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Sacred Texts: Buddhism

Chapter XII. The Tibetan Priesthood

19th Century BuddhologyBuddhist IconographyTibetan Buddhism

Connected to
Chapter VIII. The Sacred Literature Shares 3 topics Chapter XVI. The Systems of Reckoning Time Shares 3 topics Chapter III. The Religious System of Sakyamuni Shares 3 topics Chapter VII. Historical Account of the Introduction of Buddhism into Tibet Shares 3 topics
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This is a scholarly historical and comparative religious study — likely a chapter from a 19th-century European academic work on Tibetan Buddhism (Lamaism) — 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 — 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 — critically — 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.

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