In Ocean of Milk, Ocean of Blood, Matthew King highlights the writings of Zava Damdin (1867–1937), a Mongolian intellectual and religious leader who was revered during his lifetime. Zava Damdin's work is well known and highly respected in the field of Buddhist studies, but with this book King's extensive translations and analysis of the monk's writings now offer a window onto late Qing Buddhist interpretations of political and social order, and the cultural consequences of the Qing dynasty's end, for readers in other disciplines.
King scrutinizes two products of Zava Damdin's historical imagination: first, his view of the Qing state as imbued with absolute political authority and indisputable religious legitimacy; and second, his attempt to comprehend and preserve a polyethnic, Inner Asian Buddhism before and after the Qing's demise. These two elements contribute fresh evidence to our understanding of how Qing institutions gradually adjusted to the nationalist and communist...
