rights defenders and activists, the situation in Xinjiang has been brought to light, overshadowing that of Tibet, which, although less dramatic, is actually no less disquieting. The four objectives laid out in China's new 14 th five-year plan (2021-2025) give an idea of the direction the authorities have chosen for Tibet. Four axes have been set up: "ensuring national security and regional stability, increasing national income, protecting the environment and consolidating border security and defense." The time is long gone when Deng Xiaoping told Gyelo Döndrup, one of the Dalai Lama's elder brothers, that "everything could be discussed except independence".
EMMANUEL LINCOT : Votre ouvrage présente une synthèse remarquable sur une période méconnue de l'h... more EMMANUEL LINCOT : Votre ouvrage présente une synthèse remarquable sur une période méconnue de l'histoire tibétaine coïncidant avec celle, chinoise, des dynasties Ming et Qing. En quoi considérez-vous que cette période est charnière ? KATIA BUFFETRILLE : En 1642, le V e Dalaï-Lama reçoit des mains de son disciple, le chef Qoshot Gushri Khan, les territoires du Tibet central et occidental qu'il vient de conquérir. Le hiérarque devient alors le premier Dalaï-Lama à exercer un pouvoir spirituel et aussi temporel. À la même époque, la dynastie chinoise des Ming qui régnait sur la Chine depuis le XIVe siècle est sur son déclin et la dynastie mandchoue des Qing prend le pouvoir en 1644. Pour le Tibet, le XVII e siècle est effectivement une période cruciale, non seulement politiquement, mais aussi dans de nombreux autres domaines. Le Tibet est alors partiellement réunifié pour la première fois depuis le XIII e siècle et va connaître une grande stabilité politique. Les personnalités hors du commun du V e Dalaï-Lama, Ngawang Lobsang Gyatso (1617-1682), mais aussi celle de l'un de ses régents, Sangye Gyatso (1653-1705), vont être décisives. Le hiérarque instaure un système particulier de gouvernement fondé sur l'union de l'autorité spirituelle et du pouvoir temporal qui, plus tard, au XVIII e siècle sera doté de nouvelles structures gouvernementales qui perdureront quasiment en l'état jusqu'à l'invasion chinoise des années 1950.
On a Day of a Month in the Fire Bird Year. Festschrift for Peter Scwieger on the occasion of his 65th birthday. (Lumbini International Research Institute), 2020, pp. 71-84, 2020
Revue d'études tibétaines, n0 54, 2020
The conversation below took place in order to be included in a volume in tribute to Mireille Helf... more The conversation below took place in order to be included in a volume in tribute to Mireille Helffer for her 90th birthday. Mireille and Samten have both contributed to the influence of French Tibetology in the world and even if they had different research interests, there is one theme that has brought them together: the Gesar Epic. But this conversation has gone well beyond that, and as we spoke, we discover Samten's unique physical, spiritual and intellectual journey. This is why I thought it would be useful to translate this article and to give a greater number of readers the opportunity to learn about “A Tibetan Journey”.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, a... more JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
in K. Buffetrille et I. Henrion-Dourcy, "Musique et épopée en Haute-Asie", Mélanges offerts à Mireille Helffer à l'occasion de son 90e anniversaire. Paris, L'Asiathèque 2017: 409-427.
Études mongoles et sibériennes, centrasiatiques et tibétaines, 50
This article deals with a rarely described ritual, the red purifying smoke offering (marsang) a... more This article deals with a rarely described ritual, the red purifying smoke offering (marsang) and its evolution over the years. This bloody offering is dedicated to Trike Yülha, the territorial god of a village of Amdo-Rebgong. It raises the question of the identification of this local god with two important Chinese deities: the god of literature, Wenchang and that of war, Guandi. Using Tibetan and Western sources, the author shows that this identification dates back to the Qing period and suggests that it might have made an offering of this kind, that is so disparaged in the Buddhist world, more acceptable.
EPHE / CRCAO In M.F. Bennes (éd.) Les Tibétains. Lignes de vie d'un peuple. Ateliers Henry Dougie... more EPHE / CRCAO In M.F. Bennes (éd.) Les Tibétains. Lignes de vie d'un peuple. Ateliers Henry Dougier. 2016 : 46-56.
EPHE / CRCAO in F. Raviez (ed.), Poétique du spirituel, Actes du colloque La poétique du spiritue... more EPHE / CRCAO in F. Raviez (ed.), Poétique du spirituel, Actes du colloque La poétique du spirituel (29 mars 2013). Artois Presses Université, 49-64 « Le pèlerinage est l'offrande religieuse du laïc » : ce dicton qui circule au Dolpo, région de culture tibétaine située au nord-ouest du Népal, permet de comprendre pourquoi le pèlerinage est la manifestation la plus importante de l'activité religieuse des laïcs tibétains.
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Papers by Katia Buffetrille ཚེ་རིང་དབང་མོ།
Shangrila. Contested Landscapes in the Sino-Tibetan Borderlands. Seattle and London: University of Washington Press. 332. Foreword, introduction, afterword, maps (10+15), 12 black & white plates, bibliography, index ISBN 9780295993584 (hardcover 75USD), 0295993588 (paperback 39USD).
Emily Yeh and Chris Coggins have gathered a collection of ten articles published under what appears as a very contradictory title: Mapping Shangrila. Contested Landscapes in the Sino-Tibetan Borderlands. Since Peter Bishop's The Myth of Shangri la (1989) and Donald Lopez's Prisoners of Shangri la (1998), several books have appeared on Tibet and its relation with the mythical realm created by James Hilton (1900-1954). Meanwhile, Tibetans and Chinese officials in Yunnan have succeeded in establishing Hilton's imaginary place on earth in a real place, populated by real people. In 2002, the city of Gyalthang (Rgyal thang; Ch, Zhongdian), was renamed Shangrila, or Xiangelila as it is rendered in Chinese language. The Shangrila of this book covers a geographic area much larger than Rgyal thang and
its surroundings, however. It deals with what the editors qualify as the "Sino-Tibetan Borderlands": places in Kham and Amdo that are undertaking a similar process of "Shangrilazation." ...