To Make a Monastery: Tibetan Settlement and Place-making on the Amdo Grasslands

In the nineteenth century, Tibetan nomadic pastoralists in Amdo defied the Qing Dynasty (1636-1911), conquered the Qinghai Mongols, and settled the grasslands surrounding Lake Tsongön (Tib. Mtsho sngon; Mong. Kökenuur; Ch.: Qinghai hu). After decades of conflict, Qing officials acquiesced and recognized their right to live in these grasslands. The communities then built their own permanent monasteries, established relationships with territorial deities, and affiliated their monasteries with larger monasteries in farming regions in the east. I argue that these processes constituted a form of Buddhist place-making. The monasteries they built and the regions they settled often took on the communities’ names. Through affiliating their monasteries with large monasteries in farming regions, they established religious teaching networks, pilgrimage circuits, trade networks, and political alliances with eastern Amdo monasteries. By establishing different pastoralist communities as patrons (Tib. lha sde) of the same monastery, they facilitated ties between communities.