Reading a 1908 Buryat Schoolbook on Buddhism in the Light of its Socio-Cultural Setting
Reading a 1908 Buryat Schoolbook on Buddhism in the Light of its Socio-Cultural Setting

Summary/Abstract: This article is devoted to the text entitled A Concise Teaching of Buddha Shakyamuni’s Religion for Instructing the Buryat Children, published in 1910 by Lama Danja-a Erdeniyeb. The study attempts to trace its complex discursive story, which shows the way the religious didactic narrative was transformed into a textbook for secular Buryat schools of the time. The story of this transformation requires a comprehensive comment on the historical and cultural setting of the early twentieth-century tsarist Russia, in which the author and his text were both embedded. In the appendix to the article, the reader will find my transliteration and English translation of this peculiar text.

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