The Historical Roots of Tibetan Scholasticism

This paper examines the social milieu within which a form of Buddhism based on logic , commentary, and debate arose in Tibet during the period of the ‘Tibetan renaissance.’ Taking as exemplary scholastic the thirteenth‐century monk Sakya , I argue that crucial to the survival of a Tibetan scholasticism were new monastic networks supported by a revivified economy, the use of scholastic discourses as cultural unifiers, the special status accorded scholarly knowledge within Tibetan society at large, and the distinctive manner in which exoteric scholasticism was piggybacked onto the esoteric, ritual‐intensive Buddhist tantra that came to dominate the period.