Singer of the Land of Snows: Shabkar, Buddhism, and Tibetan National Identity Available to Purchase

Rachel Pang's Singer of the Land of Snows is an in-depth investigation into the writings of Shabkar Tsokdruk Rangdrol (1781–1851), a nineteenth-century Tibetan Buddhist scholar from Eastern Tibet. Pang argues that in Shabkar's lifetime “Tibet” already was conceived of as a plateau-wide collective identity. This intervention is particularly timely at a period when the Chinese government maneuvers to replace the very name of Tibet with “Xizang” in Western languages. Employing Anthony Smith's “ethno-symbolist model of nationhood” (11), Pang explores Shabkar's conceptualization of Tibetan national identity through elements such as literature, cartography, myths, and religion. Moving beyond the state-centric view of nations that emerged in eighteenth-century Europe, the book posits that Shabkar articulated a conception of Tibetan collective identity—a Buddhist imagined community—that drew on myths of ethnic election, the mapping and visualization of Tibet as a predestined Buddhist landscape, vernacularization of his autobiography, and Buddhist ideals and practices. Together, these elements...