On the Threshold of the "Land of Marvels:" Alexandra David-Neel in Sikkim and the Making of Global Buddhism
Alexandra David-Neel had already been acquainted with the Himalayas for a long time before the visits to Tibet in 1924 that would make her a mainstream figure of modern Buddhism. In fact, her encounter with Tibet and Tibetan Buddhism can be linked with Sikkim, where she arrived in 1912 after visiting India. An exploration of her Sikkim stay invites us to reconsider the self-fashioning of David-Neel’s image as an explorer of what she called the “land of marvels.” This paper highlights her construction of Sikkim as the locality that helped her create her singular vision of Tibet. Her encounters with local Buddhists in Sikkim provided her with the lofty images of a spiritual Tibet that she contributed to publicizing in the wake of the globalization of Buddhism.
Copyright (c) 2016 Samuel Thevoz
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Copyright (c) 2016 Samuel Thevoz
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
- Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).
