Photo Images of Buryatia’s Buddhists

Abstract

Goals. The paper examines the issue of visual images in the everyday ritual practice of ordinary Buddhists in Buryatia. The relevance of studying rare Buddhist photographs as a historical and cultural source cannot be questioned, since this perspective reveals unknown aspects in the formation of Buryat identity and the role of Buddhism in this process. Materials. The work investigates the collection of rare photographs at the Institute for Mongolian, Buddhist and Tibetan Studies (Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences) and photographs of the ritual complex ‘khoimor-gungurba’ collected during expeditions of the 1950-1970s and in the early 21st century. Results. A method (metalanguage) of describing Buddhist photo images was developed during preliminary works to clarify the mechanism of actualizing this material in Buddhist discourse, including elements as follows: a mechanism of image selection; cultural context; ritual and social goals; nature of materials; registration of believers’ reactions to visual images. The paper shows a close relationship between the local visual practice of Buddhists and the formation of Buryat identity from the late 19th towards the 21st century, which is concluded from a comparative analysis of the two databases. After a comparative reconstruction of the structures of the collections, the work argues that the everyday ritual practice of praying before these photos is an important aspect in the formation of local identity. The most interesting finding of the study is that pre-revolutionary images of Buryat Lamas are central in the culture of the photo-visual practices of Buryat Buddhists nowadays. The comparative analysis confirmed that a fundamental change in the transmission of the Buddhist tradition in Buryatia, social changes, and the economic situation led to a change in the development of the traditional Buddhist culture of the Buryats that currently prioritizes autocephaly and the preservation of ethnic identity.