{"collection":"Sacred Texts: Buddhism","full_text_available":false,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/sacred_texts_v1_bud_bit_bit15_htm/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/sacred_texts_v1_bud_bit_bit15_htm","id":"sacred_texts_v1_bud_bit_bit15_htm","license":"unknown_pending_legal_review","rights_basis":"sacred_texts_v1_preview_gate_primary_text_only; acquisition-method/ToS and compilation-copyright questions still open, not resolved by this gate","source":"sacred_texts_v1","source_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/bud/bit/bit15.htm","summary":"This is a scholarly historical and comparative religious study \u2014 likely a chapter from a 19th-century European academic work on Tibetan Buddhism (Lamaism) \u2014 drawing on the reports of European missionaries and travelers to Tibet from the 17th through mid-19th centuries. The text traces the gradual accumulation of Western knowledge about Lamaism, cataloguing the missionary expeditions that reached Lhasa (Jesuit, Capucine, and Lazarist) and the scholarly works derived from their accounts. It then turns to the doctrinal and institutional history of Tibetan Buddhism: the evolution of the lay/priestly distinction from early Buddhism through the Hinayana and Mahayana schools, the development of the Vihara from an open-air gathering place into a full monastic institution, and the emergence of Tibet's uniquely centralized hierarchical clergy \u2014 contrasted explicitly with the more decentralized Indian Buddhist monasticism. A distinctive claim is that Tibet's hierarchical organization, unlike anything found in India, originated with King Thisrong de tsan in the 8th century but reached its definitive form through Tsonkhapa's reforms in the 15th century. The author also notes \u2014 critically \u2014 that early missionaries attempted to interpret Lamaism as a corrupted form of Christianity, a claim the text treats as a curiosity rather than a serious thesis. This work would interest readers seeking a historically grounded, comparative account of how Tibetan Buddhist institutions diverged from their Indian origins and how Europe first came to understand them.","tags":["19th Century Buddhology","Buddhist Iconography","Tibetan Buddhism"],"text":null,"title":"Chapter XII. The Tibetan Priesthood","tradition":"Sacred Texts: Buddhism","translated_text":null,"word_count":9145}