A Study On Decline Of Tibetan Buddhism In Modern Inner Mongolia

In modern times, a declining tendency appeared in Tibetan Buddhism in Inner Mongolia. A study on its cause has important academic value and practical guiding significance on exploring how modern politics, economy, cultural vicissitudes influenced the religion and how to solve religious and national problems appropriately. However, because the study involves almost a hundred year of history of whole inner Mongolian district, the historical data is not only scattered but also can not be distinguished true or false; moreover, the academic circles has paid little attention to this problem so far.Historical data is basic materials to study history. Using comparative historiography approach and grounding in historical data left over in Archives of Tumed's Left Wing Banner, Hohhot and Archives of Inner Mongolia as well as other materials, local history, social survey reports and written works of the historians, the thesis preliminarily inquires into the decline of Tibetan Buddhism in Inner Mongolia during 1840 to 1947.The thesis is composed of preface, main body and conclusion and there are about forty thousand words. The preface is the brief introduction to the aim, significance, situation of the study subject, some relative materials, bibliographies, the research approach of the thesis and its new ideas. The first part of the main body introduces the cause of changes in policy made by late Qing Dynasty towards Mongolian nation and its content and influence on Tibetan Buddhism. It also introduces policy towards Mongolian and its influence during the rule of Kuomintang and Japanese. In addition, this is the first time in this thesis the relationship between policies made by modern Central authority towards Mongolian nation and Tibetan Buddhism is systematically stated. Finally the conclusion is drawn out from this part that the main reasons of decline of Tibetan Buddhism in Inner Mongolia are these: the strength of support from government dropped; cultivation of Mongolian district caused the wither id temple economy; the migration of Mongolian people because of the poverty led to the separation between the believers and temples. The second part proves how such external factors as modern education and agro-farming culture influenced and shocked Tibetan Buddhism. It is also stated in this part that the continuous development of modern education brought up many Mongolian intellectuals who spontaneously restricted and reformed Tibetan Buddhism in certain degree as they awakened. These reforms strongly hit the reverse factors of Tibetan Buddhism. The decline of Tibetan Buddhism in Hohhot district is mainly caused by influence of long-term ago-farming culture. The third part presents some other causes that lead to decline of Tibetan Buddhism: its own corruption; the damage caused by chaos of war and so on. The conclusion part summarized the whole content of the thesis and states the basic views of Master's academic dissertation.