Introduction to ‘Special Issue: The Anthropology of Buddhism as Marginalia’

Anthropologists of Buddhism encounter marginalia constantly, from scribbled notes in a book or the smudge of pigment in a ritual manual, to figurative ducking in and out of the crowd at a possession event. Despite being far from young, the stunted development of the sub-field within Buddhist Studies is partly attributable to a pejorative view of this ethnographic project as the marginal scribbles to Buddhist Studies’ normative text critical and philological work. Heeding Gellner’s (1990) and Sihlé and Ladwig’s (2017) calls for an ethnographic, comparative, and inter-textual Anthropology of Buddhism, this Special Issue brings together five scholars of Nepal, Tibet, and Myanmar, working towards a rapprochement of text and context by drawing on both these disciplines. Each paper plays with, trespasses, and reconstitutes boundaries by openly thinking through Buddhist Studies’ diverse marginalia, questioning the outmoded binary of text-primary and ethnographic approaches.