Prof. Dr. Karénina Kollmar-Paulenz

The planned research project developed out of my previous research on a global history of religion. Taking the example of Inner Asia, it was possible to demonstrate that the emergence of secondary knowledge systems in the form of generalisable theoretical reflections is not unique to the ‘West’. The research results prompted further questions, e.g. regarding knowledge transfer between different knowledge cultures such as religion, philology, geography and medicine in Tibet and Mongolia, which in turn introduces the idea of a separate secularity in Tibetan and Mongolian societies. This subject is to be developed through an investigation of Mongolian and Tibetan scholars and scholarly circles from the 17th to the 19th century. Having never before been investigated systematically, these circles will be explored in detail using the following examples: (1) The intellectual circle that formed around the ‘Tibetan Language School’ (established in Beijing in 1657) during the rule of the Qing emperor Qianlong (ruled 1736-1796) will be explored. Gombojab (1692-1749?), who had been appointed head of the school in 1723, is a key individual in this context. He worked in an intellectual environment that took ideas not just from the surrounding regions in Inner Asia but also from Europe, communicated by the Europeans that were present at the Qing court and through knowledge from the Kangxi period and the influential Jesuits of that time, which had been codified in Chinese. I am placing the focus here primarily on the integration and transfer processes between Tibetan-Mongolian, Chinese and European knowledge cultures. (2) The negotiation and adjustment processes in the area of tension between empiricism and religious truths will be examined through the example of the Tibetan scholar bTsan po no mon han (1789-1839) and his work. In his geographical work ‘Detailed Description of the World’ from 1830, he presented various European countries to a Tibetan readership for the first time in relative detail. But at the same time, the new geographical knowledge put Buddhist normative models to the test. (3) Using the 1802 work ‘Crystal Mirror of Philosophical Systems’, written by the Mongolian scholar Thu’u bkvan Blo bzang chos kyi nyi ma in the Tibetan language, which contains a chapter on Indian philosophical and religious teachings in the tradition of Tibetan Buddhist doxographical works, I will discuss the effects of representations of Indian religion, only conveyed in texts from the 11th century onwards, on Tibetan scholars. Here, I am interested to know whether in Tibet and Mongolia there were processes of appropriation from foreign cultures and religions in the medium of scholarly thinking.