The Cult of Pure Crystal Mountain

The Tibetan district of Tsari with its sacred snow-covered peak of Pure Crystal Mountain has long been a place of symbolic and ritual significance for Tibetan peoples. In this book, Toni Huber provides the first comprehensive account of life at Tsari, of the cult of its Pure Crystal Mountain, and of both the esoteric and popular traditions of ritual there. Huber's main focus is on the period of the 1940s and 1950s, concluding with the 1959 Lhasa uprising against the Chinese, which ended in a Tibetan diaspora. His work thus documents Tibetan life patterns and cultural traditions which have largely disappeared. In addition to the work's documentary content, Huber offers discussion and analysis of the construction and meaning of Tibetan cultural categories of space, place, and person, and the practice of ritual and organization of traditional society in relation to them.