Ocean of Milk, Ocean of Blood

A Mongolian Monk in the Ruins of the Qing Empire

Matthew W. King

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Hardback

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English

Columbia University Press
02 April 2019

Buddhism

"After the fall of the Qing empire, amid nationalist and socialist upheaval, Buddhist monks in the Mongolian frontiers of the Soviet Union and Republican China faced a chaotic and increasingly uncertain world. In this book, Matthew W. King tells the story of one Mongolian monk's efforts to defend Buddhist monasticism in revolutionary times, revealing an unexplored landscape of countermodern Buddhisms beyond old imperial formations and the newly invented national subject.

Ocean of Milk, Ocean of Blood takes up the perspective of the polymath Zava Damdin (1867–1937): a historian, mystic, logician, and pilgrim whose life and works straddled the Qing and its socialist aftermath, between the monastery and the party scientific academy. Drawing on contacts with figures as diverse as the Dalai Lama, mystic monks in China, European scholars inventing the field of Buddhist studies, and a member of the Bakhtin Circle, Zava Damdin labored for thirty years to protect Buddhist tradition against what he called the ""bloody tides"" of science, social mobility, and socialist party antagonism. Through a rich reading of his works, King reveals that modernity in Asia was not always shaped by epochal contact with Europe and that new models of Buddhist life, neither imperial nor national, unfolded in the post-Qing ruins. The first book to explore countermodern Buddhist monastic thought and practice along the Inner Asian frontiers during these tumultuous years, Ocean of Milk, Ocean of Blood illuminates previously unknown religious and intellectual legacies of the Qing and offers an unparalleled view of Buddhist life in the revolutionary period."

By: Matthew W. King
Imprint: Columbia University Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 229mm, Width: 152mm,
ISBN: 9780231191067
ISBN 10: 0231191065
Pages: 304
Publication Date: 02 April 2019
Audience: Professional and scholarly , Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Matthew W. King is assistant professor in transnational Buddhism in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of California, Riverside.

Reviews for Ocean of Milk, Ocean of Blood: A Mongolian Monk in the Ruins of the Qing Empire

King's obviously deep exposure to and grasp of a wide range of theoretical readings has made him alert and attentive to fields beyond his immediate interests in Mongolia/Tibetan Buddhist religion and society. This book is combines effective argumentation, solid evidence, and a lyrical quality rare in specialized monographs.--Gray Tuttle, Leila Hadley Luce Professor of Modern Tibetan Studies, Columbia University This is not merely an intellectual history; it is religious studies at its best. Ocean of Milk, Ocean of Blood establishes a new paradigm in the study of Buddhist Asia, showcasing both how to study countermodern Buddhism and what it reveals.--Johan Elverskog, author of Buddhism and Islam on the Silk Road

Long-listed for International Convention of Asia Scholars (ICAS), Humanities Book Prize 2021
Short-listed for CESS Book Award in History and the Humanities, Central Eurasian Studies Society 2020
Winner of Award for Excellence in the Study of Religion: Textual Studies, American Academy of Religion 2020
Winner of CESS Book Award in History and the Humanities, Central Eurasian Studies Society 2020
Winner of Specialist Publication Accolade, International Convention of Asia Scholars 2021